Its Friday, Y'all!

Yep, it is Friday. I just made myself a Pimm's cup and decided that it was time to do some blogging! I made my Pimm's cups by filling a glass with ice, filling it 1/3 of the way with Pimm's, and 1/3 of the way with ginger ale; then I topped it all off with cranberry juice and a lemon slice. Yummy!

I am enjoying a short break from all the rain we've been getting. The last time I blogged about my garden, we'd had two straight weeks of heat indexes above 100F with no rain. This time, we've had rain for a solid week with tempertures barely reaching 93F over the past two weeks! It has definitely been a welcomed change, but we really are getting tired of the rain. Chip and I are dying to get our new kayaks out on the water, but rainy conditions do not make good paddling conditions. I promise I'll post some kayak pictures if we get out this weekend. Weather permitting, we are going to paddle up the Yazoo River on Sunday afternoon.

On the garden front, things are going pretty good! I think I'm proudest of some of my containers this year. On the brick patio in the backyard, I've got two containers. Begonias in a strawberry pot and a yucca with purple heart. Both look great. I'm sure that has something to do with all the rain we've been getting.

The perennial garden has filled out beautifully! In the spring I had pink creeping phlox, 'Homestead Purple' verbena, purple irises, and Carolina jessamine. Now that it is late summer, I have lantana, 'Becky' shasta daisy, and echinacea 'Sundown', 'Sunset', and 'Ruby Giant'. The lantana is doing better this week than it has done in the past two years. Blame it on the rain I guess, because it just exploded in blooms this week.

My rose garden isn't looking too shabby either. I've got one more shrub to move from my house in Oxford: Evelyn. I've got a great place for it since one of my junipers decided to bite the dust. Perfect - I say - because I don't really like the junipers anyway. The spot I have is in the front of Golden Celebration. I think this should be okay since Evelyn is only supposed to be 4 ft x 3 ft.

Molineux:

Tamora:

Golden Celebration:

And Ambridge Rose is still hanging on even if she isn't blooming right now. The roses are flanked by 'All Purple' Mexican bush sage. I love this plant! I divided it early this year and it has multiplied just like I hoped it would. It fills in with beautiful green foliage all summer, then in September it puts out long, purple blooms. Just perfect. If you look closely you can see the lamb's ears that border my rose garden and the snail statue that keeps a watch over the entire bed.

In the spring, I divided my shasta daisy and moved some Russian sage into the middle of all that Mexican bush sage. I think the Russian sage is too short to thrive here, so I'll probably move it again. I am thinking that next year the shasta daisy will pop up vigorously and will keep right up with the Mexican bush sage. We'll see. Remember my gardening mantra: There are no garden mistakes, only experiments.

I've gotta update my banner with that!