150 Peonies!

We had the pleasure of providing a wedding this weekend with peonies. We had never seen 150 peonies all together before....WoW were they beautiful.

The flowers are all starting to produce. We will be cutting sweet peas, delphiniums, lilies, dahlias and peonies for the Farmers Market.

We will have several types of herbs, potatoes, beets, beet greens, onions and garlic scape's for market as well.

We came across an article about attracting ladybugs to your garden. Apart from aphids, ladybugs also require a source of pollen for food and are attracted to specific types of plants. The most popular ones have umbrella shaped flowers, such as fennel, dill, cilantro, caraway, angelica, tansy, wild carrot and yarrow. Other plants that also attract lady bugs are cosmos (especially the white ones), coreposis, scented geraniums and dandelions.

Then there were six....

So the bluebird update is 6 babies. Totally amazed that they raised six bluebirds in the size of nesting box they were in. They are all flying around throughout the yard feeding on the numerous insects available. Right now there seems to be an explosion of moths. They are everywhere right now. We did notice a few worms on the aspen leaves this spring. Am assuming these are the moths from those worms.
A final update regarding the killdeers that nested in the rock garden...have not seen young birds around and have not seen the parent birds around anymore either. Looks like they have moved on with or without the young ones.
The fall/winter weather has seemed to set back the lilac trees a bit this year. They are not blooming profusely like they have the last couple of years. Have only seen a few honeybees on the lilacs, but on the other hand, the cotoneasters are all a hum...very loud hum. There are all sorts of insects from Bumblebees (very large bumblebees), to small flies, a variety of wasps etc, busy gathering food from the flowers. The flowers are very small on the cotoneasters, so they have their work cut out for them.
Including a picture of the sweet pea fences we built this Spring. Since it has warmed up, the sweet peas have been growing at a rapid pace. Will top dress them with compost this week and wait for the blooms later this summer.