Well, we are quickly heading into summer. We haven’t reached triple digits yet, but yesterday was the hottest day of the year thus far. And summer is when the lilies start blooming. We have several varieties including Day lilies, Tiger lilies, and my favorite Asiatic lilies. Unfortunately, the rabbits devoured several of the Asiatic lilies this year so we are missing several beautiful blooms that we’ve seen in years past.

I titled this post “New Additions” because we’ve added several new elements to the garden just this week alone. That’s what happens when you do a stay-cation and go shopping every day! The first picture above of the lighter yellow day lily is a new addition that was just planted about a week ago.

The middle picture on the second row is a darker variety that we’ve had for six years now.  They are some of the first flowers I bought when we first moved into the house.  We’ve moved them around the yard to various places and have about six bunches of them. We added the newer lighter variety to compliment them and to complete a look in the hosta bed which has some of the older lilies, previously only on one side.

Now here are the other new additions:

The first two pics are of some new grasses we planted just today. They look great along the garden path. It’s called Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grass and will turn wheat colored in the Fall. The third picture is an old milk jug that our neighbor was tossing in the trash one day last week.  The bottom is falling out of it, but it made an awesome planter. We put an Astilbe in it with a Snowflake Iberis and placed the planter in the back of the hosta bed.

The fourth picture is the bathtub planter I posted about a few months ago.  The veggies weren’t doing so well in it because it retains a bit too much water.  So, we transplanted those and added some ferns and other moisture loving plants instead. The fifth pic is a new tickseed variety we added this year.  We loved our yellow tickseed that we’ve seen in years past and they always attracted yellow American finches. Sadly, the rabbits have feasted on the tickseed this year, but they have not found this new orange one yet. The sixth picture is a new orange rose bush we planted just two days ago.

The first pic in the bottom row is of Japanese banana trees which are a perennial for our zone.  We found those at Home Depot and bought three of them. We loved our tropical banana trees we had in the past but just got tired of having to dig them up each year.  The middle picture is of new irises. Yes! I bought new irises today. These are two white varieties called Butter and Sugar Siberian Iris and Mt. Fujiyama Japanese Iris. I bought two of each and planted them all together. Here’s hoping we’ll finally see a white iris next year! And the last pic is of a lime green hydrangea that we planted on Tuesday in the front yard bed.

The fun doesn’t stop there though!

We added two new features for the birds because we love to feed and watch them.  The first and third pics in the top row are of a new hanging bird bath that I gave J for his birthday. And you’ll notice a new feeder in the first two pics in the second row. This week a male cardinal kept making stops on the window sill in the front yard so we decided to put a feeder there just for him.  So far we’ve only seen him and his partner stop by for a bite each day, but they seem to enjoy it.

The middle pic on the top row is a new wind chime that we picked up today. We’ve previously only had one single bell wind chime in the yard, so I was excited to add this one.

The three pics of the glass balls are actually an inside feature that we purchased today.  They are called Witches Balls but are meant to keep bad energy and evil spirits away.  We bought four of them and hung them in the kitchen window overlooking the back yard.

And last, but not least, we finally bought a food dehydrator. J has already filled it with fresh herbs!

And that’s it in our garden for the summer so far. What’s new in your garden?