Cooling Foliage

I've gathered, from some of the other gardening blogs I frequent, that Sunday was a day designated by some garden bloggers as a day to post examples of some of the lovely foliage in their gardens. I didn't know about this beforehand (I'm not as connected as I like to sometimes think -- in more ways than one!), so here's a small, belated contribution of some our late June lushness in parts of the garden, with my thanks to the clever garden blogger who propagated this idea!
Here's another perspective of some of our collected ferns (seen earlier this spring in another post) growing happily in their space in the Woodland Garden. At the front, you can see our profusion of Maidenhairs, and to their right you can catch a glimpse of one of our hollies that define the front boundary of this particular bed. And moving back, at the left are a few of the many Ostrich Plumes we have popping up all over, next to them are a couple of our Leatherwoods, and a bit of the fading Dicentra foliage, which is now quickly on its way out of the picture, ceding space for the ferns to grow in even more densely over the course of the summer.
I'm not going to reveal just yet what the foliage is in this photo ... it's really gorgeous isn't it? I just love that red veining on this plant and when it blooms later this month (is it July already?) the combination of the foliage and the flowers is positively stunning! I will say this is one of our long term favorite perennials in the garden, and if you've visited over the past two years in summer, you've probably already seen this, but perhaps not connected the foliage to the blooms yet. Anyone who grows this will immediately identify it, but I do like to make other gardeners scratch their heads in puzzlement from time to time (as they do me!). I'll also say that if you have a sunny spot that could use some real spectacle in mid-to-late summer and have the space, you should really have one of these growing in your garden! So ... let me know who nails this one in the comments ...

In other garden news to report, the best finding of the day is that there are more bees coming back! Fernymoss had the day off and was mowing out back when he ran into quite a few ... both honeybees and bumblebees! He said there were some big ones with full pollen sacs, as well as some smaller ones working the woody nightshade that grows on part of our fence (you know the stuff with "deadly poison red berries" your mom warned you about?). The honeybees were busy visiting the clover, and made mowing some of that rather tricky, he said ... He finally got our canna planted, as well as dispatching a good number of weeds in the Woodland Garden. After Thursday, my work insanity will be done for a while, so I plan on spending a good part of the day on the 4th out front finishing up weeding the boulder bed and getting more of the annuals in ... it seems like forever since I've been able to get out there ... if it wasn't work, it was the heat or rain that have kept me indoors slaving away. I'm more than ready for that to be over! Last week I put in about 50 hours and it has really taken it out of (on?) me, so I'm looking forward to some good gardening therapy this weekend! Oh yeah, and blowing a few things up too, hehe ...