How Does Your Garden Grow?

Hooray! My brand-new rain gauge finally has a reason to exist! One whole inch of rain fell on Saturday and another on Sunday. This rain gauge with its butterflies will look great once all of the zinnas that are straining at its feet finally get to blooming. Hope these metal bugs doesn't scare away the real deals.

Been watering my garden every damn day since May 14, which sucks because the link between the spray attachment and the hose leaks so I get watered along with the plants I'm trying to spray. I've tried unscrewing and rescrewing. Screw it. I'll just get wet I guess.

Before this year I've been a hand-waterer. Get out "old yellow," the watering can. Fill it up a few times, hoist, and pour. This year I've been lazy. Just get 'er done.

I ordered this rain gauge from the same company from which I got my strawberry plants. It was..um... some company whose name I forget and whose name is also on a piece of paper on my kitchen counter which is aaaalllllll the way downstairs. Another time, I promise.

My hubby keeps asking me whether the rain gauge's measurment beaker shouldn't have a wider opening than this thing that looks like a test tube. "It'll be fine," I say and think to myself, "But this one was much prettier." :-)

After nearly three months with basically no rain in the Twin Cities, we got 3/4" of steady rain during the day on Saturday and another 3/4" Sunday over night. Boy did we need it.


I took advantage of the sun on Sunday and planted the new iris patch. I removed two dead 'Dewey Blue' Switch Grass plants (a third one is barely hanging on) and shallowly planted around 25 irises. They should be a mix of blue irises I got from eBay and a variety of colored and named irises from dreamingdaylilies at GardenWeb. I still have around 10 blue irises as well as six poorly placed yellow and/or white (I don't remember which are which) that I planted two years ago that have never bloomed. My guess they are not getting enough sun.

I have attempted to protect my new patch with chicken wire (and a spare window screen) and several dead stems trimmed from my Barberry shurbs. I hope the thorns will make the squirrels and rabbits will think twice about digging up my irises! The lengths we'll go to to protect our gardens.


Elsewhere around the garden more things are blooming...

... And other things will be any day now-- purple Siberian Irises.


Last weekend I finally (after a year) set up my second rain barrel. The Russian Sage at its base is a bit crowded. I wish I could move it about six inches to the left, but it is probably safer to leave it. I think it will survive. Not far away, the apples are starting to look like tiny apples!

I've been taking stock of plants that have and have not decided to return to my garden this year. Check one and check two for the clematis (clematises, clematii?) I planted last year:

I cannot understand why two of the same plant would fare so differently. They were nearly identical when I planted them but "lefty" is much more well off than "righty":