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Deluge of rain – at least we needed it!

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It’s about time that I wrote a Green Thumb Sunday post! I knew it had been a while, but didn’t realize that it’s been about two months since my last GTS post!

Sorry guys! I’ve been so busy lately and sick! It’s been hard to do my regular posts let alone special GTS posts.

Now, as I’ve said in the last few posts this summer is pretty much a write off! It’s been cool and up until a few days ago we didn’t have much rain. Boy did that change! It’s been raining fairly steadily since Wednesday evening.

Saturday and earlier today we heavy heavy rains. Like enough to form puddles in the backyard within minutes! My yard drained ok and my basements dry, but others in Toronto have had flooded basements and several streets turned into ponds! Talk about a deluge!

Chicago Peace Rose 3

The one good thing about all this rain is that I’m sure my plants are loving it … well they will if it stops soon! I also think it’s going to be a little warmer this coming weeks so maybe between the rain, the lightening adding free nitrogen into the air and some much needed warmth we’ll have new blooms in the garden soon.

It’s been so overcast in June and July that the pictures I’ve taken of the garden just don’t look as nice as they normally do. It’s hard to take pictures in the afternoon when the light seems like mid-evening!

Right now the daylilies, phlox and lavender are the stars of the garden.

Lavender flowers 2

What plants are the stars of your garden this week?






I can make it rain

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Why is it that whenever I pull out my garden hose and start watering the garden it suddenly starts raining? If this keeps happening I’m going to begin to think I’ve got magical powers!

Seriously … we haven’t really had any rain over the last week and a half to two weeks. Oh sure, every day has called for showers, rain or thunderstorms and it’s definitely rained in other parts of the city, but hadn’t rained here.

Yesterday there were dark clouds all day, but when by 6 pm it still hadn’t rained I decided that it was time to water the garden. We hadn’t watered since Saturday so the garden was really dry.

Ironically, approximately two minutes after I started watering the front garden beds it started spitting. The rain soon began to fall harder, but I knew if I stopped watering the rain would stop. All in all it rained here for about 15 minutes, but it wasn’t enough for my garden. By the time I got to the backyard it had pretty much stopped raining and I could still see lots of dry areas in the garden beds. So I continued to water.

Strange though, how it happens to rain whenever I pull out my garden hose!

Does that happen to you too? You get frustrated that it hasn’t rained for a while (even though the forecast says it should), go to water and it begins to rain or it starts raining shortly after you’re done watering? I’d say it happens to me maybe 50% of the time!

A broken trellis brings indoor rose delights

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Last week we had a lot of rain (this week’s a heat wave and a few thunderstorms), and since the roses are heavy with blooms we had a little mishap.

My Baron Prevost and Jack Cartier roses are standing tall near a wooden trellis that’s attached to the fence. I’ve also lightly attached some of the rose branches to the trellis (the trellis is mainly for the clematis that grows in front of it) and well, I guess the floppy rose branches got too heavy after the rain and they actually caused part of the trellis to break.

Upon discovering the broken trellis we fixed it with some 2×2’s – it’s very sturdy now and tied back some of the rose branches again.

Unfortunately one of the Baron Prevost rose branches snapped in half so rather than leaving the flowers out there to die I cut the branch off and then carefully cut some roses to bring indoors. Baron Prevost has a combination of large thorns and tiny thin prickly thorns covering it’s branches so it took some time to cut the roses off the branch and get them ready to go into a vase!

I almost never cut any of my flowers to bring inside. I prefer to enjoy them outside. Or I used to prefer them that way … after bringing in the very perfumey Baron Prevost flowers (and three peonies) I think I might change my mind.

I put the roses, two peony Peacher Peonies and one Karl Rosenfield peony in a vase in my kitchen and within minutes the whole main floor of our house was filled with a mix of rose perfume and delicate peony scent. In fact our house smelled of rose and peonies for two days before the roses started to wilt. Even then, the wilting roses still had some scent, although it was much milder than it had been when I first brought them indoors.

Do you ever bring some of your garden flowers indoors? Which ones are your favorites to bring inside?

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