Mid Summer

I'm still seeing the effects of the harsh winter in the harden.  The hydrangeas in front of our house are usually covered in beautiful blue flowers in June-early July.  Like so many other people, we had to cut them back hard - to about 18-20" due to die-back.  The only one we didn't cut back, the smallest one at the corner of the house has five flowers!  That seems to be it for this year. However, the remaining plants look quite healthy, so hopefully will bloom again next year.

Butterfly bushes were another plant with significant die-back - on ours, the roots survived and pushed out new growth from the base, but everything above ground from last year died.  They will bloom this year - mine have buds although no open flowers yet.  The funny thing is how short they are.  In the bed in front of the greenhouse, we have joe-pye weed, which is about seven feet tall at this point.  Next to it is a butterfly bush which is actually shorter.  Haven't seen that sonce the first year or two when we planted the butterfly bush.

Some things were extremely happy with the cooler spring weather and all that ground water from melting snow.  My St. John's wort was huge - probably twice as big as last year.  It bloomed prolifically at the end of June - around the feast for St. John, which is how it got its common name.  We don't have much shade, but in our side border near the neighbor's tree, I have pink anemone.  They will not bloom until later this summer, into fall, but the planys are really big and full.  And the sugar pea vines in our vegetable garden were actually taller than me.  We never had that before!

But the heat loving plants like basil and peppers were really on hold until we got the first blast of hot weather before July 4.  They had taken hold, because we had good rainfall after planting, but they weren't really growing.  Finally, with this hot weather and the recent rain, I'm finally seeing some growth.  Next problem, some basils got eaten by Japanese beetles, so I had to pinch then back.  It's always something!