Hi there, and welcome to my blog! Poor weather has been a strong theme over the past number of my posts, unfortunately. That’s just the way it is, sometimes the weather is good, and sometimes it isn’t. I think the garden is doing remarkably well, given the strong winds we’ve had. I won’t complain too much about the rain, as it seems the plants are happy with it!

The very last of the Sarah Bernhardt peonies bloomed this week, so I wanted to use them in an arrangement. In fact, I made two flower arrangements this week. It is such a treat to have flowers inside! This year I realized that it just took time (four or five years) for my roses to mature enough for them to have long stems. It was so worth the wait, though, and they are brilliant to work with in arrangements.

My last variety of iris (Dutch) also started to bloom this week. It was duly used for one of the arrangements.

I have to give an update that the lavender border around the new raised beds is filled with flowers, albeit very tiny ones! It looks great, even with the plants being so small. The Little Lime hydrangeas are also filling in nicely.

Have you checked out The Propagator’s meme Six on Saturday? I’ll be joining again today. Ready for the tour?

1 – Flower arrangement with Dutch iris. This was another quick, easy arrangement that just came together. I used Himalayan honeysuckle, or Leycesteria formosa, because it is so different (texture, shape) and neat looking. The pink Sarah Bernhardt peony flowers were all the tiny ‘second’ flowers, but if you ask me they are as nice as the larger ‘first’ blooms. I had a lot of them. I added enough of my yellow Teasing Georgia David Austin roses to balance out the color. I added the poppy seed heads and a few ‘ready to bloom’ poppies to have different shapes (you can see in the second picture where the lavender poppies have opened). And finally, there is the Dutch iris, which I thought matched the blue jug very well! I used two floral frogs to keep some of the bigger flowers in place. This is my favorite arrangement so far.

2 – Flower arrangement with campanula. This arrangement also used the tiny ‘second’ Sarah Bernhardt peony blooms and Teasing Georgia David Austin roses. This time I added white campanula flowers and Erysimum Bowles’s Mauve, along with a couple of Lichfield Angel (cream) David Austin roses. It also smells lovely! The jug is one of my favorites, as it was a special gift.

3 – Poppies. I’ll probably write about these a lot this summer as they are everywhere in my yard! I have a very hard time with saying ‘no’ to them. I hope that next year I can have a dedicated ‘poppy bed’, so they aren’t getting in the way of other plants, which is kind of what the situation is now. I am a big fan of them, though, and want to make sure that they go to seed this year so they’ll continue on next year!

4 – Mophead hydrangea. This shrub has so many flowers on it this year! I am very excited because this is my main source for flowers to make dried hydrangea wreaths in the fall. I love the multicolors! I add ‘hydrangea colourant’ to the soil to help turn it blue (or in this case, purple). And I water the hydrangea plants, because they love water.

5 – Lavender border. See what I mean? There are so many flowers on this tiny plant. I’m excited to see what it will look like as the plants get bigger.

6 – Raised bed update. The sunflowers are growing! Yay! There was one point when I really thought I would have *no* sunflowers this summer. But thankfully, the second and third plantings have taken, and things are looking very good. We actually staked them after the last storm, despite them being pretty sturdy.

Thank you so much for stopping by, and for taking the tour! I hope you enjoyed seeing what’s happening in my garden. 🙂

In Peace,
Dana