Sweet spot

Finally, a gorgeous day off, when I’m not feeling ill, don’t have work projects or family affairs to tend to, and didn’t have a lot of errands to run. I stayed home and worked in my garden and hung out on my patio, surrounded by happy plants, neighborhood cats, tons of bees, and the occasional hummingbird. A friend joined me on the patio for awhile, for lazy conversation about plant mutations, planned obsolescence in garden tools, and various edible things in my garden that I didn’t know I could eat. (Borage flowers, anyone?)

It’s been a lovely day. I had pizza and a salad (and some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream) for dinner, and now I am about to have a cup of tea.

From my seat on the white chair in the corner of the sitting room, I can see the ‘Swanson’s Gold’ daylilies that I transplanted from the brick planter to the north garden bed last month. That is one tough plant – not only did it survive the transplant, it has been blooming nonstop since shortly after it went in. I can also see the red bee balm (‘Jacob Kline’?) and the ‘Lucifer’ crocosmia that’s in front of the zebra grass. Last time I was at Emerald City Gardens, Jay jokingly made the comment that in Seattle “July is the new June” and that’s indeed what this feels like – that sweet spot in the year for which I put up with the rest of Seattle’s pathetic weather.

My garden tasks for the day were to get the last of the topsoil delivery off the driveway, weed the strip of garden south of the driveway, and clear the weeds from the south end of the parking strip. At one point I was trying to dig out some fennel, and I found myself thinking “I have no one but myself to blame for this.” Aside from the wants-to-take-over-the-house shrub rose and a few volunteers, everything that I am struggling to manage is here because I brought it to this particular 5000 square feet of land. There’s lots that I would not do if I had it to do over. (Cam, you were right about the lemon balm.) But on the plus side – in the garden right now I can see all of these flowers:

• Scarlet runner bean
• Centranthus
• Yellow California poppy
• White California poppy
• Red oriental poppy
• Red pompom poppy
• Calendula
• Alyssum
• Foxglove
• Pink toad flax
• Purple toad flax
• Three kinds of blue hardy geranium
• Two kinds of purple hardy geranium
• Pink yarrow
• Hot pink yarrow
• Coral yarrow
• Red helianthemum
• White helianthemum
• Cerinthe
• Borage
• Red bee balm
• Raspberry pink bee balm
• Red mini petunias
• White mini petunias
• Orange mini petunias
• Pink/white dianthus
• Pink Artemisia
• Pink ornamental oregano
• Hot pink ornamental oregano
• Deep gold day lilies
• Bright yellow day lilies
• Purple agastache
• Three kinds of melon/orange agastache
• Two kinds of cat mint
• Hot pink penstemon
• Lavender
• Yellow alstromeria
• Feverfew
• Shasta daisies
• Orange coneflower
• Light purple coneflower
• White day lilies
• Pink day lilies
• Mock orange
• Deep red salvia
• Two kinds of snapdragons
• Purple buddleia
• Heliotrope
  

I may have made a lot of work for myself in this garden in terms of plants to maintain and weeds to manage, but I’ve made a lot of happiness for myself as well.