late july gardens

Hello friends! Summer is in full swing here in Illinois and I wish it would never end. It's such a short season here. I love the sunshine, all the flowers and the green lushness of the landscape. I don't like the humidity, but it sure beats our loong, gray, bitterly cold winters.

On July 20th, we moved into this house 30 years ago. Hard to believe we've been here this long. Will we stay here "forever"? Hard to say.

As always with being a home owner, there's projects to be done. Yesterday, Brian worked on putting in edging on the new front sidewalk, while supervised by Clementine.

The dreaded mulberries have finally stopped falling, for the most part. We can once again use our patio. And walk on the walkway without stepping on mulberries and smelling rotting ones and having buzzing, nasty flies all over the place.

 

But now the patio is stained and filthy from all the berries, so Brian will have to power-wash it. The projects just never end!

One new thing we just bought for the patio is this Suncast deck box. It holds all the patio seating cushions and pillows. Every time we'd have a threat of rain, we'd have to remove all the cushions and pillows and bring them into the garage...then haul them back out again. Not only a pain, but we also didn't have room in the garage to store them. They were thrown willy-nilly in the garage, piled on top of whatever we could find.

Now all we need is another cushion to put on top of the deck box, so that we have extra seating. I'm waiting until next month when outdoor items go on clearance.

My butterfly garden is in full bloom now and brings so much color and beauty to the back yard. It attracts more bees than butterflies, but that's OK ~ we certainly need the bees, too.

Our back yard may be small, but it's peaceful and mostly private, so it's our little slice of heaven. Brian and our oldest son planted these arborvitae trees about 17 years ago, when they were only three feet high. They're the perfect natural privacy fence.

Our cherry tomato plants really took off this year. They're over six feet tall! I've been picking lots of tomatoes every day. We've had caprese salad twice already, so now I'm going to cook down the tomatoes with onions and garlic and use it as a sauce over grilled chicken.

We are so pleased with how the coleus filled out on the north side of the house in-between the hostas and ferns, except...

some varieties grew much bigger than others. Here we thought we were doing so well back in the spring when we planted coleus, by leaving plenty of room for each plant. Little did we know that some spread and overtake other plants and some grow tall and don't spread much.

And then another variety barely grew at all! (The one to the right.) Now I know why some gardeners keep notebooks on what worked for them and what didn't. I'd never remember any of this next year. Guess next spring I'll be referring back to my blog!

We have a new cardinal family right outside our kitchen window. I watched Mama build her next in three days, then saw her sitting in her nest for what seemed like a couple of weeks, and now...babies! There's only two of them. It's fascinating to watch both Mama and Daddy Cardinal feed the babies multiple times a day. Daddy Cardinal tends to feed quickly and not stick around; Mama Cardinal takes longer with the feedings and then hangs around and fluffs in her nest and fusses over the babies. I talk to her out the window and tell her she's such a good mama. 🐦

I hope you are having a good summer and are healthy and staying safe.
💓