Scenes from the Garden: mid-July

My blog is simply a garden journal, and though I write a lot of how to articles or post information on ecology and wildlife int he garden, at its most basic, it is a place to simply depict what is happening in the garden.  This post is just about capturing what's going on in the garden now.  

It is a showy time in the garden, but I do look forward to when the grasses cure, and things die back quite a bit, and reflect the dry hot summers.

 This is the time of the year when we have an abundance of flowers, and have to prune our showy fleabane (Erigeron speciousus), goldenrod species (Solidago spp.), bee balm (Monarda fisulosa), and others on a near daily basis, just to maintain our walking paths- especially after our summer thunderstorms.

Even though our garden does not get any irrigation, it provides a wealth of flowers for wildlife, and cut flowers for the house.

 Inside the vegetable garden, structures like raised beds, arbors, and benches are prominent.  The vegetables are a focal point, too!

  My next garden project is to make another grape arbor to cover and shade the garden bench (below).

Milkweeds (Asclepias spp.) and monarchs butterflies are in the news a lot these days, especially encouraging people to plant milkweed species in their garden for monarch conservation.  In the right location this is great and effective, and I think every garden deserves a native milkweed or 20.  Here, in western Montana, we are too far east and too far west for monarch butterflies (except the rare stray).  I love our native milkweed (A. speciosa), and the benefits of this plant and its beauty, are not limited to monarchs.

Our hammock finally succumbed to weather this year after eight years of being exposed to too much weather. It was a cotton hammock- I gave it to my wife as a present for our second anniversary (cotton is the traditional gift).  This year (our ninth anniversary) pottery is the traditional gift.  I have to think about that one.

I have a new hammock on its way- a more weather resistant one, made from recycled pop bottles.