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June 2006

While we saw the first flowers on our Honeysuckle in late May, it wasn't until the first week in June that it really came into its own. Now you step out onto the patio and you're bathed in the sweet scent of the Honeysuckle flowers' perfume.

We were running out of suitable pots to hold our basil assortment in a reasonably sunny spot, so when we were out picking up some 2x8 red cedar to cap a couple of our planters, we spotted a good deal on this Vietnamese ceramic pot. And it came home with us, as you see.

You may recall we received a small supply of Hosta seeds from a most generous couple in Virginia. They were sown in March and slowly germinated outdoors in our little greenhouse. This one here is a seedling off an un-named 'streaker' and even at this small size -perhaps ½ inch at the most- you can already see some streaks in this baby.

In addition to the seeds from Virginia, we also collected some of our own Hosta seed, as well as ripe seed pods from various cultivars in nurseries. This patch of seedlings here is from 'Ginko Craig' seed. Among the variety of seeds we had, these were probably the best germinators. Most of these seedlings will end up as compost, only the strongest will be kept to serve as pod or pollen parents down the road.

We added two new Iris Siberica cultivars to our assortment this year. This one, called 'Sparkling Rose' was the only one to flower in its first year. The flower scape is considerably shorter than what we're used to seeing on 'Caesar's Brother' and we'll have to make sure to keep that in mind when planting it out, they're in #1 pots at the moment.

While it looks dramatic when backlit -don't they all-, this is more what it actually looks like, a very nice, soft pink.

We have several Fuchsias in the yard: magellanica, 'Versicolor' and 'Riccartonii'. All three varieties are winter hardy here in our neck of the woods and they have to be one of the easiest plants to take cuttings from. This tray of 36 cuttings were taken maybe 3 weeks ago, if that long, and as you can see all of them are sprouting new growth.

We'd noticed a crow fledgling in our frontyard for a couple of days, making himself quite comfortable on the taller of the two stumps of pine we have there. On the 17th he decided to venture a little farther afield and he landed in one of our planters in the North sideyard. Well, our boy Ace just HAD to check this out!! Ace didn't lunge, he was just very curious, as you can see and by the same token the crow didn't move or budge an inch either and while certainly leary of Ace, it didn't make any attempt to get away from him.