It is HOT hot this week, so my biggest job has just been keeping everything watered. Our front garden is roasting and some plants are struggling a bit. I, unwisely, planted some shade plants in the hopes that our acer would one day shade them, but our acer did not survive the spring. Our back up is potted and thriving but still very short. So my solution now is to put all of my potted sunflowers around the pond to be my trees. I started them all in the greenhouse to keep away from the slugs. But now that they are so far grown, the slugs can’t do much to them. The wind however…!

I also did a little experiment to clean up the pond. I have seen a few videos on instagram of people dumping bags of store bought water cress in their ponds to use as a plant. So I gave it a shot and it worked incredibly well! Within a day it was growing roots, and within a week the pond turned from green to nearly completely clear. Amazing!

A lot of my roses are starting to bloom and I am in love! It’s been so pretty, but I think I need to replan a little bit of how my garden looks in the summer. In the spring it was pretty balanced in terms of peak bloom times, but around the pond is mostly dead iris currently. The temporary sunflowers are helping but going forward I may need to rethink my summer pond plants. Hopefully, a big gorgeous healthy acer tree fills that role someday!! Fingers crossed.

Katy