Hot, Hot, Hot

It reached 103 degrees last week, and everybody was wilting.  This squirrel had the right idea - cover your head from the sun!

The heat had an amazing impact on some of my shrubs.  The Rose of Sharon started blooming its head off.  This plant is so full of blooms that the limbs were weighted down by them.  Russian sage is the plant on the left side of the picture.  My buddleia  (butterfly bush) also started blooming very nicely.

One of the great joys of the hot weather is the abundant crop of raspberries we get.  Every day at lunchtime I hunt raspberries - the prickly stems seem to keep the birds away.  I brave them for this treat.  When we moved into our house over 28 years ago we had a very aggressive planting of raspberries - they will take over your lawn if you let them.  Several years ago they were attacked by a virus, and died away.  My husband was advised to plant a new set of plants in a different section of the garden - evidently the virus can remain in the soil for years.  He did, and now we are blessed each summer with these edible rubies.

I recommend raspberries if you are willing to keep them in check.  Rose of Sharon flowers can turn a funky mauve color.  Both Rose of Sharon and buddleia can get pretty big - be aware that they can take over your herbaceous border.

Hydrangeas

Anyone who has ever been to Cape Cod in the summer has most likely seen hydrangeas.  If you enjoyed your time at the Cape, you've probably thought about planting one or more hydrangeas in your garden.

The most common hydrangea has a blue flower.  I have several of these, as well as one with a magenta flower. See the pictures below for both types.  Everybody seems to prefer the blue.  The blossom actually starts out green, then transitions through blue and green and finally to a very clean tint of blue (by clean I mean not a grayed blue or a blue-violet).  These flowers can be cut.  I prefer to keep them out of water - they dry nicely, and never seem to last in water.

Three comments about hydrangeas.  First, they droop in the sun and heat.  You can restore them with a watering.  Second, be careful when you prune them.  I have pruned them and gotten absolutely no flowers that season.  My husband pruned them this Spring, and they are blooming profusely.

Third, I think that hydrangeas should be placed by themselves and not in a mixed border.  They have a great emotional and visual impact when placed alone; this impact is diminished when grouped with other plants.  The plant looks good for most of the summer and into the fall, as the blossoms that have not been picked dry beautifully.

I recommend this plant. 

July flowers

I've always been frustrated with gardening books and brochures, that don't give the whole story about a garden plant.  How does it look after it blooms?  Does it have a good shape after it blooms?  Do grass weeds grow up easily through it?
I want to give an honest assessment of plants that I have loved, and have wanted to love, from my experience with them in my suburban Boston garden.  You probably won't have the same experience with plants that I have unless you live somewhere with a similar climate to Boston's (long, cold winters, "mud" season instead of Spring, and two pretty reliably long, humid months in the summer).  I also have sandy, well-drained soil.  My uncle lives outside of Cleveland, and he has very different experiences with his plants, largely because the soil there is full of clay.  
Asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed) is one of my favorites.  When it blooms, it has the clearest orange I have ever seen.  The plant comes in other colors, so if you want orange flowers, make sure that is what you are getting.   Butterfly weed loves drought conditions.  Watering it will make it droop.  It blooms pretty reliably for 2-3 weeks in July.  After blooming, long seed pods take over.  It is hard to move once established, and easy to dig up by mistake in the Spring.  This plant shows up later than a lot of others, so mark it in the garden.  In the last year or two, the plant has actually spread.  I have to decide if I want to try to move the two new plants to make room for others in my garden.
Asclepias tuberosa looks great with other "hot" colored flowers, such as gaillardia.  I like to pair it with a blue flower, such as a delphinium or a veronica so that I have a nice color balance.

I highly recommend this plant.