These are a Few of My Favorite Things - Flowers!

I think I wrote about this before, but I just can't help it - I love, love, love my garden! I'm kind of a 'ball twine and duct tape' gardener (as a friend of mine once put it), meaning I love easy to care for plants that I can kind of just let go and have them do their thing with occasional watering and weeding.

So, most of my garden in perennials - things like day lilies, peonies, irises, cone flower, and columbine. I love the splash of color. I love the burst of growth in the spring. I love the fragrance. I love the joy of my children as each new bud appears!
I have three peonie bushes - this lovely white one, a light pink one, and a fuchsia one. All of them have a story. The pink one and this white one were from plants that grew on my great-great-grandmother's farm near Faribault Minnesota at around 1900. The fuchsia one grew on my grandparent's farm near Fargo North Dakota starting in the early 1930's. I will I had more of the history of that one! I feel so privileged to have all three of these - and heritage from both sides of my family!
I do add some annuals, marigolds, snapdragons and cosmos (which sometimes reseed themselves!). I also add begonias for all-summer color under my big tree out front. I have roses that bloom next to the front door but the rest of the flowers out front are done by mid-June. All of those are low-care annuals that I feel are worth the work to have that added little bit of all-summer color to fill in the holes in my perennials.

Don't these just make you happy? I know they do me!

Truly they are some of my favorite things. What more can I ask for?

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