RAIN–yay rain!!  Thunder and lightning!  My favorite weather, because all my parched plants are happy.  I love to walk around in it, inspecting and tweaking to best advantage.  It’s supposed to rain intermittently all week.  Relief.

Also, the true colors of flowers come out in this light.

I had to post again because of some new firsts.  Only a hort nerd could get so excited about the first native wildflower that I grew from seed, blooming.  This is partridge pea.  Not impressive, but still!

While on firsts, here is the first baby heirloom purple-podded pole bean of the season.  Speaking of legumes, these redbud pods grow right out of the tree trunk, resembling peas.  So weird and amazing.

Remember the closed balloon flower this morning?  It popped this afternoon!

I still can’t get over these leek blooms–such a big dramatic globe flower for such a lowly veg.

You can never have too many shots (or vases) of the same rainbow flowers, so here are more.  YT, in my element.

Last but not least, here is ferocious jungle kitty, all worn out from trying to sneak outside with me and being outsmarted.  She discovered cat TV today, with live forest birds and critters, and she practically attacked the screen.  We’ve reached a compromise, allowing her out to hunt all morning and become an indoor cat all PM.  She is not amused.  But safer.  Some serious predators come out at night here, including the human kind.

Here are some more firsts of the season: the first tomato, ironically on a volunteer plant from last year, and the first balloon flower (Platycodon) bud.

One of my gardening goals is to create a traditional cottage garden around the house, and we’re well on the way to it.

E has been hard at work repainting and trimming the shed, which is coming along nicely.

Last but not least, Misu is always busy tracking prey.  Yesterday she caught a large juvenile bird, much to the dismay of the whole bird ‘hood.  She’s a fierce jungle kitty.

Here’s your DFF (Daily Flower Fix)–and some blackberries progressing.  Also the first morning glory sighting.  No rain sightings on the horizon, however.  Still, better to have to water than to be underwater.  No complaint here.

It’s now June, so it cooled off a little (?), but still no rain in sight.  It doesn’t seem right that the whole central US is under water after record-setting flooding and devastation, while here it’s been unseasonably hot and dry for weeks.

Meanwhile our idiot-in-chief and his minions are still in denial, even as it’s affecting all of our lives and futures.  I don’t know how much more insanity it will take for people to wake up and evict his ass.  On that pleasant note, back to the usual bland topics.

Here is your daily flower fix, and Misu on the lookout for birds from the comfort of her lair.  She’s almost falling for our evil plan to assimilate her into the Indoor Borg.

Here is Misu being photogenic, overseeing my garden rounds.  She makes a great ornamental figurine.

I’ve missed having my son around for the last two weeks, but I know he’s doing well in St. Louis.   

Misu stayed out all last night and gave us a scare, but predictably she returned today as if nothing had happened.  It must have been quite a night, as she’s been sleeping it off all day.

I had to do all my yard work without my loyal follower, in order to keep her close to home.  There are too many dangers around here, mostly human ones.

There’s just so much gardening one can do in this 90-something weather, but there’s always watching the living tableau unfold.  Here are the latest blooms.

Once again (knock on wood) Tennessee seems to have been bypassed (for now) by the disastrous wave of catastrophic, destructive tornadoes and storms slamming and flooding the plains, midwest (including tornadoes where we lived in Ohio), and heading northeast.  Major historic records have been broken…again.  There were more extreme tornadoes in one week than in an average year.  A trail of devastation reaches across much of the country right now, while here in TN it’s merely broiling and rainless.

I feel fortunate but yet anxious, knowing no one is immune or protected from the effects of climate change.  It could happen in a flash, with little warning, and everything is gone.  So I’m very mindful of the randomness of nature, even as I admire and respect it.

Here are Misu and Joey duking it out for porch turf, with lots of yowling.  (Misu won, of course.)  Then she took up her cool guard position under the porch.

New flowers continue to astonish.

These are leek flowers…

…and these are allium flowers.

Both are in the onion family.  One is a humble vegetable, the other is an ornamental bulb, but the similarity is striking.

Nature is the ultimate paradox, order and chaos coexisting.

Misu and I have this early morning ritual of watching the day unfold from the porch, then making our rounds to check in on all the plant babies.  This morning’s were particularly colorful.