This beauty is a leek. Mine, that I planted last year and left to bloom this year, are in flower now, in July. The biggest is at least three, maybe approaching four, inches across. They have a pristine white quality in the sunlight, as the photo shows. I can’t give much advice for leek flower cultivation, since I don’t know that it’s especially done… I found out through neglect several years ago how great they are, and never tried it again until last year. But plant enough to enjoy for both recipes and pollinators (these flowers attract bees hugely), and in a spot where the leeks can winter over, with protection from cold, but not too damp.

 

 

 

It’s the time of the season to trim down overgrown pot flowers, and space things out for better air circulation. I had a few getting too little water, and a few getting too much. All the trimmings from things that root easily, like impatiens and coleus, become filler plants for shade gaps, where bulb foliage has died back.

 

 

 

Pots added to a flower bed work well, for the color and interest they provide in themselves, also because they lift the level of what’s growing in them to that of the surrounding plants. If a gappy area develops in a bed, you can thicken up its appearance with a few containers.

 

 

 

Here, again, I added pots where the daffodil foliage has finally died back. It won’t make sense to plant perennials in those spots, because the daffodils will smother out their new growth next spring. (This is the bed where I have the venerable daffodils that don’t bloom, and can’t be dug up because they’ve got themselves more than a foot deep, and I’d have to ruin the bed to exhume them. So I work around…)

 

 

 

This was a lucky outcome. For more than a year this oak branch was hanging on by an inch or so of wood, and I had to move around cautiously underneath. Every gusty thunderstorm, I hoped it would go ahead and fall. I’d judged it would land right on the path and not crush my plants.

So it came down, at last, just where it looked like it would. All I had to do was clear off the broken pieces.

 

 

 

When I took this picture, I had maybe nine corn stalks on the way. Now I have five. I thought I had them well baffled in, but I looked out the window and a squirrel was uprooting them and eating the root bulb. I’ve got even more baffling around the remainder, and if I can save them from the wildlife, I may have enough plants to pollinate one another, and get an ear of sweet corn or two.