It is the 15th of the month, that means Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. A wonderful forum where everyone shares what’s blooming in their gardens. So, what’s blooming in the Violet Fern garden? Just about everything!
Here is a bird’s eye view of the Bird & Butterfly and Woodland Edge borders. The entire garden hums and soars with bees and birds during the day and crickets and bats in the evenings. Cabbage whites, and occasionally other butterflies (I saw a Monarch the other day!), flutter and spin skyward. This is why I let it grow wild with natives and don’t use any types of herbicides/pesticides – all is blooming and alive. It is music to my eyes and ears.
In the Bird & Butterfly Garden we have perennial sunflower, Helianthus Microcephalus which has spread itself around a bit; Black-eyed Susans; Joe Pye; Mint; and a new feature somehow, a Lemon Balm edging which the Wool Carder Bees are guarding.
In the Woodland Edge, Phlox; Nodding Onion; Flowering Raspberry; Great Blue and Cardinal Lobelias; Persicaria; Cup Plant and Rudbeckia Laciniata bloom on and on. Turtlehead is just peeking out of its shell. Jewelweed is also in bloom and is almost constantly visited by either Hummingbirds and / or Bumblebees.
Corkscrew vine is blooming! – but WAY up there! (It still smells divine down here, though.)
I got out a ladder so I could zoom in.
Talk about vines – trumpet vine continues to bloom and impress!
Polite Clematis Claire de Lune is putting on a show this year.
In striking contrast, our big brute, native Clematis Virginiana, has them all beat! In full bloom now and rambling among Hosta Row into the Hostas and Hydrangea.
Out front a pink phlox blooms against Karl Foerster, and Russian Sage against Black Lace.
I know that it’s the grand finale of Summer because Obedient Plant is just beginning to paint the Nice Driveway in purple.
Normally this would make me sad but this year I am looking forward to cooler weather and spending some quality time in my garden neatening it up a bit and reinforcing a few paths through the beds for easier maintenance. After that I will be spending a whole month (!) moving my office/studio to a different room of our house that is a little bit larger and putting together and organizing my seed starting set up. We will be escaping again this winter to Cedar Key, but I want to be ready the minute I get home to start seeds which I will begin indoors this time before moving out to the little greenhouse. I’m going to start them in my new office/studio space which will be clean, organized and welcoming when I return home. The hornet’s nest in the greenhouse now looks inactive and I am dying to get in there to clean it up – it is full of weeds ):