"Gizmo! Are you trying to get my food?!" "Of course not, that would be rude. See...my eyes aren't even open!"
"Well they're open now...what are you doing?" "Don't be silly, I'm looking over this way...." "Well you know the rules, don't be begging or trying to make a play for the plate! This isn't a baseball game, you know!" "Uh-huh....""Gizmo! Are you listening to me?!" "Uh sure, the Cubs have a decent shot at the pennant this year...um, what?"Submitted to Friday Ark.

July Bloom Day...and I'm only a day late! :) First we have common milkweed, it's been very prolific this year, which is fine with me! Smells great, and the bugs love it! (Especially the monarch butterfly.) Okay, not flowers, but I'd never noticed how the berries on my honeysuckle bushes look like tiny lightbulbs...strange.
'Neon Flash' spirea...

....dianthus (I'll check the tag for the name and edit it in later) Update-okay, maybe I don't know the cultivar, because I never did. It was purchaed as an annual with no name, but it comes back every year.)... ....'Lorraine Sunshine' heliopsis...
...red nasturtiums...

.....again not blooms, but these mulberries are ripening...
....though not very purple yet. I tasted one like this that was barely purple-tinged, and I think this may actually be a white mulberry tree because the berry was very sweet...
....which explains the enthusiasm from these guys! This is a cedar waxwing, and right now this tree is covered with them, all the time!
I really enjoy their whispery call, and the fact that they'll let me get fairly close for pictures. (They don't hold very still, though.)

Hen and chicks blooming...
...nicely!

The New Guinea impatiens looks happy...

....as does this 'Red Mini Hollyhock'. Red? Not even close.... ....same as this 'Red Fox' veronica. I suppose "Pink Fox" doesn't sound quite right, but it would be more accurate!
Mushroom, not bloom. (Although the mushroom is considered the "fruiting body" of the underground mycelum, so I guess it counts as fruit. :)
Thyme blooming (I believe this one is 'Minus', but I have several cultivars and I forget which one I took a picture of-sorry!) These flowers sure are tiny!

Here's another for the "not red" category, 'Cherry' Queen of the prairie. I like it anyway... ...and the "blooms" on this silky wild rye. I hope the seeds will germinate, because I want more of this!
Look at the bugs on this black-eyed susan...kinda cool how they match. The butterfly is a Pearl Crescent, and the slender bug is a Thread-waisted wasp. The wasps are listed as "solitary", but are also "parasitic"...so exactly how solitary can they be? Or is that why they don't have any friends? Just wondering...
Heh, and yet another flower that was supposed to be "red", 'Wizard's Cap' clover. I tried to find the catalog picture, but it's not on the Michigan Bulb web site anymore. Now, pink is a nice enough color, and I suppose some wizard might have a pink cap, but red was the color in the picture so that's what I expected. And it's not like red is some un-attainable flower color...*sigh*...alright, I'm done whining! :)

'Alexander' lysimachia blooming nicely...
...so is 'Golden Queen' trollius...

....even her "after flower" is pretty! And finally this cute annual grass is "blooming", and I'm enjoying the seed heads as much as the foliage!
Happy Bloom Day everybody! For more Bloom Day action, check out the Bloom Day founder, Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

Miscellaneous projects...in no particular order, since that's the way my season has been going this year. Funny how I can make all the plans I want during the winter, but it all seems to "shake out" much differently. Oh well, since my primary mission is to keep my gardening hobby a "no stress zone", I'll just do what I can and the rest will slide til' whenever. (What do the Aussie's say..."She'll be jake, mate"? Yea, it'll be jake for sure! ;-) So first, we have my sort-of bonsai lilac, and it needs a trim! (See the suckers at the base?)
Yea, kinda bushy (and spindly), but I'll prune down the branches more next year....

.....there! I cut all the leaves down to be smaller as well, which will "trick" the tree into making smaller leaves for the rest of the season. It would have been good to do this earlier, but oh well. Gotta loosen the wires as well, before they cut into the trunk. This bush was already leaning like this, so I decided to go for a windswept style. I know that lilac isn't necessarily the best cultivar for bonsai, but it sort of "chose itself" by looking funny to begin with, so what the hey.
See these roses in the parking island at work? They're some sort of rugosa, and I want one!

The flowers are beautiful and very fragrant, the bushes sucker all over the place... ...and it sets lots of large hips! (Sometimes large hips are the best! ;-) So aside from getting caught digging one up, how am I going to get myself a rosebush?
Like this! Awhile back, I was reading one of those ads for a "garden secrets" type book, and it had this blip about "a rose is a rose-even when it's a potato". Supposedly you can root rose cuttings in a potato, then plant the whole thing. This is a big potato, so I got a few cuttings.......plus a couple to try in water, just in case. (I prefer a "multi-disciplinary" approach to these things.) One of these cuttings looks like it has it's own potato, some sort of "nodes" off the underground runner from the mother plant I guess. Since the potato was big, I cut apart the chunks with cuttings in them. Two go into pots...
...and two into the ground where I want them to grow........marked with these cages so I don't forget where they are. This will be cool if it works! Update: I tried this about three weeks ago, and as of today the only ones that look alive are the ones in water. *sigh* Maybe I shouldn't have cut the potato? Oh well.)
Okay, now the water garden isn't looking nearly as cool as it did last year, mostly because I am stubborn. I figured that since ponds become clearer after winter with the same water in them, then I should be able to pull it off leaving the water in my tubs. Uh, maybe not......okay fine, let's remove last year's plants since they froze out and died anyway... ...the water started to improve, more in one tub than the other. So how about some new plants...
....like this houseplant. I saw pieces cut and floating like this in the aquariums at the pet store, so I cut a couple off mine to improvise...
...while we're at it, how about some fish! (See the orange blurs?) "Feeder goldfish" were cheap enough to sacrifice in case they don't make it (or a kingfisher spots them).
So a couple underwater plants, a couple "floaters" (heh, plants, not fish), 3 goldfish in each, and two snails. Get to work and clean this mess up guys!
Cactus pad that was "pruned" from an undisclosed public location (from a huge plant, outdoors, nobody cares or will miss it, yes I kinda feel bad but they say stolen plants grow best so don't judge me!) Ahem...anyway....I forgot to let the cut "callous over" (dry for a few days), but I did dip it in this rooting powder...
....now outside in this sandy pot, grow please! Or my "crime" will be for nothing!
This area needs help! The small cedar is dying, there are weeds all over...

....can you even see this moonseed vine I'm trying to grow? Yikes!

Um yea, I'd say the bark is a good indicator that the cedar is toast... ....so off with your head! Pull some weeds, then put a proper trellis around the stump so my vine has somewhere to go...

...and hopefully get larger! Poor thing.

This area needs work, too...

...look at my poor azalia! Scrawny with very few leaves...

....and this fungus growing on the branches. It's kinda pretty, and I don't know if it causes harm, but the bush needs something! Just this one pitiful bud! (It never did bloom.) After some weeding, I sprayed the trunk with "Phish Pharm" that helps with powdery mildew, mites, etc., so what the heck. A few weeks later...
...oh yea, that's what I'm looking for! Now all I need is some horse manure to "mulch" with, and he'll be all set!
This area is very shady, and leaves blow under the fence here. First to re-arrange these boards...

....well looky here! A salamander between the rotting boards! Pardon me... ...but you're awfully cute! Okay, let's gently put the board back over him like it was before he gets upset...
...there! Now the leaves will stay raked up like I want them to instead of blowing back...
...and I can plant my cute little shade-loving 'Blue Satin' sedge, (carex platyphylla) in this spot! I put the climbing fern (lygodium palmatum) nearby too, but it died back pretty quickly. The nursery said it was hard to grow, but I'll try again next year. (It sounds too cool to give up that easily, I need to kill it at least 3 times before I'll say "uncle"! ;-)
And finally this spot, caged up to protect this tiny clematis 'Multi Blue'. This area behind the downspout is a freeway for chipmunks, and the vine doesn't enjoy the traffic!

There! Both sides secured so growth can giddyap! (Update: since I did this about 6 weeks ago, the vine isn't that much bigger, but it looks happier.)


So these are some of the things I've been up to so far...there's more, of course. But in the interest of my quest for more, I'm making a point of doing first and talking about it later. I just can't seem to keep up! :)