Flowers in June

The garden is full of flowers slowly blooming in succession in the right time and order. We have managed to get a kind of hybrid and native mixed border garden in our flower beds. The annuals are always so tempting and I usually try to get a few mixed in the beds and pots for color here and at home for mom and brother David. Last week before I went out to visit I took a walk and collected the wild flowers blooming along the drive that runs along the railroad corridor a few blocks from our apartment. They made a beautiful bouquet in a thrift store vase.

Lavender crown vetch, queen anne's lace, and red clover are simple but were very effective bit of nature at the side of my desk.

Ascelepias incarnata or swamp milk weed is a native and grows about 3 feet tall and has these lovely blooms in white and also pink but our pinks didn't survive in the crowded garden this year.

This week the mature hen's and chicks or sempervivum have begun to shoot upward to make their peculiar flowers on tall stems. Its always such a surprise to see them go from low rosettes to a tall projectile that gets little cactus like flowers on the tip.

While I was visiting Manassas I was excited to see how well our porch flowers are doing under mom's careful attention. She and I went to a close out sale on the roadside stand and came home with two big hanging baskets she chose for her porch and I got a few little things marked down 50% from original prices. Big pink begonias and purple trailing verbena were her basket choices.

The in ground flowering has begun with summer phlox and Asian lilies!

 We took on an adventure by buying zinnia seeds and planting them over the now bare area by the bird bath where the spring tulips are planted. Just a ten day period of damp to bring them up out of the soil and maybe we will have red, purple giant zinnias and mix of tiny lilliput flowering later this summer. Fingers crossed, and be careful mom going out to water the seed bed. We also found that the pink dahlia didn't freeze last winter! It came up and is two feet tall already. I got more purple pink mixed cactus type dahlias to replace the pink but now we hope to have both if the new ones can catch up with the sturdy pink ones. This is a clear sign our climate has changed when dahlias keep coming back year after year.
This week I am nearly finished with my Michael Miller Challenge for the Modern Quilt Guild quilt. It's small and coming together very nicely. Can't wait to share it on Saturday at the next DC Modern Quilt Guild meeting. Downtown again at the great little Shaw library on 7th and Rhode Island with in walking distance of the homes I lived in back in the 1990's. All my mates who died of AIDS back in 1990's wouldn't believe how much that neighborhood has changed in the last few years.