yard plants

How they're doing as june heat rises. Salvia- pretty darn good in spite of a few bug holes. It likes its new location.

Rumex- this has remained just a decorative plant. I looked up more about its use and read it can have side effects for some people. Not sure if I want to use it in salads after all.

Tithonia is only ankle height. I doubt I will get a good mass of flowers this year. Celosia in my front yard spot has the same fate: those are barely knee high and already blooming- thin little flower spikes. Definitely two plants not worth taking the trouble over, if I have a late start it seems.

Liriope is looking lovely!

My ferns are looking better this year. I've found out that some of the red bugs crawling all over my plants in the back garden are box elder bugs and red-shouldered bugs. The boxelder bugs definitely damage plants- they suck the sap out- so I have begun squashing all I see. I usually just clap my hands on them, quickly from both sides of the leaf. They're usually on these ferns, and my hellebores, rhubarb and hydrangeas.

The rhubarb sprawls. It's got pill bugs on it too, as well as those red ones.

One plant keeps repeatedly sending up flower stalk.

Columbine doesn't look so great this year. It's already done blooming and the seed pods are few. Looks like something has been eating it.

I need to dig out and move this variegated hosta next year- it's getting smothered by monarda and echinacea!

This white-edged hosta nearby is also getting overtaken. I'll probably give it away. I'm not fond of white streaks on plants (they look unwell to me).

Here in between astilbe and bleeding heart, a volunteer shrub- I think it's viburnum. Must dig up and move, if I can figure out where to put it.

This side view of the back bed, from the walkway, is starting to look rather nice. There's an empty gap in the middle where I tried growing cosmos last year. It's been populated by a few echinacea seedlings- I might let them grow up there.

Other side of the bed is still rather sparse. Behind the liriope are the two heartleaf brunnera I added this year, and some third-year hellebores are two coleus I set out on a whim just to fill in space, and a few hosta I'm debating if I should move or not (they get just enough shade here to avoid sunburn).

Now that I have my own astilbe, I recognize it on other properties when I see it- and realize some of these might get a lot bigger if I don't trim them. Nice if I want to fill in a lot of space, not so if it's going to crowd out other plants.

I've finished up the weeding- but occasionally miss one because it looks so healthy and handsome- like this one (probably a pokeweed).

At the very back of the garden, turtlehead under the tree had been attacked by mealy bugs. So had some of the rudbeckia just across the walkway from it- with yellowing leaves mottled dark spots on the lower part of the plant. I cleaned all the sickly leaves off and used soap spray on the insects last week. Both plant groups look better now.