The nice thing about going away … is coming home.  Missing two weeks of garden growth at the end of May and beginning of June is like missing a marathon!  So much is happening.

I quickly snapped away with my camera to capture the very last blooms from our cherry trees.  I was lucky to have a pretty sky too!

Pink is my favorite color, and I love to see it in the garden.  Our Hawthorn trees had a bit of pink in them this year.  They were lovely all in white bloom, with sprays of pink.

It’s funny how everything looks better in sunshine, but with too much sunshine everything looks bleached!  I won’t be complaining (ever!) about the sun, but I’ll have to work a bit harder trying to get the pictures right.

We were quite lucky with our Allium this year.  The wind has held off for the most part, and I’ve enjoyed their long showy splendor for a few weeks now.  Last year they were knocked completely over in their first week of blooming.  This one garden is transforming into a purple garden!  I think the Allium and Erysimum go really well together.

My Erysimum (Bowles’ Mauve) plant is really showing off now.  It has a great spread, and is simply beautiful. It seems quite happy.

On the right of the purple garden I have a globe artichoke plant (Cynara Scolymus). You can just see the wire support.  I’m not sure how this is going to go, but I’m always hopeful!

My tree peony had one flower this year.  It was truly a lovely flower, though!  It arrived last year as an eight inch tall stem. As in one stem!  It must be quite hardy, as it survived the winter, grew, and produced such a lovely flower.   It was worth the wait.

It is rather delicate looking, but I think it is quite hardy!

My regular peony plants didn’t do too badly either!

As for fruits and vegetables, I’m pleased with the progress so far.  I know for some people growing vegetables and fruit comes so easily.  But it has been quite a learning process for me!  We planted too many strawberry plants last year, and they were too close to one another.  The netting was cumbersome to remove, which was problematic.  This year, I am hopeful (always!) that we’ll get to enjoy the fruit.  It looks beautiful now!

We added in some stepping stones into the strawberry beds, and a wee bunny.  I’m sure he’ll definitely scare any birds away…

Our vegetable beds are filling in!  We have newly planted main crop potatoes on the right. On the left we have fencing for our pea plants.  In between the pea plants, some potatoes have decided to grow from last year’s crop. I’m really not sure what to do with them!  I’ll probably earth them up when we do the main crop of potatoes, and see how they turn out.

We love beets!  But this is the second year now that only a few beet plants have come up.  I’ve tried a second planting, so maybe we’ll still get some more. (will I mention that hopeful word again???)

My family thought we had too much chard last year, so I’ve scaled back on it this year.  I’m hoping to still keep it in our summer menu, but not too much that the family go running when they see it!

Now here is a vegetable that loves to grow in my garden – Swede!  Every single seed that I have planted has germinated.  I’ve thinned them out and passed the extras on to my neighbor James.  Thankfully, my family like swede. Good thing, too, as we’ll be having it a lot this winter!

My carrots are making themselves seen.

It turns out that most gardeners plant their garlic in the fall/winter and harvest in the summer.  I seem to have it a bit off.  This fall I’ll see if I can manage to get some in the ground.  It might be nice to have something growing in the winter.

This last picture was taken just a couple of weeks before the veggie pictures above.  So much growth in so little time!  You can just see the white from the Hawthorn trees lining the field.  It’s such a lovely sight (and site!).

I hope your garden is full of growth and beauty!

Dana