A Lovely Day in Central Illinois!

I apologize to any and all who saw this post before I added my text. I hit publish instead of save. DUH!!!


Today was almost a spring day. The temperatures have moderated a bit, the sun was shinning and the humidity was down in the low 40's. A wonderful day to go to lunch and shop.

I took Rose for a belated birthday lunch and we had time to just visit with each other. We talked of family and friends....but mostly we talked of garden blogs. "Did you see so and so's post on...Yes, and did you read about..." Well, you get the idea. We spend hours on the computer visiting our cyber friends and then we spend hours comparing notes on what we've seen and read. We laugh at the humor, marvel at the flowers, and are agog over the photography! It's so much fun.

As Rose has said numerous times on her post, we don't really shop-shop any more. We plant shop. And even though both of us have spent the next year's grocery budget on plants already, we just had to check out our favorite garden stores to see if they had any sales. They did! We really didn't get carried away, but oh how we enjoyed looking-still.

When we pulled up to one rather expensive nursery, we were greeted by this planter. It's 48" long and must weigh a ton as it is making the iron fence sag a little. But wouldn't that make a statement hanging on your fence or deck.

After several stops at nursery's we decided to go to the 'Idea Garden' at the U of I. It has only been a short month since we were there last, but we couldn't get over how much it has grown and how the plants have filled out. This was in the children's section. A little hard to tell from the picture, but it is a lion. I love his mane.

The elephant was just sooo cute, and has a blue streamer coming out of his trunk, just like he is spraying water!

Honeysuckle, 'Dutch' it was called.

An oval garden with annuals in the middle and a border of Sedum Angelina. I have that. Bought it this year. That's what I am going to do-make and border of it on the bottom edge of one of the burms.

Hen and chicks-no name with this one. I am really infatuated with these.

And this one is huge! Echevarria, 'silver spoon'. We saw so much more and spent longer than we intended to, but every time we went to go, we would see something else and have to go look-you know how it is.

When I got home, I waked around my gardens, and while not as extensive as the ones we saw today, I am happy with them.

My yellow Asiatic lilies are ready to pop.

I have my first cone flower of the season.

Don't let anyone tell you these are hard to grow, or that they don't self seed like crazy. This started out as one plant 3 years ago!

My 'bearded tongue' is blooming and it, too, has self-seeded in 3 or 4 spots in this bed. It is a gentle self-seeder and has done better at placing itself than I could have.


Yesterday, I weeded. And weeded. And then I weeded some more. The thing about all this rain we've had is not only does it make the plants grow-the darn weeds are loving the rain too!

I finally got around to a project I have been wanting to do for a couple of years now. Doesn't the edge of this bed look horrible?

Now, This is better! But, and that's a big but-it was a lot harder to put that edging in than I was led to believe.

Do you see any lilies in this picture? No? Just the dreaded false sunflower that I have been trying to eradicate for 3 years now.

Okay, now the lily has some room to breathe and bloom.

Corn update! This picture was taken 3 weeks ago.

This is the corn today. And this is on high ground. Just out of view, over a little rise-there is what is left of a big pond that formed from all the rain. No corn growing there now. It will have to be replanted.

I hope your garden gets what it needs this week, whether it be rain, or sun, or dry or warmth or cool!