August Sees The Closing Of Summer

Never Give Up Your Dreams

Metal art in my garden made by my husband Dick, never give up on a dream
no matter how hard life might get.  Today only lasts for a little while.

     This summer we have had excess of rainy days.  I had hoped to get a lot of weeding and thinning of plants this summer.  Much to my dismay I had to spend many a day inside keeping busy with my pictures, household jobs, and my favorite inside thing to do is reading, which is what I did when I got in just before the deluge of rain came down.
     The book I picked up was my new Lauraine Snelling titled:  "The Promise of Dawn".  It is about the logging days in the early historical times in Minnesota.       Excellent reading!  I have most of her 80 or more books she has written and I am never disappointed.  The only trouble is that I cannot stop because it is so good!  Read this last one in two days.
      The picture above is dark clouds rolling in warning me that I had better hop on my gulf cart and fly up to the house.  I was weeding here in the Birdhouse garden trying to get a nice edge on the path that winds through it.  Dick keeps the path cut with the lawnmower and I am in charge of my gardens.
    The photo is dark, it was getting late afternoon when I snapped this picture.

Gulf cart I use to get around all my gardens.  We have paths running through
the whole 27 acres we own.  At least 2 acres are in flowers.
Dick attached white plastic pipes he painted black.  They
hold my garden tools for the day.  In the back of cart, the seat
pulls down flat so I can put my pails of tools,
containers for holding the weeds, fertilizer,
and watering can.

     My days are filled with the silence of the birds song.  There young ones have flown from the many birdhouses to their new life of almost a grown up.  I can still hear them in the morning but it seems during the day they are busy looking for their meals of bugs and seeds.  Our bird feeders are seldom used during this time because of the plentiful harvest surrounding them.

Chickens are more quiet too.  They often rest in the compost pile where
they dust themselves by rolling around in the new soil they helped
make.  Breaking up the lumps into fine dust.

     My kitty Christal hops up on this bench she shares with the angle statue and doses off too.  She follows me to where I am working in the gardens and meows until I stop to rub her and do a little kitty talking to her.  She hunts for mice most days of the summer and even winter but when August comes along she chooses to find me instead and take a nap.  

Lilies are almost all done blooming.  They smell so good.  

White Lillie's with a splash of rosy pink blend nicely with the purple Phlox.

Zinnias grace my August days.

Zinnias come in all different colors and size.

Balloon flowers blend in to my  late summer day.

Phlox come in all kinds of colors too.  Here is is
white with little pink eyes

This is the back side of the Birdhouse garden.  Another peace of Dick's
Garden art is used like a trellis for my new rose Chicago Peace.  After
the day lilies and the cone flowers are done blooming they will
be moved to give the new rose more room and show.

This is the side of the Birdhouse garden.  It is overflowing with flowers.
Some of them are Day lilies, Ornamental Lilies, Phlox of many colors, gay feather
Rudbeckias, roses, Balloon flowers, Sweet William, Capenella, Purple and Blue Sage,
Black Eyed Susies, Queen Ann's lace, Joe Pie weed, Fevor Few, Golden Rod, Culvers root,
Red Monarda, White Monarda, Ligularia and Giant Lobela, Blue Globe Thistle, Pink Cone flowers is
the list of flowers I have in this garden.  There is an abundance of bees, Yellow Swallow Tail butterfly and
Black Swallow Tail butterfly's.  A few Monarch, and one I am not familiar with.  Numerous little butterfly's too.

I plant very close and in no hurry to thin out clumps because they will grow together amongst the other plants.
I call my garden a Gramma Garden.  I try to dead head (take off spent flowers) or deliberately leave them go to seed to
be dispersed later in fall to other gardens I want to bloom in the wild.
     I love my nearly wild look in my gardens.  A reporter was here taking pictures and asking me lots of questions for an article she wrote for local paper.  She declared this is "almost wild look" and said she loved it.  I do too.
     I leave most of the dead growth from our first frost we get in September for the birds to feed on in the winter.  A little
messy come spring but that is the way I garden.

What ever you do in your gardens

Remember God created the Earth

He is

He was

He shall be

with us always.

Kate

Blessings of God, Abundance of Rain and Sun, Cause The Best June Ever !

Pink Double Peonies  After A Day Of Rain

Capella Flower Holding Rain Drops

Here in Wisconsin it rained two or three times a week.  My gardens have never produced   so abundantly in the past 30 years.    All of June was very warm.  In the beginning it was close to 90 degrees.  The last couple weeks held pretty close to the 70 degrees.
In May I had bought 8 bags of Bloom Food 12-24-12 Slow Release Plant Food at Menard's store and sprinkled it on all the flower gardens I have.  (about 2 acres of flowers)  It was well worth the investment!  The blooms were twice the size compared to other years.

Our creek down in the woods was always up to flood level.  

June brought lots of sun in between the deluge of rain.  Here is a picture after I let the chickens out  They are eating their treat of sun flower seeds.
Now released of the confinement of their coop can run free range all over the area of gardens and near our hoome   We also freed up the two Silkie-Cochin roosters to mingle amongst the larger hens.  They are so funny chasing those big hens all over the place and never catching them!  The abundance of feathers on their feet really slow them down.

This rooster is Silkie-Cochion mix.  

This rooster is also a mix of Silkie and Cochion  and brother to the black one. 

The gardens are twice the size in fullness than most years.  I can hardly walk through them.  Picture is the birdhouse garden.

Taking  many walks feels so good after the long cold winter.  June has now flown by so fast.  

     Here Dick is walking our Airedale Luke.  Luke is seven years old and just as perky as he was when he was a puppy.  A nice long walk is a must for Luke to wear off some of that robust life he leads. 

      I often walk along with them but also go out at day break to enjoy the gardens and out back land.  We have paths all over the twenty-seven acres we own.  I carry my camera as a hunter of photos looking for surprises.

This photo I took from a window inside the house .  There are three hens that come up to the house to look for bugs, grubs and what ever else they can find. Here they are on our deck and once I produced the pictures I discovered the hen in background watching the hen sip rain water from the angel container.  They have a nice clean birdbath on a stump available but they have to try this spot.

 The deck is above this rock garden on the hill .  Hostas are twice the size and are so high from all the rain and sunshine.  It is quite shady in this area from trees I planted 30 years ago when we developed this area. 

Top of rock garden looking down at front of house shows the birdbath.  Looking down, bench Dick made sits near the front garden at lower level.  In the picture hostas are blooming and Capenella blooms blue and white.  The Capenella reseeds itself and wonders all over the place.  I let it have its way and then before it drops too many seeds I clip them off the plant and spread them into other areas of our land .  You can see how huge the host leaves are in the picture.  

Thirty years ago this area was nothing but a corn field when we bought the land.  We had an excavator haul up the huge rocks and place them on the hill.  Dick and I placed the smaller ones.  They came from stone fences running through our land.  We placed trees amongst the rocks before planting.  In the beginning it was all sun and after the trees grew tall during the thirty years, it is now shady.   

Stella De Ora daylilies are starting to bloom where Peonies use to prevail.  

Clematis has hundreds of flowers blooming on this trellis.
Dick made this metal art.  The antique weather vain he placed on top. The
gate opens to the Birdhouse garden. 

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Picture is Sun Rise when I often slip out of the house early morning at 5:00 a.m. to go exploring and picture taking.  This picture taken down by the Bless arbor and outhouse that has been turned into a tool shed.
      Deciding to take the path out back that morning I came upon the deer.

The early morning brought the surprise of seeing this deer just watching me.
I have my camera set on the automatic sports which catches fast movement.
The doe just stood there for a bit, and then ran up our hill  which is the fallowing picture.

The doe high-tailing up the hill 

Skirting along the edge of the soybean field we let a local farmer use, I decided to head back towards the house.  You can see the outback woods behind the field.  We have a pond called a scrape for wildlife back there.

One of the many paths I walk on.  You can see the shadow of where I stood to
take a picture out back.  I decided I had enough adventure for the morning
and headed down the path back to the domesticated scenery closer to our home.
Heading back into the gardens the newly opened Clematis caught my attention.

Saw a few more flowers that needed  pictures taken like the pale violet Clematid with the pink stripe and ruffled center.

And before we close up for the month of June

this is my very first lily that opened. 

Blessings going your way from my way.

love to you all

Kate

June brings Poppies, Peonies, and Hot Weather

My Bless arch over a metal gate which is open and not showing .  It was
Sunrise this morning.  I went out early because it has been in the 90 degrees
here in Wisconsin yesterday and today and most of the rest of this week.
I wanted to get some pictures taken before it got too hot to breath for me.
The arch opens into the back of the fairy garden which had a Perennial
garden in front of it.  In back of the small Perennial garden is a
Wild flower area we planted last summer.   There also is
a 15 inch bed that runs along the one side that I
planted Zinnias and Cosmos.  Dick put in
three tomato plants and made wood
supports for them.

Peonies are the big ahaaaaa attraction in June. 

Group of Tree Peonies I bought a few summers ago from
a dealer in Upper Michigan.  The owner's father
hybridized them from a tree peonies and
regular peonies getting the best
of both kinds in one
flower.

White single peonies bought from the same Michigan Dealer.  It is a hybrid
developed by combining a tree peonies and a regular  peonies.  

Single dark Pink Peonies

   
















Dark pink Poppies are perennials
     I started from seed years ago.  They are gorgeous and steal the show no matter how many lovely peonies surround it.  I am not sure where I purchased the seeds. I had a green house at the time and so had perfect growing conditions .

Orange Poppy was also started by seeds

The white poppy is in my Birdhouse Garden.  I started it from seed.  It is a perennial which comes up every year.

Birdhouse Garden 

Pink Poppy sometimes looks like little angels with their wings up in air.

Siberian Iris are also blooming in June.

Pale blue Siberian Iris

My favorite Iris is the tall Bearded Iris.  This one is special with its yellow ruffled top and the bottom being violet with yellow ruffled edge.

This pale beauty has several 

colors.  smoky pink top with yellow inside, bottom showing white with violet edging.

Perennials in my garden come up every year.  They are a little high maintenance because I have to pick off the spent blossoms like the one above in photo.  As I do walk abouts each morning I try and do this chore in the gardens.  I plant natural,  looking even wild in some parts.  Grass does sprout up in between the plants.  I am in no hurry to weed it all out but do pull out anything that is clumping.  I even add grass that is seeding out into my bouquets.  Gives it a prairie look.

Birdhouse garden's back area looking toward house. In back of picture is
a trellis and gate that Dick made with his metal art.

Birdhouse garden looking toward horse barn

The Birdhouse garden is between our horse barn and our home.  It  houses numerous birdhouses of course that wrens take advantage of, choosing different one each time they raise a batch of little ones.  I love their song as I work in this area.  It is really a warning but oh so sweet and tender the sound.  

Being a garden for birds, there are grasses, weeds, besides the plants they so love to get nectar from.  Weeds and grass draw insects which draw birds.  Birds also are drawn to water.  The sound of a fountain attracts birds too, not only for drinking the water but splashing and dipping  in a splendid bath.  There are also shrubs edging the area and small trees that a bird can quick fly up to.  There are two scrub Oak trees the squirrels planted and I chose to let them grow.  A robin always has its nest in one of them.  The branches are so attractive with their gnarled bark and it holds pretty birdhouses nicely, protecting the nests from falling.  

     The birdhouse garden changes constantly as the seasons progress into late summer.  Come July I will see all types of lily's like daylilies, Ornamental lilies, and Tiger lilies, etc.  I have many, many butterflies flying here and there besides the birds.  Been seeing dragon lilies quite often too.  

Looking through a butterfly metal art you can see an abundance of peonies blooming.
It also shows the common Iris and other plants that I call fillers.  Being a natural
setting I plant very close and try to have the common flowers in between .



So another time we shall meet,
in the sweet settings of Nature
Peace setteling our souls
Always Peace.  by Kate