Mushrooms a Plenty
I found these this morning growing on my pile of Sweet Peet. They’re very pretty.
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Here come the Hollyhocks
They say you can’t have a cottage garden without hollyhocks, which is good because I like cottage gardens and I really like hollyhocks. They are such tall stately flowers able to withstand so much weathering.
I have had trouble with the deer eating them in the spring, but this year I figured out a place where the deer won’t eat them and my hollyhocks are taller than I am. I have old-fashioned double hollyhocks, the blossoms look like small peony blossoms, I would like to get some single ones next year. They’re such intriguing flowers since they bloom from the bottom up. They are beautiful from the multiple buds on the top of the flower stalk to the partially opened buds down to the full flowers.
Here are a few photos from one of my hollyhocks (all from the same flower stalk from top to bottom).
I love how all the buds form at the top of the stalk and then as it grows the buds space themselves out on the stalk.
The buds are so neat when they begin to pop open. You can finally see what color the flowers will be.
Down a little more and the buds are a little more open, beginning to reveal the ruffled petals.
Going down even farther you start to see a little more of the flower.
And finally the full blossom at the very bottom.
Here’s a larger photo showing a foot or so of the bloom stalk.
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Morning Dew
I always enjoy walking around the gardens in the morning while the dew is still on the plants. Last week I snapped some photos of dew on a few flowers. This is Snow Crystals Sweet Alyssum, it’s less that 2 inches tall (it would be a bit taller, but I often find the Chiots laying on it).
Lady’s Mantle is one of my favorite plants, last year I ordered some seeds from Richters in Canada and set out to start my own. I only got 3 plants out of it, but I love them. It’s so much more satisfying when you can start your own plants from seeds. The plants are still small, but they’re doing beautifully this year.
I’m hoping next year they’ll start seeding down around the gardens. One of the great things about Lady’s Mantle is the soft fuzzy leaves and the way the leaves hold dew in the morning. Just beautiful. CAUTION, you may want your own Lady’s Mantle after you see these photos!
This is one of the small inner leaves that is just beginning to unfurl.
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Here Come the Squash!
I noticed my squash plants are starting to show the signs of baby squash! How exciting.
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What to do with an abundance of rocks
Everywhere we dig in our gardens reveal rocks by the dozens.
I used to cast them aside and there are still many piles along the edges of the woods to attest to this. About 4 years ago, we decided to start using the rocks for walls to contain our gardens.
We have a severely sloped front hillside out by the road and we have used mountains of rocks to terrace it. It’s such hard work, we only finished a third of it the first year.
This year we started working on the right side of the front hillside, this is what it looked like in April when we started.
This is it’s current state, we still have a lot of work to do, but it looks better than it did last summer!
We also have used rock walls to edge our driveway.
Now finding a rock while digging is like finding a treasure, and we are constantly using the piles along the edges of the woods that were made during our first 2 summers here. We now have rock walls all around the property and rocks edge almost every flower bed we have. Plants always look so lovely cascading over a wall of rocks. 
