We won!

Sorry lily bugs, we won this round and the lilies are flowering and they even have most of their leaves intact. I hope we have killed every last of the bugs but I know that if I now go to the garden, I'll find one bugger somewhere.

Why does one call them summer flowers?

This have been the coldest summer ever and my summer flowers have done better than ever before. Even the violets I planted months ago are still as good as new.

Maybe next year

Today is the day of open gardens, read more here. We have opened our cottage garden for the last two years but this year we decided to pass. As I am a perfectionist, participating takes a lot of work. This year we have done a lot at Vårkulla instead. And today we'll visit a couple of gardens to see what others have made with their yards.

I would love to show off Vårkulla some day, but there is still a lot to do before I could even dream of participating.

Let it shine

Interesting day today, weatherwise. In the morning when we left Vårkulla it was cloudy but at the cottage it was full sunshine. My husband mowed the lawn and I dug up perennials for Vårkulla. When we came back here it has been raining a lot and it rained when we planted the perennials from the cottage. Now it is again full sunshine and the garden looks absolutely beautiful!

Midsummer magic

If you pick a bouquet of wild flowers in the midsummer night, magic things happen, right? Well, I picked a couple of bouquets and nothing happened...nobody even ironed the curtains...must be because I picked the flowers during the day and the flowers are from the garden, not from the meadow.

Lazy days

I just wonder why I have slaved away in the garden for the last ten years. This year I did almost nothing - just raked the old and dried away on one spring day and now cleaned the gravel areas for two days. And the result can be seen below...looks at least as good as when I have worked in the garden for hours a day for months.

Green and even greener

I love hostas (kuunlilja in Finnish). The flowers are not so impressive but the leaves even more so. And after a summer rain shower they are at their very best.