Fertilizer Friday, July 2nd.

This was definitely a good week for me, nothing like having your birthday stretch out for a whole week!  I enjoyed time with my husband and kids, dinner out with two of my sisters, plant shopping with my girls and breakfast out with my parents, kids, sister and nephews.  On my actual birthday I told my girls they had to come with me to as many nurseries as we could fit in, which was about 4.  I think going to Dairy Queen for dessert helped make it worthwhile.

During a day out last weekend my husband told me to pick something out for the garden.  I found this trellis with a bird finial.  I'm drawn to anything with birds on it.  Another thing I'm drawn to is something to grow a Clematis on, so it was an extra great gift.  This is the new bird trellis, it's about 6 feet tall.

One of my sister's gave me a gift card and the first thing I thought of was, "now I can go plant shopping!"  I found a new Clematis integrifolia 'Pamiat Serdtsa' which means "memory of the heart".  It will grow 4 - 6 feet.  I love when plants have special meanings behind their names.  This will always remind me of this birthday.

Here they are together in the bed behind the pond (although you can barely see the Clematis now).  I didn't plant any of the Poppies, Larkspur or Bachelor Buttons this year, all of them reseeded from last year.  The Larkspur that I started by winter sowing are not growing at all.  I think just letting them reseed on their own will be how I let things happen back here from now on.

A side view of the "driveway bed".  These plants take many beatings from basketballs, and aside from the roses all seem to handle it pretty well.  My poor unknown pink rose really got hit with rust and blackspot over the last week.  I cut a lot of the diseased branches off, being sure to not leave and leaves behind in the soil.  The 1/2 wine barrel has just been planted by the Littlest Gardener and I, she named it the "family garden".  We planted Cosmos, Zinnia, Agastache, Coneflowers, Coreopsis, Liatris, trailing Lobelia and million bells in it.  Now I have to decide where to put the other half of the barrel.

Fleabane in the driveway garden had to be staked up as usual.  I love how bright purple the flowers are.

Rose 'Tamora' is still too small to be seen from behind the Lavender in that bed so I have to get down and look for the blooms.

 Astillbe is just starting to bloom.

 This is the bed that I planted the rest of my new flowers.  The short rose struggling in the back is 'Gertrude Jekyll'.  I don't she likes this weather one bit.  In front I added Campanula 'Cherry Bells', Campanula 'Mouse Ears' and Scabiosa 'Beaujoulais Bonnets' - I hadn't seen or heard of this type before, the pictures of it are very pretty.  As I was looking at this bed I realized I have four different types of Campanula in this bed.  I think everything in this bed is awaiting some real hot and sunny days.  (Another day of 63 degrees and rain for today.)

And in case anyone remembers the little lemon on the Meyer lemon tree, you can see it's still hanging on!  It's a little bigger than a golf ball now, but I'm really rooting for it.

To see who else is flaunting their flowers this week visit Tootsie at Tootsie Time.
If I don't get a chance to post on July 4th I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday!