I had the photos taken for this post back on Saturday but wasn’t able to post until today. Still, I’m not ready to throw it out yet, since it’s not quite next week’s post yet! Just have to hang on for one more week, and then there will be much more free time to catch up on blogging stuff.

1. Rosa pimpinellifolia ‘Plena’, also known as the Midsummer Rose. Well, it used to be known as that but it might need renaming if weather patterns persist. The unseasonably summery conditions of May had this thing blooming an entire month earlier than it was supposed to. Of course, the flowers are welcome at any time, and I hope that it will continue blooming all summer since we’ve been getting a healthy amount of rain this month. As you can see, it is very overgrown and will need to be cut back after it’s finished flowering so that we can use that emergency ladder again.

2. This is a self-seeded lilac that landed in a perfect location on a sunny slope next to our swinging bench. I keep on questioning if I perhaps bought and planted it, and then forgot about it, but I’m pretty sure no such thing happened. It has grown to a very manageable height of 1 meter with a couple of sturdy trunks, where I would like it to stay, so I will try to groom it to look like a standard in the next few weeks. It does seem that the temperatures made this year’s lilac bloom period very short, which is unfortunate. They’re one of my favorite spring flowers.

3. Rhododendron ‘Helsinki University’ has offered one small set of blooms this year, which I wasn’t even expecting, given the neglected state of that part of the flower field. It’s my oldest rhodo and has been looking a little droopier than the others all this spring. The entire area needs a good weeding, mulching, and feeding still. Happily, the summer holiday is only a week away, then there will be much more time to give everything the care it deserves.

4. Just like last year, the spinach bolted! This might sound not so surprising to many people, but you have to understand that up until a couple of years ago, my spinach beds lasted for most of the summer. When you’re close enough to the Arctic Circle, bolting from warm spells isn’t something you usually worry about. Except… yeah. Here we are again. Looks like spinach is officially moved to autumn crop status now. This time, I wasted no time in harvesting every single plant right away. They were pureed and frozen, for future use in sauces and soups. The bed is now hosting a few rows of rainbow chard.

5. A visit to my favorite nursery resulted in a couple of new herbs I’d never seen before. I got them more out of curiosity than anything else, and am still trying to think of ways to use them. The one with the small thin leaves on the left is Olive Herb (Santolina rosemarinifolia ‘olivia’) and the one on the right with the fat glossy leaves is Mushroom herb (Rungia klossii). They both smell exactly how you’d expect, it’s so cool. Two lemon verbenas destined for tea-making round out this bucket.

6. Finally, a shot of my dicentras taking over the front steps. They are getting bigger and bigger every year, just as I’d hoped. Not shown, but there are more on the other side of that little pine on the right, too. They pretty much take over the entire area for a while in spring, before dying down when the heat gets to them.

Thanks for visiting and please do check out what the other SoSers are doing over at Jim’s page!