My daughter sends a morning text: can we switch Snowdrop's farmette visit to this morning so that she can go swimming in the afternoon? Me, I'm full of weather information! I quickly respond: she is going to be disappointed! There will be storms all afternoon. 90% chance. She may as well come here then.
And once again Ed and I get to work early. I have some garden adjusting to do: transplant some flowers that will do better elsewhere. Weed, snip, take stock.
And pause for a late breakfast.
Immediately after, I return to work. To beat the rain. And it is hot. And the clouds move on. And I'm thinking -- if it's going to rain, then it will have to come from sapphire blue skies. There's not a cloud up there!
And so Snowdrop does go swimming and I continue to work until Ed says (three times) -- Nina, you have to come in from the sun occasionally. You'll get heat stroke!
Ed never urges me to do anything that's safer than what I'm doing and he rarely calls me Nina, so I know he is serious. But I can't come in! I want to put in this lily and divide that one and there are so many weeds in this bed and why don't I move that lavender plant...
And what June flowers are blooming now? Well, there's the ever lovely penstemon (you may know it by its common name -- beardtongue), this one called "Mission Bells."
Here's a cheat, because it's not really a June flower: Hemerocallis Primal Scream. Out of the 232 new perennials I planted this year, 80 were day lilies (aka Hemerocallis). It is an exercise in patience since the day lily hugely under-performs the first year in the ground. So often it will put out one or two early blooms and then call it a season. That's what's happening with this one:
Keeping me company: the two little pullets. Here's Cherry:
... now joined by Unie:
And by early evening, I catch up! With just about everything! Planting, dividing, deadheading, chipping, weeding. I do not have a to do list anymore. Weird to be looking at a blank slate!
Oh, I could walk the fields and always find another handful of weeds. Too, I'm sure I'll need to water later in the week. We had sunshine all day long. Not a drop of the predicted rain. But in the end, it's the deer flies that cause me to stop for the day. They aren't the worst we've ever had (so far!), but they are pretty annoying and I have many itchy bites to show for it. Hateful things. Luckily, their season is typically short. I'm hoping in a couple of weeks we'll see the end of them.
To celebrate the incredibly productive day, I take an evening scooter ride again. That cool breeze that comes with trotting along at 35 mph is heavenly and when you're scooting, there are no biting flies. Nothing but the views, the chat with animals encountered along the way, and good thoughts about the incredibly good fortune of being alive.
