Today is a beautiful gift—sky turning red at 4 am, sun and 71 degrees in the forecast. The first warm sunny day of June! My parents, sisters and niece are arriving this evening for my daughter’s high school graduation and I am so excited.

Our June gloom has been worse that usual with only one other day above 70 so far, 8 rainy days, and an average high of 62. Still the garden is thriving.

I am taking photos of all the gardens for today’s bloom day. They are not so colorful right now. The peak bloom is past now that rhodies are ending. They are wild, weedy and jungly from the rainy spring, but lush and green. I weed and weed, but the weeds spring up everywhere and get HUGE seemingly overnight. However already the ground is getting dry as the rains are really mostly just sprinkles, and weeding season will taper off, and watering season will begin soon.

We’ve had a few peonies, which I cut for bouquets, and have many buds now. Peony buds are so delightful—I love their smug roundness. We are getting roses. Many of the first blooms were marred by thrips or budworms, but that problem seems to have gone away in my predator friendly, unsprayed garden. It looks like spiders and ladybugs are taking care of the thrips and wasps have taken down the bud worms. I’m especially happy with the health, vigor, fragrance and beauty of “Night Owl”, “Julia Child”, “’Livin Easy”, “Knockout Radrazz”, and “Ghislane de Feligonde”. The alliums are wonderful. Only 2 of the foxtail lilies bloomed, but they are fantastic. I am trying to figure out how to make the others happy—weeded around them, gave them compost. Delphiniums are their usual dreamy blue and seem to be the hummingbirds’ favorite right now. Honeybees are going crazy on Ceanothus “Concha”, and bumblebees are all over the foxtail lily, alliums, lupines,nepeta and lavender. The verbascum buds are so pettable. I have a mutant foxglove with a megabloom that keeps getting wierder looking.

The vegetable garden keeps pumping out purple sprouting broccoli, pea greens and lot of other greens. I have made and frozen some intense garlic scape pesto. Many of the tomatoes have set fruit which is I dont remember ever happening before this early. The tomatillos are growing fast and have set lots of fruit.

Keeping an eye on fruit. Salmonberries are ripe, cherries and plums are getting there and we are trying to keep a close eye on them to see if we can get some before the birds descend. For some reason we have not had issues with critters eating our berries but the birds, squirrels and racoons love the tree fruits.

The bloom day badge goes to Astrantia, for being so intricately lovely on close inspection, for providing blooms in my shady border for most of the spring and summer, for holding its own against the Japanese anemone and other thugs without becoming a thug itself, for reminding me of Dayna who gave it to me from her old garden, and for glowing in the early morning sunshine. Honorable mention goes to Carpenteria Californica ‘Elizabeth’.