Ongoing Battle/ Marmot Lunch

Clematises are growing/ pink Oriental poppy is blooming

We had hail 2 evenings ago and I had to rush outside and drag/ carry all my deck pots in close to the house under our deck roof! Luckily it only lasted several minutes, then it turned to fat rain drops. Needless to say, I was soaking wet by the time I had most of the pots out of the rain!

We have had some rain here almost every day since the beginning of June! Everything is lush and green and full, but we need the sun now to help the plants to bloom.  Some of my annuals in my pots are so soggy that they are rotting off at the soil level (Had to replace a number of pansies.)

Pond is doing well. Not as much algae as last year.

I have added some birch mulch chips to my flower beds now. The beds look so much tidier with the mulch in between the plants.  We have had so much rain in the last few weeks and the mulch prevents the dirt from flying up and getting on the leaves of my perennials and flowers.
Yesterday we finally had a beautiful, sunny summer day with temperatures up to 24C and NO RAIN or showers all day! Fabulous!

More planting today...
I dug out the little lavendar perennial I had planted a few weeks ago. It was not growing in the spot I had it, (small spruce tree flower bed, next to the beautifully budding peony) as it was not getting enough sun there. Right now it's in a pot on the deck until I find a more permanent spot.  I planted a couple calendulas there which I grew from seed and which have big fat buds now.  Have to remember to go out and spray them with the animal repellent or they will become marmot and/or deer lunch.

Perennials are lush due to all the rain; Hollyhock on left, cranesbill on right, purple flowers of chives in centre, blue salvia annual in front centre

I weeded and cleaned out the tiny plot below the huge juniper bushes by the bird feeder. There's a slow growing false spirea there and a whole lot of weeds, so I replaced the weeds with  a ready to bloom dianthus (Pinks) which I thought might be safe there.

That pesky little marmot continues to help itself to my garden flowers! It's an ongoing battle!  I have replaced the gazanias in my top rock garden bed twice now and sprayed them often, but the marmot destroyed both sets.  I went to Tail Creek Greenhouse and bought some flowering burgundy verbena to put in that bed. Since they have fuzzy smelly leaves, I thought that might deter the marmot but I sprayed them, too, just in case...
If anyone has a sure-fire method of deterring marmots from lunching on their plants PLEASE let me know!

I also went around the yard and sprayed Bobbex on all my growing lilies, dahlias, rose bushes, delphiniums,  lupines, and even the buds on my peonies. These are all plants which the deer have eaten in the past. The Bobbex is rather stinky, with wintergreen oil, garlic,  but it seems to do the trick against deer nibbling. Not so again rodent lunching, though.  I may have to mix up some Plantskydd and go back to using that...

Shasta daisies blooming in a sea of white blossoms; red currant bush is loaded with fruit.

My husband removed a large dead juniper bush in the wild rock garden by the road. There was a big bare spot there, so today I planted a couple of young first year daisy plants there, and a Malva that  had seeded itself and was growing in a bad spot in my long flower bed. The Malva did not like being dug up and is quite droopy right now.
I also transplanted 3 little Hen and Chicks that were growing in the shade under a bush in that same wild rock garden bed. Two years ago I  had bought them from the greenhouse where I was working and had planted them in a relatively sunny spot. Now they are back in a sunny spot! :)

My perennials are growing like gangbusters with all this rain! (So is the lawn, much to my husband Chris's displeasure...)  They are getting tall and have set quite a few buds, the 2 monkshoods- 2 blue, one pink,  8 or is it 9 delphiniums; the cluster bellflowers have never been so big and my favorite peony near the pond has 8 fat buds! The maltese cross is doing well, (not unusual) except that much of it was beaten down in all the wicked rain storms we've had recently.  It usually stands up well on its own so they have no stakes or cages surrounding them.  I stood some of them back up immediately after and even propped a few with some garden stakes so many did recover, but I had to cut off a number of others today which were flopped over.

pink lupines are huger than ever before

And the best news of all... my new Morden sunrise rosebush has opened its blossoms !  It is beautiful!  My other 4 rose bushes all have fat buds and so are not far from blooming either. So as long as the deer stay away, I think I will have a bumper crop of roses this summer! YAY! :D

We had a wicked rain/hail storm this late afternoon, just after I finished this post.  Luckily I had time to get all my pots  up close to the house out of harm's way... The sun is back out now drying up all the rain. (And "incy wincy spider's climbing up the spout again!"  :)

Foxglove surrounded by maltese cross, monkshood and cluster bellflowers soon to bloom; thrift in front.