Perennial Favorites

Well, it’s June, and we have finished with most of our gardening goals for the season. From here on out, we mainly need to just water everything and try to keep it all alive through the summer heat.

I did need some tomato tape, though, to hold up the CrAzY tomato branches that have escaped the tomato ladders, so we went to the nursery over the weekend to buy some.

Not that I don’t already have some tomato tape, mind you. I just know I have a roll in the garage somewhere!  In fact, I’m pretty sure that I have a lifetime supply. I just have to buy some more and then I’ll be able to find it! Isn’t that how it works??  :)   Or is that true only at our house?

Anyway, while we were there, I found 2 perennial flowers that I couldn’t live without:

The purple ones are called balloon flowers. They are so cool. The buds grow and grow, and really seem to develop into little balloons, which burst open into a beautiful purple blossom.
How fun is that?!

And the pink clover is exactly what my mother had in her flowerbeds the whole time I was growing up. I just love them. They seem as familiar to me as the back of my hand, and it actually warms my heart to look at them.

Is that weird, to get sentimental over a flower??

I guess not. Once I had a neighbor who had hostas, transplanted from her homestate of Tennessee, and my sister loves gerbera daisies, which were in the flowerbed next to the pink clover, growing up. People seem to want to surround themselves with things from home….

I would love to have a Turk’s Cap lily someday. Momma had those, too. And maybe some camelias. I wonder if they do okay here? And I just couldn’t abide not having at least one hibiscus bush in my garden. Those plate-sized fushia blooms are just spectacular! ♥ !

I’ve had to change some of my favorites in the garden, moving to Zone 7. Mexican heather isn’t perennial here, for example. And forget dwarf pittosporum. And we’ll never get used to having Bermuda grass instead of St. Augustine. Gosh, I miss that carpet grass!

I especially love the garden with all its seasons. My chives are always the first sign of Spring, and deadheading my perennials lets me know that Summer is finally here. And Fall means putting down more fescue seed. It’s a nice way to mark Time.

But a flowerbed is a lifelong work-in-progress. And I’m running outa room and sunshine in mine.  Some things change, some stay the same. I’m not really much of a gardener, so things have to be tough to survive in my flowerbeds. And I hope I’m learning not to take failures so personally out there. It’s a plant; I can buy another one. Why does it feel so personal?

Truth be told, it’s already a little late to be planting. It’s June already, for crying out loud. (How in the world can that be??) But more importantly, we have some really warm weather coming our way this weekend (read: hot!) (nearly 100 degrees!), so hopefully if we water a lot, they’ll be okay.

Nevertheless, I hope the new plants work out; they’re sweet little flowers. And the tomatoes, well, hopefully we can tame them into submission at last.

XOXO,
Lucky Dog
♥