Happy Midsummer weekend! With last week’s rains, several days of clear sunny skies and only a couple hours of twilight to call night, our garden has been growing at a breakneck pace. We are absolutely inundated with leafy greens at the moment and I have already started showing up to friends’ houses bearing whole lettuces. Not a terrible plight to be in, but funny all the same.

1. The last day of school was this past week and one of my students brought me this little beauty. There were a couple of other plant-themed items as well. My kids know me too well. Does anybody know what that is in the bottle? I’m not very good at identifying houseplants.

2. Paeonia herbaceous hybrid ‘Lemon Chiffon’ was the first of my peonies to bloom again this year. Well, the first of the ones I planted myself, to be precise. The very first is the big pink-flowered shrub that came with the house, which I featured last week. But anyway! ‘Lemon Chiffon’ flowers are supposed to have more petals as the plant matures, and this one does look fluffier than last year’s.

3. ‘Rosamunda’ potatoes have started flowering, and they are a very pretty lavender with white edges. The potatoes themselves are maincrop with pinkish-red skins. It’ll be fun to see all the different colors of potato flowers since I have six different varieties.

4. Lots of broad beans on the way as well. I rarely see black and white flowers, so find these quite cool. I only tried a few plants last year but liked them so much that they got their own bed this year. Figuring out a support system was probably the trickiest part since I didn’t expect them to get so tall so fast. They’re currently being held up by a grid of twine zigzagged through wire supports along the edges.

5. Rodgersia aesculifolia, whose tropical-looking leaves and giant flower spikes surprise me by returning year after year, despite our not giving it a bit of protection or care. It really is the most reliable of perennials and I’ve grown very fond of it.

6. Last Sunday I attended our local garden society’s plant sale. Yes, of course I signed up to become a member as well. It never even occurred to me to look, for some reason, but after a year of being around the SoS crew, the idea of hanging around with more gardeners in real life seemed very appealing. I came home with three large scented pelargoniums and a baby peach tree (‘Reliance’) as well! More updates on that after it’s been planted.

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

I am determined to actually do this on the proper day this week, yes I am! The clear weather today after a week of thunderstorms (some of our friends had localized hail!) made it a very pleasant day for photography. Sadly, I will have to wait until next week to share whatever I pick up from the university seminar garden’s plant sale tomorrow. Did I mention I haven’t attended a garden event for almost two decades? I’m very excited.

1. Paeonia officinalis ‘Nordic Paradox’, the midsummer peony. Named so because it usually flowers around midsummer. Except, like the midsummer rose from last week, it has also started a bit early. These have a habit of shattering pretty fast, so they might very well be gone by midsummer this year.

2. Actinidia kolomikta, the variegated kiwi vine. For the longest time, I was worried that the white tips on this plant’s leaves were from sunburn or indicative of some other problem. Then I finally got around to looking it up and discovered it was just doing what it was supposed to do. This became more apparent as it grew larger and more obvious variegation appeared, rather than just the random few leaves we used to get.

3. Aquilegia atrata, dark columbine. These self-seed along the walls of our house and barn, and just about nowhere else. I love the dark wine coloration – they look almost chocolate-burgundy on dark days – so different from the pastel columbines I usually see in seed catalogues. I’ve seed-traded these with quite a few friends over the years. I’m considering growing other colors next year, but they would have to be positioned far away from these clumps so that they don’t get diluted.

4. Tragopogon porrifolius, salsify flowers. I planted these last spring and didn’t get around to harvesting them over the cold season, so now I’ve got a bunch of these cute purple flowers. The entire plant is still edible, so I will probably pull up a few later this week for dinner. If nothing else, I’ll be set for vegetable seed for a good long while.

5. Vitis vinifera ‘Zilga’. A nice juicing grape that I didn’t get around to cutting back earlier in spring. It has now gone wild and escaped through every opening in the greenhouse. I’ll have to give it a pruning next week so that it has more room to breathe.

6. Herbal tea tubs! I mentioned having lemon verbena for tea last week but didn’t show the other two herb tubs. The one on the left has Moroccan mint, strawberry mint, pineapple mint, grapefruit mint, and chocolate mint. The one on the right has lemon balm, sage, catmint, oregano and yerba buena (Clinopodium douglasii).

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

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!