The rose garden was blooming away happily this summer. The new David Austin roses we planted were busy getting settled, and the rest were showing off their brilliant colors. We have over 40 different roses in our yard and it is really a lot of work to keep them healthy. Roses are the Queens of the flower world, they require a lot of pampering! We battle black spot, Japanese beetles, and several more menaces. The roses are worth it, though! Each one is unique in form and color. The blooms are exquisite, and they smell amazing. We like to go from bush to bush and stick our noses deep into the flowers and compare their scents. Some smell like candy, others, simply… heavenly. (We always check the rose first, don’t want to stick your nose straight into a bee!) Here are some of our favorite pictures from the rose garden this season. In the future, we’ll post some tutorials on how to take care of roses…

Mom’s favorite lilies are stargazer lilies, so we have them in many of the flower beds:

We grow these huge, maroon lilies by the roadside. We like how they kind of leap out at people as they drive past. Maybe it makes them smile for a minute!

We planted daylilies in different areas around the garden, but some have done better than others over the years. Here are two of our favorites:

We planted a lot of petunias and marigolds in pots to keep on the back deck:

We grow a few different kinds of hibiscus, both hardy (which can stay outside in the Winter) and tropical – which we keep in pots and bring inside for the cold season.

Niko’s fairy garden is the place to be if you’re a fairy who would like to spend some time relaxing in the shade amongst the greenery:

We decided to try growing purple vegetables this year, just to change things up a bit. They looked so cool, and they tasted delicious!

Niko is learning a lot about worms, and she was super excited when she found this big, fat worm while she was digging. Worms are really good for the soil, they fertilize the soil and help aerate it (get air into it), which keeps the soil loose and healthy.

The dahlias had a tough year, just as they were really getting going, we had a storm that knocked a lot of them over and broke many of the stems. But we still got some really nice bouquets and we enjoyed the ones that did grow!

We were really looking forward to growing glass gem corn, which is this super colorful corn, along with the sweet corn we usually grow. The cornfield did well this year… until the raccoons thrashed it! Raccoons came and gnawed at all the corn before it was ripe enough to eat. They trampled over all the stalks, and then the skunks came and made a mess of what was left. It was really disappointing. We tried to install motion detector lights to deter them, but it didn’t make a difference. Here we are, all smiles in the cornfield, blissfully unaware that it was to shortly become the site of a raging animal party.

We hope you are all enjoying the summer in your own gardens! We will leave you with this drawing that Niko did of a little flower fairy, till next time…