In bloom in our garden are irises, baptisia, foxgloves, clematis, roses and some of the hostas. I don’t ever remember our hostas blooming so early.

The peony blossoms are mostly gone and I’ll be clipping off their seedpods just above a lower leaf on each stem. The peony plants make a nice summer border.

The bee balm (Monarda) plants are full of buds and soon will be beckoning our visiting humming birds. We hope!

Flowering annual begonias decorate containers and marigolds beckon bees in the vegetable garden.

The Kousa dogwood trees, however, win the gold medal this year. We have never seen such a spectacular show. And to think that most of our dogwood trees were grown from berries that dropped off the original tree that I received at a garden writers convention about 20 years ago.

In the vegetable garden the lettuce, radish, zucchini, pickling cucumbers, basil, and climbing green bean seeds have germinated. Sadly the rascally squirrels dug up some of them — especially the beans and zucchini. Cages have been secured around the five tomato plants we bought since we didn’t want to grow them from seed, which involves starting them indoors.

The milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is spreading via underground runners. Since its foliage is the sole source of food for monarch butterfly larvae, we want to encourage them but may have to move some of the volunteer plants to other locations or share them with our neighbors. We do love our butterflies.

As always, the weeds are healthy and numerous.

Unbelievably, this week I received my first 2020 calendar! It’s beautiful and I love it, but doesn’t it seem a bit early? Maybe not, since I recently read that the Boston Flower and Garden Show at the Seaport World Trade Center is scheduled for March 11-15, 2020. The Show theme is “Garden Party: Celebrating Friends & Family.”

I must mark my calendar!