But not a total frame of turquoise. I just needed to replace the blah blue with the turquoise. I also need to add some to the right side, with stitch, beads, or whatever.

Wow! this is a wonky cloth. I may know how to do curves and turns, but not necessarily well. Oh well, I’m enjoying it and learning to do better (I hope!).

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Today I spent three hours watering everything. It is so dry here! 98% of the lawn is brown. Even without the heat, everything dries so fast. Fortunately, it didn’t get quite as hot today as predicted.

This is the view coming out the kitchen door.

I still need to cut away some dead roses, but it’s so much better than last week which was pretty much only the dead roses. These are delightfully fragrant roses, but the wonderful fragrance that greets us at the door is the honeysuckle (which I forgot to photograph, but isn’t particularly showy this year anyway).

This is the view someone coming to the kitchen door (to the left on the deck) will see.

The garden I planted last year mostly returned. The delphiniums didn’t return at all. I was surprised that only one echinacea (coneflower) came back, but now there are two more that came up from seeds. The two red dahlias returned. The Achillea (yarrow) never died away all winter. The lilies all came back strong. And the sedums are there. The corner garden has some phlox and crocosmia that I may switch to this garden and there are some glads coming up under the butterfly bush that I’m also considering. That should be enough to fill in the gaps with color. Being such a narrow strip in full sunlight, and next to the blacktop, with not great soil (even though I did amend it when I planted last year), this garden need regular watering, but it’s the garden that has done best.

This year I also moved the roses out from under the ever denser maple tree. You can see a rose photobombing the strip garden. The rose garden is now the blacktop next to this garden. That sounds pretty horrible, but I think the roses are happier than ever. Sunlight! Lots of sunlight! The blooming was always good, but now there are new branches, which some roses really needed. I don’t know when, but eventually we will dig up the blacktop. I’d love it to be terraced with a brick path. It’s not something we can do ourselves any more, so we’ll see

I still have a few other flowers to bring up from under the tree. I need to figure out what a couple of them are to know if I should move then. Mostly what is left is shade plants and trees. I pot all the self seeded (or squirrel planted) trees I find and a lot survive. The idea is to make them outside (not table top) bonsai. It comes in handy, too. My brother and sister-in-law just moved into a pretty treeless home, so they’ll get a couple of the larger ones to put in the ground.

There is a lot of work to be done. Since Iqbal is not a gardener, it’s either what I can do or what we can pay to be done. As a non gardener, it’s not high on his priority list or budget. I never get caught up. Would that I had the energy I had 25 years ago when I could keep going for 8 hours of physical labor. (It’s not getting old that’s bad, it getting worn out. :^P )

There are also lilacs, camellia and hydrangea to be cut back. A beautiful small white flowered clematis to be reigned in and pulled out of neighbor’s tree. A wisteria to be retrellised onto something it won’t break (current trellis is just lath strips now)–probably needs trimming, too. There’s garden furniture to be sanded, oiled and painted. Ditto tools. Two sheds to be emptied, cleaned and organized. The neighbor’s cedar tree has reached my pear tree, so that needs to be trimmed. And the weed trees beneath the cedar to be cut away.

Oh, yeah everything needs to be mulched!

But there are benefits.

Oh, the blueberries may be moved, too. They’re in pots, so no problem. When we put them where they are, that spot got a lot of sun, but, even after being professionally trimmed, my red maple has grown and shades the spot for more of the day. Can’t move the pear tree, but I think as long as we keep other trees trimmed away from it, it will do okay.

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I’m going to go stitch, now.