June in Garden and Forest

"Awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field

Calls us, we lose the prime, to mark how spring

Our tended Plants, how blows the Citron Grove,

What drops the Myrrhe, & what the balmie Reed,

How Nature paints her colours, how the Bee

Sits on the Bloom extracting liquid sweet."

                                   ~Paradise Lost

The days are delightfully busy right now and sometimes I feel like I have so much to do and so much to say, that I get overwhelmed and accomplish less instead of more! So today I'm combining a garden and woods update in one post. 😊 I think we have finally had our last frost, although there is always a slight possibility of a chilly night or two throughout the month of June. But I am working on getting everything transplanted, and getting the last of the seeds planted. Corn and beans are in now, and I hope to have the garden officially "in" by this evening, but we'll see! 

Meanwhile, the gardens are in their spring glory right now. This is really one of my favorite "garden moments" of the year, when the tulips and forget-me-nots are at their peak. 

I think I may have already said this, but the hillside garden has filled in nicely this spring, with lots of evening dame's rocket, valerian, mountain cornflower, lupines, irises, etc.! 

The "herb garden" is showing promise too although it's not quite as exciting right now.

Yes, it's June and I still have daffodils...this has been a very odd spring!

Forget-me-nots are such a delight...until they go to seed!

Bleeding Heart...

The late-flowering 'French Blend Rose' tulips are just starting now!

Our neighbor gave me a clump of violets about 6 years ago. In the last couple years, they have apparently decided that the grass is greener on the other side of the garden border, so they have now mostly escaped from the garden and bloom in the lawn instead! It's very pretty but difficult to mow around them! 

The original plants were all purple but now there are even some very pretty white ones with purple veining! 

I enjoy going for walks in the woods early in the morning. Everything is so fresh and fragrant and it gets my day off to a good start...and of course, the light is better for taking pictures! Yesterday I surprised a fox right in this area, but he was off into the woods before I could focus on him for a picture. 

Much of the woods are still water-logged and the mosquitoes and black flies are the worst I've seen. Even with bug spray, they swarmed my face every time I just paused to look at a flower or take a picture! I normally don't mind them that much, but they were driving me crazy!! 

Pin Cherry (Prunus pensylvanica) is flowering at the edge of the woods...

Plumed Solomon's Seal (Maianthemum racemosum)...

Wild Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis)...I will be using this plant in something I'm making very soon, but you'll have to wait to find out what it is! 😊

Red Baneberry (Actaea rubra) had me puzzled for a while because all the plants in the woods here have blackish stems, while most pictures online show green stems. I still haven't come up with a good explanation for that, so if you have one please let me know! 

Hooked Buttercup or Blisterwort (Ranunculus recurvatus) grows in the more moist areas of the woods.

The mystery plant of my last woods post turned out to be Rosy Twistedstalk or Rose Mandarin (Streptopus lanceolatus), a common understory plant native from Alaska to Labrador and further south into the Appalachians and Great Lakes. Isn't it beautiful?  The twisted stalks do make it rather difficult to photograph, so my pictures don't quite do it justice!

Creeping Snowberry (Gaultheria hispidula) has started to bloom.

You have to look carefully to see them, though!

The Painted Trilliums (Trillium undulatum) are abundant and very beautiful!

Pink Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule)...it won't be long now! If you look closely, you can see a seed pod from last year behind them.

Dwarf Red Blackberry (Rubus pubescens) has an odd little flower that never seems to open fully.

An old friend, Starflower (Trientalis borealis) is just starting to bloom!

And finally, a lovely scene from a few miles down the road, and again, my picture doesn't do it justice!

Now I'd better get to work. I will be gone over the weekend (hopefully I'll have some new discoveries to share with you when I get back!) so I would really like to have all my seedlings safely tucked into the garden before I go. 😊