Strolling...

It's a long weekend here in Canada (and for our friends south of the border), and I plan to spend most of it knitting... if you are too, you can get free shipping in the shop with the code CANADA50. Sale is on until end of day Monday.

And all this knitting time means I will have some actual progress to show you, but until then.. let's take another stroll through the garden...

I flashed a shot of this one the other day... it  was one of my clearance buys - a new rose called Crimson Glory.

Another clearance purchase was this Blanket Flower. It's so big and bright and cheerful, I think I need more!

The orange day lilies are doing fantastic, but the other lilies I planted this year are taking their sweet time. I moved a couple from the side garden to the butterfly garden where they will get more sun. This spring I ordered 10 surprise bulbs, so until they bloom, I'm not really sure what I've got.

I know some are Oriental lilies, though not the colour. I believe this one is an Asiatic lily

And it's looking like it will be yellow or orange.

This beauty..

...is a double-blooming Oriental lily. It wasn't part of the grab bag, but another clearance buy. It was already over three feet tall when I got it, and in need of some care. But it still had a healthy stalk and some good buds on it, so I bought it because who could resist that flower? It's taking its sweet time blooming though. Petals started peeking out last weekend and here we are and it's still not fully bloomed. She'll be worth the wait when she does though.

The sedum had finally bloomed too. The whole back of the tree garden is full of these tiny little flowers (and for some reason, the mini spiders just love them!)

Cupid's Dart is starting to shine too. It's having it's best year yet actually. It's covered in buds, and this is the first year I haven't had to stake it - it's standing quite nicely on its own.

The Echinacea shouldn't be too far behind either. And like Cupid's Dart, they are having a fabulous year.

My Toad Lilies seem to be doing well - no buds, but other than the one the squirrels dug up, they are doing nicely.

The Milkweed I started from seed has grown exponentially over the last week. And I may be wrong, but I think that's a bud in there. I'm so pleased with this.

I wish I could say the same for the sunflowers. The squirrels ran off with most of them  (all my poor red ones!) and all that survived was this sad, sorry specimen.

Oh well.. guess you can't win them all....