A New Camera View of my Backyard

So the trip to Dayton last weekend was a success... I got to cuddle my new little nephew, see my family, introduce Steve to both grandmas, drop off some plants and gifts, and listen to the best radio station in Ohio for a few hours. And I came home with not one digital camera, but TWO!

My parents also had an extra digital camera that they offered to me, and I'm borrowing it to try it out. It's similar to the ones that I had been looking at online, so it's handy to have one to test before I buy. I still need practice with it (and I really need to remember to take the date off of the photos) but I thought I'd post some photos so you could see what's been going on in my backyard garden while I've been busy with work:

Blackberries are going crazy this year with blooms.

The little sedum hispanicum (I think) that I put in the "shallowest" part of the "Lock Garden" has filled in nicely already. I left in the beech leaf and my toes for scale so you could see how tiny this sedum is.

Eryngium, starting to get its blue tinge in front of a clump of 'Grosso' lavender. Both were supposed to be moved to the front yard garden this spring... Oops.

I love this little clay tile planter, with 'Yubi Red' portulaca spilling out the front, and 'Sedona' coleus mingling with a dark blue angelonia behind. (My other tile planter pairs the portulaca with a different coleus, and a lantana.)
Supporting cast includes 'Black Lace' elderberry, zebra grass, flowers from 'Plum Pudding' heuchera, and some spiky blades of little bluestem in the foreground.

Ruby orach self-seeds itself in interesting places--here it's a pretty companion to little bluestem. Ruby orach is also known as "mountain spinach," and I like it cooked with garlic and olive oil. It's even tasty when eaten fresh from the garden, if the leaves are small. That you can eat it makes it easier to weed somehow!

For the third year in a row, my 'Bing' cherry tree brought me nothing but a crop of aphids (and lady bugs, which are very cool looking in their spiney larval stage) and just plain looked horrible... so I started hacking at it a few weeks ago. About the time I got the small branches and all of the leaves removed, I was looking for a home for my clematis Jackmanii as well, and... voila: an interestingly shaped trellis that has pretty bark, too!

I can't wait for this lily, located near the far back fence, to bloom--I can sometimes smell it all the way in my bedroom, and it's a luscious orange color, too. (I want to say it's 'Copper King,' but I may be wrong on that one.) Notice also the reuse of those spiral tomato stakes that are utterly useless for supporting tomatoes.

Yum... Concord grapes. :) My 'Himrod White' has a bumper crop of baby grapes on it, too!

So as you can see, the backyard garden is mostly plodding right along, even without my attention. Tomorrow I should be posting some photos of the front yard garden... maybe even in time for inclusion on the Gardening Gone Wild June roundup? We shall see!