Nothing much

Trying to keep my mind off various workplace awfulnesses by focusing on the garden...

• I finally cleared out and weed-whacked the area along the west fence between the patio and the big shrubs.  Need to make up my mind about what I want to do in this stretch--I'd been thinking about planting a tree, but realize it would eventually shade the west garden bed.  Now contemplating some shrubs--a ceanothus, maybe a viburnum, some more hollies.
•  Got the weed-jungle in the Massive Pile of Dirt (which is waiting to be added to the north bed) mostly ripped out.  I need to try to find the business card of that dude I hired last summer to finish building/filling the expansion to the north bed.
• Everything in the general region of the shed remains to be done and is currently ghastly.

But the main west bed is looking very nice right now, from certain angles.

And so we're in June.

Just a quick update, mostly photos:

First of all, the Saddest Oriental Poppy EVER.  She should be like two-three feet high, with many splendid luminous huge tissue-paper flowers, but since she was only planted a few weeks ago, this is what we get for this year.  We can only look forward to 2018...

 

In the category of roses, first of all, this weirdly foreshortened picture of the first blossom on Sharifa Osma, who is in a big pot on the porch. What I wish I could somehow post/share is the fragrance of this bloom, which is intoxicating.

 

And in other rose news, here are the first early blooms of The Generous Gardener.

 

Also! The mountain laurel / Kalmia Latifolia blooms have begun opening!  They are actually very small (not well shown in this photo), and very exquisite.