We had some gorgeous autumn weather in the last few weeks, and then the rain really started in earnest yesterday. Maybe that’s the most gorgeous weather of all!

Below are some pictures from around the garden the last few weeks.

The garden reflects two different worlds right now. The first world is a very dry, hot summer world where plants are just trying to survive. The second world is the world of pampered plants that have been watered all along and who love the heat–they aren’t struggling to survive and some are blooming wonderfully.

I barely spotted this camouflage bunny in the front yard.

Pampered begonia on the patio below. This is Funky Pink in its third year from seed.

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And a seedling heliotrope below. This one lives up to the heliotrope hype. The color is deep and rich and the fragrance is sweet vanilla honey. Even Leon noticed this one.

And in the greenhouse, the Sinningia and most of the Streptocarpus are blooming.

I’ve been working a lot and just trying to keep the garden and greenhouse plants alive! Due to the lack of rain, it is quite a struggle.

There are always highlights, though, so below are a few.

The flowers start to wane by mid-July, but there are still some summer stalwarts that carry the garden into the autumn. We have had very little rain all spring and summer so any flowers seem somewhat miraculous at this point. I have been supplementing with hand watering, but as little as I feel I can get away with knowing we are looking at a potentially serious drought.

I’ll just dump a bunch of photos here and label them as I have time.

The extra care I gave to my Hippeastrum bulbs last year paid off this year with a bounty of blooms. I wasn’t sure that would be the case because I felt very late in sorting them out and starting to water them. But an excellent trait of the bulbous plants is that they have the reserves in their bulbs to be very forgiving. Hurray for geophytes. It certainly explains why I’m somewhat successful with them!

You can tell some of these are seedlings because of the differences in the blossoms. I love that no two of them are alike, even thought they are mostly red and white.

I just noticed yesterday that my Brugmansia “Charles Grimaldi” is blooming with just a couple of lovely trumpets. We just cleaned up our patio and got new furniture. Today, we sat out there and ate dinner with the angel’s trumpet wafting its sweet fragrance our way.

Another flower that just started opening some blossoms is the annual Silene pendula ‘Sibella Carmine’ I grew from seeds this year for the patio pots. In the photos I’ve seen, this is a very full plant, but for me, it is a little wimpy. However, the flowers are fun. I’ve always been a sucker for a swollen ovary and the ovaries of each of these flowers is not only swollen but decoratively striped.

As always, May and June are the busiest garden months with dozens of plants in bloom. So, I’ll just drop some photos and captions here to try to stay on top of some of the highlights.

Foxglove, like so many plants and people, have a mixed reputation. I grew up seeing them growing wild in various settings and in gardens and I’ve always liked them. I’ve grown them from seed in various varieties and species, too, but they haven’t really taken hold here in the garden.

I started seedlings two years ago, though, from a mix bought from Chiltern’s in the UK. I planted them among the bulbs in the memory garden thinking they would be the second act after the tulips and hyacinths finish. For once, I didn’t get that wrong. They are blooming now and they are SPECTACULAR!

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There are myriad other blooming beauties in the garden and greenhouse right now.

I’m just dropping some photos in here of blooming things around the greenhouse and garden.

Spring is so overwhelming with all the exquisite flowers and the burst of leaves around us here in the Northwest. I took a trip to Happy Valley, Oregon to visit friends this weekend and saw some gorgeous blooms.

I landed home and the garden jumped ahead of me again–so many things blooming or preparing to bloom.

May is a prolific blooming month in the garden. I took a few photos today as I wandered around and did some spot-weeding. The tulips are still amazing, including the big patch of new bulbs, but also the individual left-over artist’s tulips in white and deep pink.

Above is a drastic houseplant rescue. I had purchased two dwarf peace lily plants for employees at work prior to the pandemic shuttering the office. I moved them to my office and tried to keep them watered over the past year. However, because they were so pot bound, it was impossible to keep them appropriately watered and fed during weeks when I didn’t venture to the office. I brought them home yesterday and potted them up today. The first one I put in a larger pot with fresh soil. The second one, I split in half and potted back in the two pots the plants came in. I was ruthless in cutting back their roots and their mostly dead leaves. We’ll see if they can recover from this drastic treatment. If they do, I’ll give them away.