This week in the garden - #11

The march of the daylilies that I reported in this week's Bloom Day post continues. Every day it seems that another daylily begins its bloom.

Like this pretty pink one with the yellow throat.

And this clear lemon yellow one.

The bicolors are always striking.

At some point when I wasn't noticing, the old 4 o'clocks also started blooming.

Besides enjoying all the new blooms in the garden this week, I've been busy most days with watering plants, weeding, and with pruning the wild hedge along the back fence that has been threatening to get out of control again. 

Everything had dried out terribly since our last significant rain and the vegetable garden in particular was beginning to suffer, so I spent a good bit of time both carrying water from our new rain barrel and dragging a hose around to provide water for my thirsty plants. Finally, today, they and I got some relief in the form of rain. It was still raining as the sun set so I didn't get a chance to check my rain gauge, but my sense is that it was enough to give everything a nice drink.

This morning, before the rain started, Bob and I had taken what has become something of an annual spring jaunt for us to the Antique Rose Emporium. 

A lot of other people had the same idea today. The parking lots were pretty full and the place was crowded.

Of course, ARE is all about the roses.

We wandered through the display gardens and found many roses in bloom. Unfortunately, they were not labelled, so I wasn't able to put a name to most of them, such as this beauty.

This clear red one formed a natural bouquet with its bunches of blooms.

This shrub rose was past its prime but still pretty and it had a nice fragrance.

Polyantha roses are among my favorites of the antique rose varieties.

I did recognize this one. It was 'Red Cascade' and was in full bloom, which just made me wonder why my own 'Cascade' isn't blooming yet.

Isn't this one absolutely gorgeous?

They did have other things besides roses in their display beds.

Bright yellow poppies, for example.

And beds of colorful larkspur.

After we walked around all the gardens, we headed back to the retail area, where I found a little red wagon load of plants that my garden really, really needed.

I went home with my newly purchased treasures as one happy gardener and found it raining at home which made me even happier. The perfect ending to a perfect day-trip.