Chaos Reigns, And A Happy Anniversary Wish!

I love beautiful, well-tended, orderly, tidy gardens.
Sometimes I go and visit one, just to see what a 
beautiful, well-tended, orderly, tidy garden looks like.

Because here at That Old House, our garden patches are

enthusiastic, but tidy and orderly they are not.

Right behind the sunroom, along the old stone wall . . . this:

As the late Bob Ross might have said, "Happy, happy little flowers . . . . "

(By the way, this is after a bit of weeding.  Primping for the camera.)

My favorite spot to have morning coffee, right in the corner.

 Do you do this?  Get all your stuff planted (thank you, Anne!) and

then realize you've still got some plugs languishing in their flats? Those are white petunias, shriveling up.

Why don't I pop them in the ground?  Why?

Eh, sometimes lazy has no explanation.

Our local supermarket had Knockout Roses dirt cheap (haha . . . 

dirt cheap!) back in May.  I love me some Knockout Roses.

The smaller Knockouts, 5 in this picture, are rather hidden by the big fluffy balls

of bleeding heart foliage.  Doomed foliage.  It won't last till August.

 I know they aren't the breath-taking, showstopping divas of the Rose Universe,

but wow, those babies can bloom.  

The big, arching dark red rosebush on the left, across

from the Grandma Swing, is old.  Old.  Like, really old.

In this non-cropped view, you can see the back of the house; the old rose grows up against it,

right outside the powder room window. and just south of the really ugly air conditioning thingy.

Every year we cut it back.  Ruthlessly.  It comes roaring back.

Definitely likes punishment, that old gal.

But unlike its distant Knockout cousins, it has its first flush of blooming and then it goes on vacation, only sending out a couple of roses, like brief postcards, every few weeks.

 I'm starting to like the look of the picket gate on the steps leading

up to the driveway.  Rather cottage-y, don't you think? 

And a lovely shot of our trash can, up along the driveway.

We are nothing if not classy. 

The tomatoes and peppers were a little late settling in this spring;

I didn't trust the weather after the winter we had.

But they're taking off.  Ripening tomatoes on two out of five plants, 

and the banana pepper has a 5-inch long baby growing fast.

Nothing so far from the slacker eggplants except blossoms.

Not all of the perennials survived the winter, but these did.  Yay.

(The other threadleaf coreopsis on the other side of the door survived, but barely.  It's got one shoot!)

When I look at the crazy quilt of plants here at this

kind of crazy quilt of a house, I'm okay with it.

And I remember late March, when the borders looked like this:

  (Nice.  Thumb in the picture.  Nice.)

What's happening in your garden today?

In ours, Gilda The Red is soaking up the sun.

Dylan DiPoochy doesn't stay still long enough outside

for a good shot, unless he's in someone's lap.

Yes, like that.

Have a lovely Wednesday, whether you are indoors, or out.

-- Cass

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And . . . lest I forget, let me wish our daughter Alida and her husband Josh a very happy
Third Wedding Anniversary!
Long time readers of That Old House may remember the frantic weeks leading up to their wedding,
when we were racing the clock to get the house painted, repairs made, landscaping done,
fence installed .... but in the end, all that mattered was that these two got hitched, 

. . . and they're still honeymooning.  :-)