July is coming to an end. What a month it has been … heat, humidity, thunder, brief downpours, but no steady rain.
Last Friday night we had terrific thunder and wind storms. Thankfully that took away the awful humidity and left us with temperatures around 25 Celsius … so much better for being outside.

Harvesting the veggies is in full force this week. Yummy sweet tomatoes and fresh green beans. Nothing tastes better than home grown.

The wonderful daylilies are coming into full bloom … the yellows, peaches, reds, pinkish.

The tipsy pots are still doing really well and needed watering once and sometimes twice a day in the awful heat we just had. The rudbekia is doing really well. The front wanna be grass is drying right out and won’t need cutting this week.

In the shady north garden the hosta blooms have been amazing.

The sunny north part of the garden is beginning to turn to mauve and purple as the coneflowers and liatris bloom. The garden beds are getting very dried out due to lack of rainfall.

New blooms to open this week are the 4 o’clocks. So far there are yellow, light pink, dark pink and the variegated pink and yellow. There are many more buds so a promise of lots more blooms.

The evenings have been clear and viewing the July full moon has been spectacular. The native people referred to this moon as the buck moon as it is at this time of the year that young bucks begin to grow their antlers. They also called it the thunder moon as thunder storms are prevalent during July. The weather in the past week or so has been full of thunder storms. This info came from the Farmers Almanac.

On Wednesday morning the moon was visible in the west against a clear blue sky.

Yesterday was a wonderful day for working outside. All the ditch lilies got the flower stalks cut off. The coreopsis got a long overdue deadheading. One clump of rudbekia has just about finished but 3 others are doing really well. A few feverfew blooms have been trimmed off. One of the miscanthus is sending up a plume. They were slow to start over the winter but hopefully have established themselves now.

The plants in the gardens and containers are in varying stages of blooms. I’ve grouped them into stages (my names) and can move them around each week as they progress. This is a good reference for me to look back at next year for comparison. Some plants are in 2 areas … example is coreopsis because it is blooming but with continual deadheading it is also budding
leafy and growing – yucca, peruvian daffodils, cosmos, garlic chives, coleus, canna, climbing beans, miscanthus
Budding –sedum, hollyhocks, zinnias, beans, coreopsis, daylilies, venedium, 4 o’clocks
Blooming – roses (bush), rudbekia, petunias, fuchsia, coreopsis, clematis, pansies, shasta daisies, echinacea, hostas, beebalm, liatris, nasturtiums, golden goblin blanket flower, 4 o’clocks (pink, yellow, variegated), feverfew
Fading blooms – honeysuckle vine, climbing roses, weigela, astillbe, coral bells, lady’s mantle, drumstick allium, lavender, ditch lilies, Bressingham Blue hosta
Seeding – lunaria, feverfew
Harvesting – peas, Egyptian Walking onions, tomatoes, beans
Blooms finished. leaves flourishing – iris, lily of the valley, early yellow daylilies, bleeding heart, columbine, dianthus, evening primrose, ninebark, creeping jenny, oxeye daisies,
Vanished till next year – tulips, daffodils, poppies, yellow molly alliums, trilliums

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