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!