July Garden

 Now that we are into July, the garden has really taken off in most respects.  The rain from June (our wettest in several years) hampered some of the growth, but in recent weeks we've had more sun and dry days, so things are really starting to grow and produce.

We have this really pretty purple clematis now blooming, as well as a pure white clematis.  The white one is from last year and is the most vigorous this year and has already grown over the top of our 10-ft arbor.

To get an idea of how big those blooms are, the slats on the arbor are 2-inches wide.  The white flower is about 4-5 inches across.

I think next year this arbor will be completely covered in green and with lots of flowers blooming.  When we picked out the plants, we made sure to get ones that grown on old wood.  There's no way we wanted to remove the spent branches from the arbor every year.

Here is our catchfly plant.  Its blooms are bright orange, which attracts butterflies and humming birds.

Our coneflowers are also starting to take off.  Here's a new red one from this year.

And rubeckia from last year...

The balloon flowers are just starting to blossom, too.

Our planters near the house are also happy and sending out flowers everywhere.



The vegetables are really starting to go now, too.  These are our beans...

Tomatoes....

 

Corn....


It seems like the corn is growing by leaps on bounds.  The picture above and below are 1 week apart and the barn has grown at least 6" in that time... maybe more.

During our time off, we also decided to tackle some of our brush piles.  Here's where we started (after two prior sessions of chipping... note the pile of wood chips to the left on the pictures):


And here's what it looks like now.  All the chippable wood is gone and we're left with the larger pieces that won't fit into our chipper.  Once things dry out a bit more, we will cart it down to the back part of the property to just let it rot on its own.


I hope everyone else is enjoying their summer so far this year.  Let's hope it slows down a little more so we all can enjoy it! :-)


Happy Crafting!
~Sarah at upstateNYCreations