Heat Wave

I've officially switched to iced coffee for the summer. Just my usual non-fat vanilla latte, but on ice. Yum! I buy the coffee and vanilla syrup at Starbucks and make them at home.

I wandered around the yard with the dogs this morning taking some pictures of the flowers. The butterfly garden is so chaotic! It's a good thing the butterflies don't seem to care about design ;)

A hardy geranium...

and a detail pic of it too.

The Italian Alkanet is looking a little sparse this year. Actually a number of the plants are and I'm pretty sure it's because of the drought we had last summer. Luckily, I didn't lose any and I'm hoping they will recover their size for next year. Anyway, I love the blooms on this plant. If you click the picture to see the full size, you'll almost be able to get a sense of how iridescent they are, but it's hard for my camera to capture that.

A detail of some of the flowers in the first flower pic above. I really like those pink daisies, Robinson's pyrethrum mix, I think, some of them are more of a dark pink/red. You can sort of see a few of the dark ones in the back of the pic, with the yellow centers. The sort of fluffy looking ones are Knautia, watercolors mix, and the butterflies love them.

There are about a dozen of these poppies now, Princess Victoria Louise, if I'm remembering correctly...

This salvia is a gorgeous shade of blue.

Dianthus, newport pinks.

Centranthus ruber.

The Canterbury Bells are just starting to open. I didn't notice the big daddy long legs spider on it until I was uploading this pic!

I love lamb's ears.

Saffy and Silas have no energy in this hot weather. Though they've been shedding, they still have a lot of winter coat left.

It's not possible to do much in this heat. I've been working on Tea Time and am about 25 rows away from finishing the fronts. At that point, I'll have to seam it and then pick up stitches for the neckline ribbing and the button band.

I've been waiting for late evening to do anything more strenuous. I was glad to get the lawn all mowed last night. It had started to get away from me again, though it seemed like I'd just done it! There was a tiny baby bunny in the yard with a little white spot on its head. I had to get off the mower and herd it to safety. It wanted to just sit still and try to hide in plain sight, but that's a terrible defense against a lawn tractor! I hope it doesn't eat too much of my garden!