We've seen the darling buds of May and now we're ready for the big show (although my roses are actually working up to their second flush).

The thumbnail for June is Medallion.

All I have blooming right now is Austrian Copper & Theresa Bugnet, but one of my Winter Magic's is about to open...

Nothing here ... nor for the rest of the month. I haven't seen any bugs either ...

I still have a lot to do in the garden, so blooms or no blooms, I am out there every day.

Smiles,
Lyn

Have a few minis getting ready to open, but otherwise, nothing a lot going on here.

Austrian Copper, International Herald Tribune (I thought for sure I'd lost this one years ago!), Winter Magic

only thing I got is Iris (2) peony (1) and thousands of weeds LOL

Tony I love roses who drop their petals and then display little golden coronas like your Austrian Copper!

I do too. It looks sweet. Sparrieshoop does that.

I've always thought of that as the rose saying, "come hither" to the pollenators ...

I like it, too.

Smiles,
Lyn

Me three!

Me four !

Did some digging around in the mulch this morning, depressing. Lost a lot more roses than I thought. Can't tell if they just didn't make it through my winter or if I accidentally killed them with kindness by smothering them with too much mulch. But, on average, this is what my back yard roses look like. This is Novelty, thanks to Zuzu & Sue.



Only Hansa in the back yard is showing any signs of buds. Definitely lost at least 1 of the Palatine roses I ordered for this year (I think Lady X). Almost everyone else is barely putting on some leaves finally. I really need to go out there & start digging the roses out from the mulch.. otherwise I won't have ANYTHING this year. I think for every one rose I lose I'm putting in a salvia. Can't kill them, no matter how hard you try. LOLL

But some of my mini's are getting ready to open! Yay!
Winter Magic & Rise N Shine


Bee's Knees & Vista


My "Blue Star" (Amsonia) is blooming for the first time ever. I'm really disappointed in this plant. I was expecting a lot more blue, not a bluish white. And the fall foliage isn't all that & a bag of potato chips unlike what it's always advertised...



But I do love my tradescantia. Can't kill this stuff, grows like a weed, spreads nicely, blooms forever.. never had a flower that blooms only in sunlight. You can actually watch (slowly) the blooms open when the sun hits the buds!! Yes, I have NO life if I can sit there & watch a damned flower open up, but I thought it was so fascinating!

Sweet Kate & Concorde Grape Tradescantia


And the salvias are going full blast. Here's my Electric Blue penstemon (foreground) with May Night salvia (background)


And my native Rock Penstemon are blooming.

Ooh I need to get some of that electric blue penstemon. That' s a great combo you have there!

We had a hurricane blow through here this morning. Wow. TWO inches of rain fell in 20 minutes. My gutters could not handle it. The lightning was so intense that Weather Channel kept going back to talk about us. I think that's why my bags of fertilizer are still sitting in the garage. I don't need to apply it, because when we finally do get rain here, it comes with lots of lightning and free nitrogen!
The 70 mph winds broke my McCartney rose off at the base. It was 5' tall and had a big cluster of heavy blooms at the end of one stem. I think some winter damage had weakened the lower part of the stem.
Yesterday was shop-till-you-drop day at the parking lot nursery. At half price, I filled my van with colorful annuals and a few perennials and shrubs. They were so perfect looking and since the forecast was for hail, they spent the night in my living room. I'm not sure if I should plant them today or wait to see if we get more hail tomorrow!

It's a great day to pull weed and weedy grasses! Normally I don't like to walk on saturated soil, but I really want the get all the weeds out while it's easy, and while it's cloudy and cool outside.
Ooh I just looked at local news on tv--I got off easy. There's lots of trees down locally, and some areas had baseball sized hail. I feel for them, been there. ouch.

Cindi - You know, I was thinking about you & Larry (in Iowa) last night when we had some storms brewing up.. I knew that they were gonna be HORRIBLE because it was so warm & humid here (really out of the ordinary for us.. the humidity). I knew it was gonna be bad.. I'm so glad that your house didn't get blown away! You sure it wasn't a microburst? Yikes!!! The electric Blue penstemon is a pretty hardy little plant & spreads nicely, so be aware of that.. most penstemons do spread (at least for me they do). Found mine @ Home Depot last year (not all.. I had some previous to that). You want some? I'd be happy to send you some..

We had some wicked lightning storms last night.. popping so often that it was almost like a strobe light. But we got about 1/2" of rain out of it, which is wonderful. Transplanted a little bitty maple from the west side of the house to the east side where it can grow & spread. I had lost my Golden Chain tree (which SUCKED) with that last snow we got (it had started to wake up & ZAP! was dead from about 6" above the ground), so put the maple in it's spot. Was worried that I had lost my Golden Rain tree too. I don't want to dig that up because Osiris is there and I don't want to disturb him. That's another thing I shouldn't be worrying about, but I am.. what if I have to sell my property & the new owners start to dig & find all kinds of kitty bones everywhere.. I wonder how long it takes for a cat to decompose? Freyja has been gone the longest.. Feb 2011, then Wolfgang (but he's in a cookie tin in the house), then Osiris, then Vasillia, then Raiden, so they haven't been in ground for *that* long. I put everyone pretty deep... at minimum 2.5' down as I knew I was going to be putting something above them and that plant needs room, so Osiris is probably 3.5' down, Raiden is also over 3' down as I really had to reach down to put him in (Princess de Monaco is above him, & Silverado is above Vasillia). Great, shouldn't be thinking about them while at work...

Anyways, one of my roses in the front reverted to Dr. Huey I think. I only see sprawling canes rather than normal thick canes (that's how I tell here). Have to wait for them to bloom before I can determine 100% of course. Hansa is blooming a single bloom and HoneySweet has a big fat bud on it. Not the prettiest rose in the garden, but the scent! *swoon* Got a few more irises blooming.. I love irises. Love the fact that they're true blue!

Here's some of my Hueys. Can anyone identify the coral single rose in this bed? I didn't realize how crowded that bed is until I looked at the pic. In another week, those daylilies will be blooming, and Dr. Huey will be gone.

Here's another one with no name. Any ideas on it? It is beautiful and blooms all summer long.

oops, sorry. I'll get a better pic of the single coral rose later when the sun isn't so bright, and when I can get up closer without getting muddy.

Toni ...

>>>> one of my roses in the front reverted to Dr. Huey

I am going to take this as an opportunity to clear up a misconception about roses reverting to Dr. H that I see on a lot of rose forums. I hope you don't mind.

Roses never revert to Dr. H. When you plant a budded rose, let's say 'Henry Fonda', you are actually planting two roses. 'Henry Fonda' and the root stock 'Dr. Huey'. Let's say you did everything right in planting the rose, caring for the rose and winter protecting the rose. Then in spring all you see is Dr. H. What that means is that the budded rose, 'Henry Fonda', died and all that was left was Dr. H.

Instead of having two roses in the planting hole, 'Henry Fonda' and 'Dr. H.', you only have one rose which made it through your winter. It happens a lot no matter what rose was used for the root stock.

There are a lot of reasons for a budded rose to fail to survive. It may not have been budded properly, the budded rose was weak to begin with and didn't have the vigor of Dr. H and more. Not your fault because you did everything right.

>>> I think for every one rose I lose I'm putting in a salvia

I think that is a great idea. I planted my first delphinium this year instead of replacing a rose that just doesn't like the heat in this garden. Why fight it ? Of course, I don't know whether the delphinium will do well in that site, so I planted it in a container first ...

Smiles,
Lyn

My Honey Sweet.

I'm not sure if my Honey Sweet made it. I hope it did, it is one of my favorites. If it doesn't recover, I will replace it.

Carefree Celebration and a couple of mini roses have buds. The rest are recovering from winter and moving. It is rather depressing, but I will baby them along and get them ready to survive this winter.

I cheered myself up by buying the cutest mini rose at teh super market - a red and white striped mini. I'll go take a pic to share.

Your salvia and penstemon are beautiful! I have indoor trandscendia. I didn't realize that there are hardy varieties. I'll have to search for some. I love blue flowers, especially with yellow roses.

Today I brought home a new rose. At least the label said it was a new rose.
Here's the info:
http://www.provenwinners.com/p...
Help Me Find didn't have any info on it, but our own database has it:
Rose (Rosa 'Mathilda')
and it's not new at all! Just another re-named rose. I guess they thought the Australian name wouldn't sell here, so we get a rock-n-rollish name. As soon as it blooms, I'll get a photo posted in the database. Funny that Proven Winners picked it up when it wasn't sold anywhere, and doesn't have a lot of good press.
My favorite annual, Supertunia Vista Pink Bubblegum, was a Proven Winners selection this year and I couldn't find it anywhere for under 4.98. The price fixing offended me, so I found other plants to fill the beds. Yesterday, though, the seasonal nursery near me went to half price, and I bought several monster sized Bubblegums CHEAP!
I use these as groundcover in the rose beds and even though they are a garish pink, they really do look good in with the roses. Nepeta was kind of hard to find this year, and the stores were slow to bring in rose moss or purslane, and all my Homestead Purple died off in the cold winter, so I was struggling to find something to use.
The new tablet arrived today, but it has a defect, so I won't get to post photos until I get that resolved.
Hopefully that will happen while this first flush is still on!
Lyn, I love your clear and concise wording on the Dr. Huey information. We discussed whether or not to dig out a Dr. Huey rose at our Rose Society meeting tonight. Would you mind if I used your explanation in our club newsletter?
I had a guy once tell me that all his roses "turn" red because of his SOIL!!

yes, I know that it's the root stock that takes over & the grafted part dies. I just use the term "reverted" because it's easier to explain to non-rose people (like my DH).

Cindi - http://www.helpmefind.com/gard... Found it under the registered name. Love how they rename roses like that on a regular basis, huh.

Did some weeding today.. filled up a 10gal tree bucket weeding a section about 15' x 6'. Only have another.. 70? feet x 25' to go. I can easily fill up a 45gal garbage bin with weeds.. mostly grass. The grass is growing like mad in the back yard. Bleh. When I tried to grow grass, couldn't get a single blade to grow. Now that I don't want it? Go figure...

Lost lots & lots of roses. I think I killed them with kindness when I dumped all the mulch on them. They suffocated. Probably lost 50-60 roses I'm guessing. Got HUGE holes where I knew there was roses, and now there's nothing. *shrug* oh well. If I stay, I'll put salvias & agastaches in their spots. If I move, then I'm not missing out on much. Just getting kinda disgusted with my yard. Too much work for not a lot of enjoyment. It's already almost the middle of June.. that means I have only 3 more months max (July / Aug / Sept) before the threat of winter comes back. Just not worth the effort.

On that note, I do have some roses blooming.. 4 in fact. I have an Angel Face, Honey Sweet, Hansa, & 1 Stainless Steel. Yay. Lots of buds everywhere, though. And my Oranges N Lemons is a whole whopping 4" tall. Yes, Four Inches Tall. That's it. Pathetic.