Orange Lilies

 These orange lilies are not one of my favorites - it's just not a color I prefer - but they ended up being the right choice for this location. I realize I need a photo with just a little bit more context, but we have this incredible piece of granite that used to be in our neighbor's yard. [back story: our house and the house next door belonged to brothers who were truck farmers. The house next door no longer exists after an accidental fire.] Even though this came from our neighbor's yard, it has a great personal story.

 See that long, vertical groove that runs half way down the rock? Well, the neighbor in the house two down from us grew up in the house next to us (Matt's Dad's cousin), and her brother was over one day and shared the story - when Matt's Grandpa and his brother were clearing their fields, they had many rocks to clear. Some, like this one, were too big to remove as is, so Grandpa Walter used a hand drill to drill that groove that you see, and filled it with TNT, and made the rock smaller. 😊

 I wanted to plant something around the rock, but didn't want to hide this fantastic bit of family history, so these lilies were the right ones - they have enough height to stand up to the rock, but also leave the view clear.

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Also around the yard tonight:

The blueberries continue to grow. This is our first full season with the bushes, and it's great to see how many are on there! We have three varieties, plus a bonus one from Sam from the garden store, and they intentionally bear at different times. These are the earliest ones, growing plumper every day.

We had incredible winds yesterday, resulting in the larger half of the top of our old apple tree blowing down. We're going to try grafting with this tree - we love the apples, and have no idea what variety they are. Besides, grafting just sounds so cool, and not too difficult! If we do, we'll probably end up with a few of them, so if anyone we know wants one, they could have one (friend Elisa who is the only other person who reads this blog that I know of besides me!!! I thinking of you!!!)

Owen and Matt went out today to tackle the first pass at getting it cleaned up.

Please also note that the tomato trellises that Owen and I so carefully dug in also blew down. So now Matt has to do it anyway. I am grateful, on this year when we really don't have time to devote to the vegetable garden as we're still busy adjusting to life with the two newest members of the Motley Crew, that the plants were not big enough to be ripped out by the loss of their trellises! Also grateful that I only planted on one side, so far, of each trellis. That makes it easier to put them back in without disturbing plants.