Lush

I bring you a report on the state of the garden. Here's the view out the back door, where the pink persicarias have faded and the yellow phlomis has arisen in their place. Compare the scene to this video, which I shot in April, and you can see how dense the growth has become.

Here's the area around the birdbath, which looks like the prehistoric lair of a small dinosaur. Can't you just imagine it poking its head out of that tangle of green? The teasels -- three on the left, three bunched together on the right -- are towering and preparing to bloom, and the burdock in the center has reached an insane size.

I mowed the lawn yesterday, and I can barely squeeze the mower through this area, with red persicaria on the left and another giant burdock and, beyond that, a teasel on the right.

The growth is just as dense on and around the patio -- which is under there somewhere. That gigantic inula in the foreground grew there of its own accord. It comes up every year and I don't have the heart to kill it, but it is in a rather inconvenient place. My foxglove seedlings are on the right. I need to do something with those.

Remember that set of garden shelves we bought -- the "plant ladder"? Well, it's a badly designed, badly built piece of junk. Within weeks it began falling apart, some of the shelves collapsed, and it got so bad I was afraid to put pots on it because of the weight. The screws holding the shelves together are so flimsy they've snapped in several places. We decided to throw it out. So the side of the house, which is our sunniest spot, is once again free from furniture and honestly I think it looks much better that way.

(Well, except the small shelves in the foreground, which are holding pots of jimsonweed (datura) seeds. Only one of those seeds sprouted, and you can see it growing in the grey pot surrounded by pottery shards to keep the squirrels at bay. We also have a lettuce plant there that Dave bought at the grocery store -- I've never seen lettuce sold with the root ball attached, but we planted this one after we ate the leaves and it's giving us another harvest!)

Here's the little wildflower garden, where the seeds I planted have grown to a respectable size. (Some of them, anyway. I don't think any of the cornflowers made it -- the slugs liked them too much.)

Our first dahlias are beginning to bloom!

And finally, the corncockle, which you may remember I grew from seed, is several feet high and producing flowers of its own. Success!