The natives and the undesirables...

I've avoided this all summer … too hot ; but this morning it was time to tame the natives : the native that is , Snowberry. The undesirables being : bramble, nightshade, suckering Lilac, Vinca, Ivy, bindweed and what ever else was in the way.

My new Felco pruners , worth every penny.

The star of the show : The' Scheppack' mulching meat grinding wonder we brought with us from England. It actually doesn't make a lot of noise , unlike my next door neighbors shredder. It's more of a gentle grinding, chumping sound.
 

And afterwords I pour all the snowberry and Lilac mulch back from whence it came.

Lazy Echeveria propagation...

                                         ….tossing the old long stems in  the planter worked just fine.

A rain day...

It's been rather nice this week with a couple of rain days . Not the norm in  PNW July, we usually have to wait till  late October. The dogs have been bored as hell staying in . But I enjoyed spending the morning COOKING pasta sauce and listening to the BBC  PROMS .

This has been  the shady seat  under the Santa Rosa Plum and Cotinus , I believe we're in for more heat in a few days , so I'm embracing the wet.

The umbrella … not to keep the Phlox dry; but  to protect the badly placed Ligularia and Cimicifuga from burning to a crisp.

The garden looks it's best in the wet.

Doesn't my NOID conifer look pathetic , I bought it a few year ago at the Cistus Tough love sale. It's got a sort of Charlie Brown Christmas tree charm. I wonder how big it will get?

This years ex Rose garden….

I couldn't find a single photo of this my ex rose garden area  when it had roses. It wasn't nice , so I must have dumped them all. Anyway it's not hard to imagine a dozen  black spotted mangey hybrid tea roses all crammed into this space. Now eight years later much has changed over the years. This year I jammed all the my red bloomers in. They're  all sulking and refusing to bloom , that means you : Potentilla 'Volan' ,  Geum 'Flames of Passion' and Penstemon 'Cherry Glow'. So, rather than a red border , I have a mostly purple one. 

I think this is from a few years ago, hasn't the Tetrapanex grown ? And the Panicum in the the brick planter .  The Eucalyptus was knocked back this winter.: and the Cannas are goners. I've replaced those…with red blooms.

A few years earlier , even smaller Tetra. Kangaroo Apple taking center stage….didn't make it through that winter : and didn't self seed as I'd hoped. The Hakonehloa ' Beni-Kazi' have had a rough time.  They look wonderful all spring , then the burning begins with the hot dry summers. But now the huge Tetra shades them from the worst. 

The long deceased Eryngium pandanifolium  early in my post rose garden planting…very early. I think there has differently been some improvements.

July Bloom day ...

I thought I'd let the bees lead the way though this July Bloom day; and there are many bees , which makes the garden a success for me. Here is the late flowering Allium sphaerocephalon , probably the first Alliums I planted in the garden . They seem to turn up in places I know I never planted them . Here they've landed in front of a visiter from... somewhere    Lychnis coronaria .

  

Salivia Turkestanica  a great self seeding biannual 

Newly planted from seed this year Achillea ptarmica'The Pearl' , going over well with the bees.

A great favorite Eryngium 'Mrs wilmots ghost' 

You can't see them; but sedum, a bee heaven.

Echinacea purpurea and 'Mrs Wilmot'  

Inula orientalis

Naughty Nigella…another visiter from afar really taking advantage of my casual editing style.  Here with Euphorbia Oblongata which I sowed this spring. I didn't expect to bloom this year ; but here it is.

Another great treat for those bees... Echinops 

 

No bees in this photo; but I love this area :Verbena , Heleniums , Miss Wilmot and the getting  bigger and ready to bloom Saccharum ravennae . So, these are some of the bees and my favorite bloom this month: and for more beautiful blooms visit Carol at  May Dreams Gardens 

Everyone needs a haircut at sometime...

Arcotostaphylas''Austin Griffiths' sporting his new leaner limbs . Though looking at this photo , I may go out and snip a bit more ...

A. 'St. Helens' or have I got them mixed up ? Anyway they both got a bit of a snip . Should have done these years ago . 

Umbels arriving...

I grew Dill this year ; and what a beautiful plant .

My old reliable friend and self-seeder Ammi visnaga

                       I new one of the locals, Daucus carota would find it's way into my garden .

A new one this year  Bupleurum fruticosum

Bronze Fennel, another  one I've planted from seed this year .

A new bloom...

This one from down under; and after loosing my Acacia this last winter . I was not going to make the same mistake  , by planting it in the ground; and as I happened to have a large empty pot .  Grevillea ' Moonlight' with it's  fine pine needle like foliage captured my greedy plant loving  heart , so tender or not , I have a new Australian  to worry about .

Adjudication ...

I'd just spent the later part of the day madly digging up lank sun loving perennials , under a whole lot of  other sun loving perennials ; and here I'd thought I'd done a good job planting things out this spring.

So...Crocosmia and Kniphofia and Helenium you have been relocated to new spacious ground . Sedum 's have had to vacate; which have been allowed to take up far too much anyway.

After I'd gone in for the night, I picked up my current garden read : ' Onward and upward in the the Garden' by Katharine S. White . Katherine was having the same problems in chapter 5 , 'War in the borders, peace in the Shubbery'. At one point she wants to say" Let it go.Let the plants fight their battles"