This is the only rose in my garden whose name I do not know. It had no tag when I bought it, but its lovely soft pink with the faintest red edges, and its lovely fragrance, won me over. Anyone know its name?

Visit Ruby Tuesday, Color Carnival, Pink Saturday, SOOC Sunday (straight out of the camera), Today’s Flowers, Macro Monday, Macro Flowers Saturday and Macro Friday. Today is the Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day meme, where people around the world take photos of what’s blooming in their garden on the 15th of each month, post and visit each other. Fun! Getting to the latest post here (if you’ve arrived from a link) is easy: just click on Sara’s Fave Photos above.

An old-fashioned flower, for sure. My mom used to grow this one. It’s very, very tough, can bloom in sun or shade, reseeds very vigorously. Also it’s on the tall side, which I like. But the color of its small flowers (one inch or 3 cm) is extraordinary: an electric magenta that seems to move to red—just the most shimmering, intense color, and combined with its silvery stems and leaves, a real showy plant.

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I went outside and picked a few roses. I hate to cut them but I love bouquets, so I compromise by cutting only the full-blown ones, leaving as many as possible out there. But oh, my goodness, the perfume in the room from garden roses. No florist roses ever come close.

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After a tough winter, most of the roses have come back well. Lots of compost, regular food and water, and frequent tidying up (so I can take photos! and also helps prevent blackspot) make a very satisfying rosebed in front of the house. The neighbors walking by sometimes admire it. It’s a pretty good walking neighborhood, for which I am very grateful. This ‘Oklahoma’ rose isn’t loaded with blooms, but the ones it has are big and fat. And that’s a lavender plant I grew from seed behind it!

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Oriental lilies are the latest in the summer and the most fragrant, I am told. Worth waiting for! And they will bloom in part shade, another plus. A lily grower in N. California told me that they like having low plants at their feet, like oxalis, perhaps, or some other low forest plant. All I know is I adore their smell.

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Bonus photo: Here I am at my book launch at the Volunteer Park Conservatory in the Bromeliad House yesterday. It was so much fun and such a great experience! Thank you to all who helped make it a success.

I am pleased to announce that so far, the squirrels seem completely uninterested in the raspberries which are bearing this year for the first time. As opposed to, let’s say, strawberries, of which I have picked NOT ONE. Nuts. I guess I can’t complain, having so few garden pests or predators, but still. You grow them and you want to eat them, or at least taste them! I’ve also learned that raspberries, even unwashed and in an open container, get moldy after three days or so in the fridge. I won’t let that happen again.

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A warm evening in the summer is heaven anywhere, but here in the Seattle area we feel particularly blessed when we can eat dinner on the patio and take in the garden view. This was last evening’s lovely view. Hope you can enjoy it with me.

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Last week it rained, before the beautiful weekend we enjoyed, so of course I had to head out to the garden when it stopped. I’m enjoying the daylilies this year in their varying shades of orange, burgundy and peach. I think I have a yellow one, but it hasn’t bloomed yet.

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From a couple of weeks ago, some flowers in my garden. The orange and yellow ones are alstroemeria, the purple on the left is linaria (VERY easy to grow and reseeds vigorously) and the blue and pink in the middle are bachelor buttons, also reseed well. I love gardening for moments like this one.

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Seattle’s extra cool and rainy spring this year, and hardly any summer to speak of (all the heat elsewhere in the USA) have been great for the peas in my garden. Keep ’em picked and they keep pushing out more. Yum!

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