June 29th and its 104 degrees!

A beautiful pink Filipendula rubra finally came back to life and bloomed this year. Its in front of white Annabelle hydrangea. A nice combo.

A big fat Cleome full of pollen. You should try to find the wild species and collect the seeds in the fall.  The hybrids are not as large, sturdy and don't bloom as prolifically.

This is group of smaller Cleome on the edge of the veggie garden.

Our bed of of Gooseneck Loosestrife (Lysimachia clethroides) is always bountiful.

Acanthus hungaricus produced a series of symmetrical blooms this year. It looks like a plant catalog photo. This variety has small spines so you have to be careful when weeding around this one.

We moved the Yellow Loosestrife (Lysimachia punctata) and it finally grew strong and bloomed. I've been waiting to see this flower since 2009! It has a nice sweet fragrance and the pollinators appear to like it.

This year we decided to help the Jacob Cline Bee Balm (Monarda) by weaving a series of stakes and wire over the bed so it would grow through it. This provided much needed support. It grew about 6 feet and as you can see its very happy indeed. The little white flowers peeking out are White Obedient Plant (Physostegia virginiana).

This is Petite Delight Bee Balm (Monarda). It only grows about a foot and has a nice purple flower. Great for borders. Surprisingly, these are doing quite well in a rather shady area.

Golden Stargazer Lilies living up to the hype. The fragrance is quite bold and wafts all over the garden. We have them in many places throughout the garden so you always catch a whiff.

We decided to try the new double lilies but they haven't lived up to the hype. This is the second season, the fragrance is weak, the blooms are short lived and always a little deformed. I guess the breeders need to work on it a little longer. This is called Double Oriental Lily Soft Music but doesn't look anything like the marketing photos.

This is the other double lily we tried called Double Oriental Lily Lodewijk. It looks much better this year but the fragrance is weak and the other flowers are small and deformed.

Tiger Lily (Lilium tigrinum) recovered from being munch on by voles last year.

The always abundant Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) after being ravaged by bees.

Our veggie garden is staring to take off. We planted purple hull peas, peppers, squash, celery, cabbage, broccoli, collards, tomato, sage, mint, basil, and thyme. Yum!