Thanks, Ken, for taking the time to write that long post. That’s just the sort of think I had in mind. Here’s where we are in my garden. The big ornamental Allium are a bit past their prime but still presentable. Dichelostemma, Brodiaea and company are more or less in full bloom. The earliest lilies are showing bud color – Lilium hansonii will probably open any day now. The peony season is over but for a very few very late blooming garden peonies. Few local growers plant these late-blooming types because in most years they do not open well. We’ve had so much rain this year! The late tulips were washed out, the bearded iris were washed out, the peonies were washed out, the oriental poppies were washed out, the early roses were washed out. By “washed out” I mean that just as each of these groups came into bloom, there was heavy, persistent rain which weighed down and eventually dissolved the petals of the blooms. For instance, the intersectional peony ‘Garden Treasure’ bloomed here for the first time this year. One flower opened successfully and was beautiful for perhaps two days. Then the rains came again and ruined it. A second flower opened between rain storms and never dried out enough be typical. The south side of the house Is literally covered in noisette roses which spill out across the house roof. These were spectacular for about a week until the rains came again. Overnight, they went from thousands of breathtaking blooms to ragged shreds. So far the lily season looks very promising. The plants are lusher than ever this year and some have already topped the seven foot mark. It’s a real pleasure to look up into lily blooms – and if the deer don’t get them I’ll be doing just that in late June. Deer are a problem here: the other night one walked along the sidewalk cropping lilies as it went: the next day, I noticed that some of the Lilium superbum were shorter than expected: a second look gave the answer: deer had cropped that clump. Allium olympicum was blooming recently: pale white almost translucent flowers which are not at all conspicuous. Not everything in the bulb department is flashy. Another favorite Allium, A. obliquum, is blooming now. If you don’t know it, it’s a sort of miniature hard-neck garlic with pale yellow flowers. I compared it to the hard-necked garlics because the scape goes through the same contortions as it develops – very interesting and ornamental. I saw another garden recently with big patches of elephant garlic about to bloom – this is a very ornamental plant, well worth space in the pleasure garden and the vegetable patch. The scapes of robust plants go up to six feet high easily, and until they split and fall off the spathes form very ornamental “onion domes” as on Russian churches. As usual in recent years, I’m getting very little seed set. An aberrant brood of periodical cicadas is calling from the nearby woods. Their cycle is four years off this time – it’s happened before. Tree toads are calling now. That’s just scratching the surface, I could go on and on. But at this time of year the keyboard has lots of competition for my attention. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/