Since we got home from vacation a few weeks ago, things have been very busy! Plus, it’s peak garden time, and when I get a minute to spend on garden stuff, I’m out in the yard rather than on the computer. That’s how it should be, but OK, I finally found some time to post some cool photos from this month. Here goes:

My garden actually created its own ‘goblin’ sort of Gaillardia (left) — a short little blanket flower. I’ve never actually wanted to buy the ‘goblin’ variety, because I thought they were out of proportion — too stubby. But I really like this flower. I’m going to have to take cuttings and propagate this one, like I’ve done with some mostly yellow-blooming ones (right).

My front walk is adorned by these awesome Ruby Meidiland roses (left). They just keep blooming better every year. On the right is the one darn Pink Simplicity rose that blooms well, while the other 16 have grown a lot of greenery (see my earlier post).

Last year’s most valuable perennial keeps on shining: Lavatera tauricensis. It’s been blooming well for all of June and will continue all summer and into the fall.

On the left is another cool Gaillardia produced by seed in my garden. This one planted itself in a fairly dry spot in the graveled area by my fruit trees. I like its gentle blend from red through orange to yellow. I may have to propagate this one by cuttings, too. On the right is Malva sylvestris, which is pretty much becoming a weed in my garden, but Dana likes them. They have bloomed for about a month now, but today I noticed they’re mostly going to seed now. Time to cut them back and see if they’ll rebloom.

My Campanula glomerata (the purple flower on the left) has been blooming for a week or two now. Some are starting to go to seed already. Nice contrast with the yellow Coreopsis grandiflora behind it. On the right, my Shasta Daisies have begun blooming pretty well just this week.

I have a lot of that Coreopsis grandiflora this year. I had grown some from self-gathered seed last year and planted them out. The seed originally came from ‘Mayfield Giant’ but I don’t know if it’s really true to the named variety anymore.

In my small shade garden area, Lamium maculatum groundcover has been blooming well for a few weeks now. The hostas behind them are just starting to send up flowers this week but they weren’t in the photo. They’re not really grown for their flowers, though, and I may cut them off.

Check out my cherry crop! This is the first year I’ve had a lot of cherries — I think these trees are only three years old. They are the ‘Lapins’ variety. I only sprayed pesticide once during their growing season, so it turned out that about 30-40% of the cherries had a worm inside. I popped quite a few in my mouth just because it feels to good to eat cherries that way, even if they do have a worm. But then, I ended up cutting the rest all open and discarding the wormy ones. I must do better at spraying them next year! Also, I noticed a lot of them eaten by birds right when they were coming ripe. I harvested all of them on June 20.

Raspberries just started ripening in the past 7 days. We’ve picked a bunch this week. These are the ‘Canby’ variety. I just ate some with vanilla ice cream as I started writing tonight. That is just about the most perfect food combination ever thought of!

I don’t remember sowing any seed for this, so it must have been carried to the front flowerbed from the old wildflower garden area in back. This is a Larkspur, probably the ‘Rocket’ variety, since that’s what was in my wildflower bed. It started blooming in May, and this was taken on June 16.

Lastly, my ‘Ville de Lyon’ Clematis vines finally got some good growth this year. I let them start out longer than the usually recommended 8″ tall. I wanted them to grow over the front arbor. The one closer to the house is growing up on the top now, but the other one is stunted. I think it gets too much sun, plus one of the nephews broke off some of the stalks playing in the garden when we had a family gathering in May. That was a bummer.