Summertime Gardens

The warm, long days of summer have brought out the gardens.  The white garden in blooming with tiger lilies and stella d'oro lilies.  The shasta daisies and other wildflowers are getting ready to bloom. I put a small lemon mint plant in last year and it is spreading nicely.  The leaves smell so nice when you crush them in your hands.

As you walk across the yard from the white garden you come to the arbor.  The silverlace clematis is covering the arbor nicely (it could use more training and trimming)!.  The wire cages at their bases have kept the rabbits from chewing the stalks.

As you pass through the arbor, you then come the shade garden.  It is full of hostas and a few sedum, though the tiger lilies and black-eyed susans have found their way in also.

We also found a neat pair of mushrooms growing next to the shade garden.  From what I can gather, they are scleroderma citrinum (roughly translates to yellow bumpy skin mushrooms).  Not edible, but I wouldn't try to eat any mushroom in my yard anyway.

Though I am not particularly fastidious about the yard, I did rake some areas where the grass clippings from the mower were getting heavy.  I was amazed that when I look at my lawn, I see lots of ground ivy, plaintain and clover.  However, I sure raked up a lot of grass!  Go figure . . .