I love my garden in the Summer time!

For the last few days I've been out in the sun/shade trying really hard not to give myself a stroke, but also trying to get some plants in the ground before the heat really hits.

I went out Friday afternoon and nearly did give myself a stroke, so I had to come back in and take a nice coool nap in the A/C (thank goodness for central air, I never had it growing up and I LOVE it) :)

Saturday morning I woke up and went to the Garden center with DH and we got enough almost enough flowers to fill the planters outside and the border around the front bed of the house. When we got back it was already getting warm but I wanted to get everything in the ground asap.

I spent a good several minutes digging a BIG hole to put this beautiful lime green hosta in. It's H. Sum and Substance and right now it's about 3' across and 2' high. At full maturity, it can reach 7' across. I love its bright yellow-green leaves in my shady garden. Behind it to the left is H. Blue Angel, another giant Hosta and another favorite. In fact, it's such a fav that we have about 4 of them. Beneath the leaves of S&S are some plants that look like lettuce (or so says DH. What's that stuff that looks like lettuce?). They're actually FoxGlove 'Giant Shirley' mix. The flower spike on those when they come up will be about 3' high.
I'm hoping they start coming up in time for my mom's visit at the end of the month. Also, you can see the Impatiens that I planted yesterday running along the border of the hosta bed. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of Impatiens in the world, but they bloom in nearly full shade and that's what I've got. When I bought them on Saturday morning, I thought that I might not have enough for the whole border, but then I started planting..... yeah. 36 little pain in the a$$ plants later, I'm finally finished and I'm sure they'll be lovely all summer long.

Finally for today, my Peonies are blooming for the first time since I put them in three years ago!!! I have a part shade /shade garden and I read (after watching them not get enough sun to create buds for two years) that you can get peonies to bloom in part sun but you need to feed them like crazy. So, this spring way back in March when they first started sticking their pretty little red shoots out of the frozen ground, I waited for the first warmish day and went and fed them like they've never been fed before. Then, once the weather started getting warmer, but super rainy, I spread 3-month fertilizer pellets on the ground around them.

I'm sorry, my mom won't be here to see these beauties bloom but I'm so exited they're blooming at all. I thought I was going to have to move them to the sunny (buit less frequented) side of the house and wait another year for blossoms.

I have a deep magenta one next to this lovely pale pink, spicy scented one that should be in full glory by the end of the day today.

Ahhh, I love summer gardening ....