Gentle Breezes & New Flower Bed

Spring tulip with asiatic lilies just sprouting... next to the nylon containing Irish Spring soap/ deer deterent

Gentle breezes are back! We definitely have had enough of the gale winds that we had been getting... 40 kmph winds gusting to 60 and 70 kmph, day after day for 10 days straight!  The breezes are welcome to keep the hordes of mosquitos at bay. (All those new young little blood-suckers are just waiting for their chance to lunch on you!)

And the sun is shining again today after a series of much needed rain showers. It has been pretty dry here since the beginning of May, although we still have lots of standing water thanks to the huge amount of spring melt from all the piles of snow that winter had left us.

I planted 2 little zucchini bedding plants out into the vegetable garden  as well as the sweet potato plant that sprouted all by itself in my pantry!  We have never grown sweet potatoes before, so we are looking forward to that new experience.

Rhubarb and chives are growing well after the long winter

I also planted my long flower boxes on the deck stair landing with multi-bloom pink geraniums with white centres, dark blue pansies and some lysemachia (Creeping Jenny).

Next I tackles the 2 big green tubs on either side of the driveway down by the road. There I planted  Orbit Pink  geraniums, rocket mix snapdragons, a citronella and some mini licorice vines. One of the tubs is still not quite finished... I need to harden off the second citronella (which I have over-wintered in my bedroom bay window) and buy more licorice vines. I might add a few wine colored pansies, too.

After that I planted one of my deck pots. It already had 2 geraniums in it, one ivy geranium (candy stripe, red & white) and a regular geranium (Maestro blue).  (I had brought the whole pot into the house in the fall and had it in the kitchen by the big bay window all winter.) So that pot was easy to do, I just added a wine colored viola pansy and a little Dichondra Silver falls vine to the geraniums and voila, it was done!

Tuberous begonia on left and gazanias on right

I transplanted the 9 dry, root bound gazanias (Big Kiss- yellow Flame) into 5 inch pots to encourage them to grow a bit more till I get the chance to plant them into their permanent homes in the flower beds.
I am quite proud of my 3 little tuberous begonias which I grew from little tubers that I had dug up last fall and over wintered in the house in a plastic bag of peat moss! One even has a yellow blossom on it already! :)

 New triangular flower bed surrounded by stack stones - upper left

Yesterday my fabulous husband worked his butt off making me happy! (Isn't that great! :)
He drove to town and picked up over 200 stack stones for the perimeter of my new flower bed. He hauled wheelbarrowfuls of soil from our dirt pile next to the shed and mixed it with bags of triple mix which he then shoveled into the new flower bed spot.  We manhandled 200 stack stones around the outside of the bed, 2 deep.  (Today I feel it!)  It is taking shape and I'm excited about planting it!

 I bought a bleeding heart bush, a hardy rododendron (an experiment to try here on the prairies), and a cinquefoil (never had one of those before), to put in the new bed. I also have a miniature lilac bush (Miss Kim) to relocate there, as well as a grass infested false spirea bush (once the grass gets removed), a day lily and some bearded irises. Still trying to work out the configuration of what will go where.....

)

Two cactus dahlias, which I started from over-wintered tubers, one small citronella (scented geranium) which I over- wintered in the bedroom window, and one canna lily which finally decided to make an appearance. It was also started from an over-wintered tuber.

Happy gardening! :)