So yesterday afternoon was spent planting the remainder of the seasonal plants in the backyard garden and the garden pots. Finding a home for the irresistible new hosta, the begonias, the wave petunias, the dracaena, the impatiens and the two lovely new Hibiscus shrubs. Not the best of times to move immature flowering plants around, on very hot sunny days, but it was by then late afternoon and some shade had moved in. 

Taking stock in the garden, the irises have set their blooms and they'll open in days. Mountain bluet is now in full bloom in both the front and back gardens. As are the Columbine plants. They tend to plant themselves, mysteriously, as many plants do, but discreetly, a new plant here, another there, they're not garden thugs wanting to take over other plants' assigned territory, and we're always glad to see them.

The forget-me-nots are shining their pretty little blue faces everywhere; they have a tendency to look after themselves year after year. Already there are tiny new seedlings of Morning Glories, renascent beyond order at the top of the rock garden, so I have to pluck the excess seedlings to maintain some vestige of proportionality, else they overgrow everything else.

The Mountain Bluet both at the back of the house and in the gardens at the front of the house are in bloom. As is the two flowering peas. The Icelandic poppies are sending up their flowerheads, soon to open. Our garden Jack-in-the-Pulpit plants have attained gigantic proportions and they're spreading among the ground-cover foamflower and spurge.

 This has turned out a cool, windy day if you're in the shade. Once again I took time to sweep up the piles of wind-strewn petals from the Jade and Sargentii crabapple trees, along with those of the large Magnolia. The minute the piles are swept up, the wind sweeps down a new batch to replace the old. The smaller magnolia tree in the backyard bloomed later, so it still has some of its gorgeous huge pink blooms intact.

After Irving finished cutting the grass, we invited Jackie and Jillie for a swing through the woodland trails in the ravine and they thought it to be a fairly acceptable idea. The atmosphere couldn't be more perfect; cool and breezy, mosquitoes and black flies at bay thanks to the wind. Irving picked up a walking stick he had leaned against a tree yesterday at the time of the access trail to the ravine's forest.

We often come across a pair of very nice young women walking their two dogs, a Golden Retriever and an Apricot Poodle mix, the two affable dogs took an instant fancy to the stick Irving was carrying, so taking heed of their commandeering suggestions, Irving surrendered the stick to them, and they happily carried it off a short while. Engaging in a bit of competition over the stick, they finally left it as they carried on with their humans, so Irving retrieved it for use during the remainder of our hike.

 

When we returned back home, we all settled down in the garden for a short while, to look around, enjoy the immature garden aspiring to summer munificence, and took our rest in the shade offered by the trees that surround the front of the house; spruces, magnolia, crabapples, false cypress, all providing shade, as their crowns take the brunt of the heat and brightness of the sun.