It's All Done but the Crying..

It's finally over.  My first course has finished.  That's one out of 12 anyway.  I expect my marks in the next week or two.  I can shed a few more tears then, that final was brutal.

For now it's summer.  Two months to myself to garden and relax before I hit the books once more. 

The garden is a big mess as you might expect.  Not a stitch of weeding has been done, plants are still sitting in pots waiting to go into the ground, worse still there are summer bulbs that I haven't planted! (not sure these are still alive or not...)

Despite not being able to get into my garden to work I have been enjoying it.  Over the last two months I've spent a considerable amount of time sitting in our dining room.  It has a big bay window facing out over the flower garden.  The view looks like this

Can I just pat myself on the back here and say, brilliant idea Marguerite putting that flower garden in front of the window.  It has provided ample distraction as needed when studying.  I haven't missed a bloom all spring.  There is a design principle at work here of incorporating your garden into the home.  The window acts as an extension and brings the outdoors in.  I'm not sure that's what I was thinking when I did this but let's pretend I did anyway.  I would certainly recommend it.  Particularly if you're stuck indoors for months on end studying.

And while I'm congratulating myself can I mention as well how great the procession of blooms has been.  This too was completely unintended.  I have simply planted what I like but amazingly it has worked well.  The first bulbs to appear in spring were the hyacinths, followed quickly by tulips and daffodils.

Menton tulips

Solomon's seal and sweet woodruff then started to take over.  Followed quickly by still more tulips, anemone and columbine

late tulips provide a pretty backdrop to emerging columbine

hostas began to fluff out

Then the mountain bluet and jacob's ladder

Mountain bluet - Centaurea montana

As of today the rhododendron and siberian irises are in full bloom

I picked up this lovely native iris at the local plant sale

I really don't know how I managed it but I've been duly impressed with the ongoing show.  Of course, it's still early in the season, there may be some gaps in the bloom sequence yet.  There's definitely a rather large gap on the far end of the bed - Jody 'helped' weed one day with a weed eater...  but that's a story for another day.

Anyway, thank you all for hanging in there, I appreciate your patience.  I look forward to catching up on all your blogs one by one in the coming weeks.  till then, happy gardening