Finally it feels like summer!!!!

Oh yes…the weather I have been craving and waiting impatiently for has arrived!!! 90 degrees and sunny and late evening storms!!! This is growing weather and the plants are in heaven!!

• I have over 15 different varieties of abutilons in the garden and they really do love the pacific NW climate. They can be a bit touchy in the winter if not protected but I am against a hillside with a micro climate 10 degrees warmer than most of the surrounding area. The one pictured I purchased 2 years ago and it has it’s first blooms ever this year. It is about 5 feet tall now

• The poppies are very happy too. The only downside to poppies is the blooms are so fragile. I go outside at 6:00 am every morning to do my photography of them before the sun blisters their petals or a downpour shatters them to the ground.

• Daylily “Cleopatra” is one of my favorite cultivars with electric apricot blooms and deep magenta eye zones. They are a semi spider and have such lovely form on wiry nodding stems

• The pink poppy is a seedling and something that just volunteered…probably pollinated from my other poppies by cavorting bees. I love the fringed thick doubled blooms. If I didn’t know better I would think this was a florist carnation

• The last daylily cultivar is “Three Wishes” .With 3 cream sepals backing 3 soft violet and cream ruffled petals…and fragrant…this is another fave of my daylily collection. Very compact and heavy blooming and repeats bloom in a good year.