WoRdY WeDnEsDaY

Things are blooming like crazy right now. All the rain we have had along with a lot of sunny weather has turned Upstate NY into a lush paradise. Our summers are not always like this. 3 summers ago we had a very dry year and in 2002, we did not get a single drop of rain at our place from early June until late September! Fortunately for us that was the year we got the new house which meant completely destroying every garden I had, to accommodate the new place plus the new septic system. We also didn’t have time for a vegetable garden that year. That meant it really didn’t matter much to us that it didn’t rain. Rain would have meant a sea of mud anyway. And in the end, all of our gardens – decorative and practical – ended up in much better shape than they had been before. But I digress. Back to the photos – all from the garden this week.

When this first put up some scapes this year, I thought I knew exactly which daylily it was. Then last week ago, I realized it was something else entirely and that I was going to have to wait until it bloomed to figure it out. Yesterday it finally did, but I still couldn’t figure it out. I looked through all my invoices until I ran across one from a seed place that had sent me a “Little Business” daylily as a bonus. It is anything but little and other photos I have seen of it before do not do it justice. I love it – and it was free!When we got married, I took a sprig of Chicory to the florist and told him I wanted my bouquet to look as close to that flower as possible – he used cornflowers and bachelor buttons. These are growing where they should not since Chicory is actually a weed, but I always let a few of them creep in here and there.This is Moonbeam Coreopsis. In a few years this clump will die out in the middle and I will have to dig it up and replant the edges more compactly. I love the airy softness of it and my garden would seem incomplete without a few patches of it.This is Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly, enjoying a little snack on my Profusion “Fire” zinnias. He looks like he has an attitude doesn’t he?One of my bigger hostas – Regal Standard – is getting ready to bloom.Finally, I know I just said the other day that I have a favorite daylily. I may have a new one now. I missed this blooming last year, because I was down in Virginia, watching Mark while his parents were at the hospital bringing his new baby sister into the world. I bought it because of the name – “Quilt Patch”, which reminded me of my Grandma K since she made about a ba-jillion quilts in her lifetime. So I was thrilled yesterday to see it put on a stunning display. It is also the flower of the day, so don’t forget to click on the thumbnail of it up there on the lefthand sidebar before you leave.*

*I should say it will be the flower of the day when Blogger gets the photo issues figured out this morning. Yeeesh!