Hm. I didn’t *plan* for the dragon’s blood sedum to be growing through the creeping charlie like that, but I have to say, it’s a perfectly fine effect. If they’re happy, I’m happy.
Achillea / yarrow, with hosta and allium summer beauty behind, both still opening. I haven’t grown achillea before, because I’ve mostly seen it in yellows that fade to brown, not my favorite color scheme. But I love this variety, which I think should fade to light pink. We’ll see!
Hm. I’m not sure the lavender is situated quite right — it seems a little short to be right next to the coneflower (which is playing beautifully with the tall Russian sage). Do I need to find a medium-height flower to go between them, which might mean moving the lavender out a little bit. Hm. Although the lavender is also new this year, so maybe it just needs to have enough time to grow more? (I wish I remembered what variety it is.)
(You can see the yarrow in the background, blurrily.)
Three different varieties of white hydrangea — a lace cap (Quickfire), panicle (Oakleaf), and mophead (Annabelle). I know it looks like the mophead is about to swallow Kevin, but I promise you, he survived.
My black cohosh / black snakeroot / bugbane / fairy candles / cimcifuga / actea racemosa is flopping over oddly — I’m not sure what’s up with it, and I really hope I’m not supposed to divide it, as I’d have no idea where to start with that monster.
I’m kind of afraid to go look it up. Hopefully I can just stake it up so it doesn’t attack us as we try to cross the path. (The Walker’s Low nepeta is flopping over equally far at knee-height on the other side, so it really is quite an adventure trying to traverse our garden path right now.)
The shaded path to the backyard is starting to come along nicely, with two different varieties of dwarf hydrangeas (should only get to 3′ feet around or so), hostas, and lamium ground cover.
I really like the way the light edging on the hostas and the silvery-white leaves of the lamium light up what would otherwise be a pretty dark space.
Lilies! And with that, we end our tour of ‘what started blooming while Mary Anne was out of town for four days.’ And I, to bed. Tomorrow, writing and weeding, weeding and writing. Also watering. It will be a “w” kind of day.
