The foxgloves (digitalis) are beginning to flower and they are always a delight. For the most part, they are growing where we scattered their seeds from their blossoms last year. Being biennials, the plants began to grow last autumn. We will repeat the process this year.

For many gardeners the month of June is considered “National Rose Month.” It is easy to see why. Their blooms, many of them fragrant, are beginning to appear in our own garden.

Especially pretty are the ‘Zephirine Drouhin’ roses, which are climbing up a couple of garden arches. Even more enticing about these beauties is the fact that they have no thorns and they’ll re-bloom towards the end of the season.

Although recently battered by heavy rains, the peonies are incredibly beautiful. As a test, we didn’t set up cages around them this year, but we did trim off the smaller buds leaving only the largest on each stem. In our experience the smaller buds never seem to bloom anyway. So removing them makes the stems less top-heavy and less apt to fall over, especially without cages.

In the vegetable garden, we’ve been harvesting chives, parsley, green onions and lovage. The rhubarb looks very healthy, although for us it’s merely decorative. No one in our family likes to eat rhubarb.

The lettuce, zucchini, and cucumber seeds have germinated. Nothing yet from the pepper seeds. Sadly, the sunflower seeds were dug up and eaten by rascally squirrels.

Small potted tomato plants were planted within cages and pole green bean seeds were planted alongside. The combination of these two has worked well for us in the past, especially since hubby “designed” the special cages. We’ll describe them in a future blog.

The pollen has been incredibly bad, the worst I can remember. Not good for allergies!

The Summer Solstice takes place on Sunday, June 21, the same day as Father’s Day. Then the days will begin to get shorter.

Happy Summer!