Flowers of June

Golden Marguerite (a tender perennial that also reseeds prolifically and attracts beneficial insects to your garden) and yarrow.

I’m a fan of relatively simple shrub roses that smell fantastic, as opposed to the fussy hybrid tea roses that take all kinds of attention and often don’t smell that good. I’d have to dig to find the name for this one, purchased from Fedco Trees a few years ago, but it definitely fits the bill. Hardy, beautiful, smells fantastic, and you can use the rose hips too!

The daylily my husband transplanted (we have about a thousand of them, all in the same color, that we keep moving around the yard). The sweet pea was a volunteer. The pea has no smell, so maybe its a perennial variety?

More yarrow (its actually a pale lavender, which is difficult to see in this picture) with a purple smoke bush as the backdrop. Swoon.

Smoke bush with daylily, not a bad combination either!

This old door came out of our place in Spokane. It was down in the root cellar, and had originally been an upstairs closet door. Michael painted it red and attached it to an old fencing post. The sunflower is a volunteer. Soon, there will be morning glories climbing up both, as they have reseeded underneath.

Shasta daisy and more yarrow. This is the only Shasta that survived out of 4 planted here a few years ago. Me thinks Mr. Gopher enjoyed the others. But this one is going strong.

Bread seed poppy pods. This is my first year growing them. The purple flowers only last a day, but the pods add their own interest. Trying to grow a few more of my own spices this year. Cumin, mustard and bread poppy seeds.

“Ann” yellow raspberries. If you don’t think you like raspberries, try these before you write them all off. Makes growing raspberries worth doing. WONDERFUL flavor, and great big fruit.

The two oldest turkey poults, hatched out April 5th. STILL not sure if these are boys or girls, but I’m betting boys.

Da boys. This is a wide ranging age group, from born early January to born late April. We now have them all separated from the mama’s, along with Pasco, our ram. They won’t be back in with the girls until October. With a 5 month gestation period, we’d like to have babies in March (rather than starting in late December!) next year. One or two of these guys will be filling our freezer in the fall.

Malcolm is no help at all, except for being cute and cuddly. This looks like a great yoga twist pose, lol. Ignore the pile of clothes and the unmade bed. Both are pretty standard for this time of year.

What to do with tons of left over semi-wild flower seed packs? Till a quick bed and plant them in front of the fence facing the road, to provide an inviting view into the farm. Worked out pretty well, though there are some weeds in there that really need to go away.

A closer view of the same bed. Most of what you see here is African Daisy. We grew a lot of it when we were living in Arizona. Super easy to grow and a very cheery flower. Very easy to save seed from for next year. Ignore the blooming bindweed. Ugh.

Calendula reseeds easily. I infuse the dried flowers for use in face soap. Calendula is wonderful for the skin. AND I just love the flowers. I brought seed with me from Colorado, and then it turned out there was a ton if it already here, so now I have several large patches of it. This one is out in the garden.

Shirley poppies and tricolor salvia. They both reseed (notice a theme here?). The salvia comes in red, white and blue, so is always fun in mixed beds.

Potatoes are blooming. I think this is the first year in forever that I planted my potatoes and didn’t then get a frost to knock them back. I have purple, yukon golds and reds. Each has a corresponding colored flower, which I think is cool. So these are the purple variety. We harvested our first new red potatoes yesterday for a batch of potato salad.

And this is happening. Which makes me giddy with anticipation!