Pretty Flowers

The flowers are blooming in the herb garden so I got some photos. I am enjoying the pops of color here and there.

This yarrow is a lovely pink:

I planted borage once and will never have to plant it again, as it has escaped the beds and is making itself happy all over the garden. (Someone should deadhead the marigolds . . . )

And the black hollyhock bloomed. I love hollyhocks and this one is my favorite variety (Nigra).

The raspberries are ripe. My Tacoma friends Mike and Kathy—we went to conference in Oregon together—have been staying in the guest house for the past couple of days. They stopped here on their way to South Dakota and Mike preached the sermon on Sunday. I gave them a container so they could pick raspberries to take with them on the next leg of their travels. The husband has been snacking on raspberries, too.

I mowed and ran the string trimmer around the garden yesterday morning. Look what I found:

And a few minutes later, one of them appeared:

The snakes like to hang out underneath the zucchini plants, so I have to remember to announce myself before I look for any that are ready to harvest.

I am a bit concerned about the apparent decline in pollinators this year. The lavender hedges are in full bloom but there aren’t as many bees as usual. And our apple trees are going to produce a lame harvest. My Lodi tree—the older one that produced enough apples two years ago for a dozen quarts of apple pie filling—has a measly 3 or 4 apples on it this year. The State Fair tree should be producing this year, too, and it isn’t. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I don’t like it.

I went to town yesterday afternoon to do some of our grocery shopping and to check on prices and availability of items for bike tour. The amount of traffic in Kalispell this summer is insane. Our infrastructure just isn’t built to handle this inflow of people. I am going to do another run today to begin buying non-perishable items, but I am going to do it first thing this morning. The husband was working on the new fire hall foundation yesterday and said he waited for five minutes yesterday to be able to pull out of the property onto Highway 35 because it was just a long string of traffic.