Finally - Summer Begins In New England - Revised

Ah, the thermometer has finally risen above 80 for more than a day and we have gone three whole days without rain!

Living in New England is sometimes wonderful (we only wish we had an air conditioner a few times a year, fall foliage is gorgeous), but sometimes it's not.  Like when almost all of June is rainy and raw, which means that our already short three-month summer has now been reduced to two months. 

In spite of my whining, I am thankful for where we live. 

However, when we hit the lottery, we will have our summer home here in MA and our winter home.... somewhere that doesn't get snow.  (It's nice to dream - somebody's gotta win, right?)

A few new things blooming around the yard for Fertilizer Friday:

Clematis surrounded by Circle Flower

Coreopsis Zagreb

Some unknown type of Rudbeckia:

 

And another unknown Rudbeckia:

Echinacea:

Astilbe Peach Blossom and Alchemilla Mollis

Clematis: Jackmanii and Niobe

For some unknown reason, my perennials like to self sow in our brick walkway.  I have been pulling out Bleeding Hearts for years.  This year it looks like a Lady's Mantle farm.  One of these days I want to lift the bricks, dig them out and transplant them but first I have to find somewhere to plant them

(REVISION: Yesterday hubby weeded the yard for me while I was at work, great guy that he is..... guess what else he weeded.  You got it - my Lady's Mantle seedlings.  That's OK, I'll have plenty more next year!)

Cheers!

Waterfalls, Wildflowers & Mountains in the Adirondacks NY: Part II

This is Part II to my previous post on our trip to NY.  See that post for info on the trip and waterfall & Fort Ticonderoga pictures.    On with Part II:   
WILDFLOWERS & BUTTERFLIES:

MOUNTAINS (my hubby's obsession..... he's a hiking maniac):

The picture below shows the view on the ONE hike that I did with hubby. We climbed Little and Big Crow Mountains. I am not a hiker so this was hard for me; it was a breeze for hubby. The previous day he hiked for eight hours and climbed four mountains.

Hope you enjoyed the trip!

Waterfalls, Wildflowers & Mountains in the Adirondacks, NY: Part I

Hubby and I escaped kid-free to the Adirondacks / Lake Placid region of NY last week.  Neither of us had ever been and it was breathtakingly gorgeous. We came back feeling rested and relaxed. 

A few hours into our trip, we unexpectedly found that we had ferry the car across Lake Champlain.  Very cool... another first for both of us. 

On the ride across, we could see part of a building with several flags flying around it on a hill above the water.  The woman collecting the fee told us it was Fort Ticonderoga so we stopped in, had lunch and took a quick walk around.  Very cool place.

After I completed this blog post, I realized that as usual I got carried away so I will break it into two parts. 

WATERFALLS - the pictures don't do them justice:

In the picture below, can you see the girl in the black bikini near the top left of the waterfall?  There was a group of teenagers jumping off the rocks into the falls.  Yikes......

In the picture below, notice the two people on the bridge above the waterfall. This waterfall was huge

FORT TICONDEROGA (check out the cannons sticking out of the walls):

See Part II post for Wildflowers and Mountains  :)

Hope you enjoyed the trip!

Endless Summer Hydrangea Mystery

I have two Endless Summer hydrangeas in my yard - I have had them for several years.  They have always bloomed sporadically - some years they have lots of blooms and some years very few. 

Last year I had ZERO blooms.  The previous year I had a handful of blooms between the two. 

After zero blooms last summer - the Endless Non-Blooming Summer - I gave up on them and decided thatin the spring I would dig them up and move them some where else in the yard where they would be less visible.

This spring I had very little time for gardening so I didn't move them and guess what happened?  They bloomed more than they ever have - each shrub has at least 50 blooms!  I don't know why -  I did not fertilize them.  Actually, I completely ignored them. Normally I have to trim off the dead wood since in my Massachusetts garden they die back almost to the ground every year, but this year they did not die back.  I'm assuming because we had a lot of snow this year so they were well insulated?

Has anyone else had this happen with their Endless Summers?  Maybe it was all the rain we got this year? It's a mystery to me.

Here are some pics: