ainy Day Backyard Garden Tour: Lush Greens, Herbs & Hydrangeas | Linda Vater🌳

Happy Thursday, everyone. Well, I am so often grousing on this channel about the wind and the heat and the strong sun that I thought I would do a little, well, kind of a walkabout in the backyard on a day that the garden is just so happy, so, so happy. We've gotten lots of rain. It's been, for the most part, a gentle rain without lots of damage, damaging winds. It is making up for all of the strong winds we've had on our hot days this week, and everything is just breathing a great big sigh of relief and looks so lush and so green, starting with this huge bank of Annabelle hydrangeas here. It's rapidly getting too big for this space, but boy, I'm enjoying it for now. I need to cut a great big bouquet and bring it inside, but everything else, the real heroes of the garden, the boxwoods, the evergreens, they just, well, they are just relishing all of this rain. They look beautiful. It doesn't matter what variety they are. All of the boxwood, they are just happy. The other thing that's really happy now are the geraniums. You know, geraniums, I've come to learn, they're really much more of a spring and a cool season plant for us here, I think. It's when they tend to really bloom, when it's cooler, when it's milder, when it's rainier, and then they just tend to kind of, well, they just tend to kind of fold when it gets hot, but right now they're very happy, and they are almost as lush and flowering as heavily as all of the large-leaved begonias. Really beautiful. Obviously, the everillo carix also looks pretty happy. It's a nice contrast to all of the green. So, I just met with somebody. I was recently auctioned off at the Wilson Elementary School fundraising auction, and someone bought the cocktail party that I'm going to be having out in my backyard, and I think I'm going to be doing this on June 11th, weather permitting, and we're just going to have cocktails and hors d'oeuvres out here, and they can stroll and look at the garden and visit with their friends, and it'll be just a really nice time to get together. So, I'm looking forward to it, and I am happy to help promote Wilson Public School, which is just down the street from me. I've said it many, many times, and it is definitely a good cause. The myrtle topiaries are doing well, and they love this rain, too. However, I think they're ready for some strong sun, and in fact, where I've got them positioned here in the backyard on this terrace, I think it might be in a little bit too much shade right now. As the sun goes further to the south, this area will get more light, but right now, I think it might be in a little bit too much shade, so I may have to revisit some of this. I'm going to show you. Look at this wonderful, wonderful pot that one of my followers, Elba, brought me. I believe it was Elba. Elba, if that was you, shout out, that came for the garden boutique experience here. That elephant bush there is also happy. Despite being a succulent, it really likes the rain. I am waiting anxiously, but also, I guess, patiently for all of these hookerillas. These are southern living plants to put out some blooms, but right now, the foliage is just gorgeous and very, very, very happy, as are the begonias, which now have put out enough root growth that they're starting. I took a lot of these as cuttings and replanted them, and I also cut them back really hard this spring. Now, I think they've put out enough root growth and foliar growth that I'm hoping pretty soon they will start blooming their heads off, especially as it heats up a little bit, because it's gotten, it's really gotten cool. Amazingly, a couple days ago, we were able to even light a fire inside, which is just remarkable for May. It was supposed to be hotter and wetter this month, according to the experts, and the latter part of the month has indeed been wetter. We were really in a drought and need the rain desperately. We could even use more of the rain. Now, I noticed these takes-a-cake blueberries. These are also a southern living plant. They've got blueberries on them, but I was looking at the leaves on here, and they, well, they, they look a little bit chlorotic to me, so I think I'm going to give this a feed of iron, maybe some liquid iron. You can see the sweet blueberries on there. And then, a little bit later this afternoon, that's one thing about this rainy weather. You can cut your flowers for a bouquet at any time of day. You don't have to do it exclusively in the morning. So, I'm going to be cutting a big bouquet of flowers from the backyard, using some of the flower heads from the parsley, and then over here in this middle bed where I grow my herbs, some of the romaine lettuce is going to seed, and I'm going to cut those flowers and use them as soon as they bloom out. And some, it looks like some of the parsley seed that I planted in here has germinated, and I see maybe even a basil seed back in there. The hyssop is blooming, and I will probably cut, it's going to be kind of a wild floral herbal kind of arrangement, so I think I'm going to cut some of the flowers from that more fuchsia colored hyssop, and then this over here that's a little more lavender, and some of these parsley heads. The oregano is kind of going wild, and I'll use some of it. It will be a very fragrant arrangement, and then I need to make some more vinaigrette, so I'll cut more thyme. This was a fun, happy thing. So, you see these onions growing here. This was an onion, a red onion that was in the back of my refrigerator. I had it wrapped in plastic, and it was starting to sprout, and had gone obviously past its time to be consumed, so I just planted it out here in this herb bed, and it is it is taking off. Fun little experiment to do with the kiddos. What else is taking off, oh my goodness, is all of this chef's choice rosemary. It has gotten huge, and just beautifully so. It really anchors the back of the backyard, and it too is really, really loving these conditions. I mean, look at that. Look at how lush that is. Now, if Hobbes were here, he would say, then you need to cut some of that and make some rosemary chicken, and yes indeed, I do. The chard's looking good. I need to harvest that pretty soon. It's going to be getting hot, but I noticed there's also some basil seedlings in there, and then I seeded and started some yellow pear tomatoes in this bucket, and I'll plant them in this bed here to climb up these two tours. I never expect a ton of production from my garden beds, but just enough, a handful every now and then suits me just fine. The bay tree is looking fabulous, as are these little miss figgies. They've been putting on lots of leafy growth and even height, but now I need them to start producing some figs. You can see that one over there is getting very tall. These I was able to protect over the winter, and they really have rewarded me for it by getting tall and beautiful. Sounds like there's some music in the background, people across the street. Despite the rain, their kids are out of school today. I think it's their last day of school, and so they've had a swimming party over there in the rain. It's been fun to listen to them exude happiness from being finished with school. Boy, this red looks beautiful in the rain, doesn't it? And all this asparagus fern that we overwintered in the greenhouse is going bonkers. Look at all of those shoots coming up. Lush is the watchword, so from a distance here you can see that bay tree, which is really happy. The eugenia, wow, it is in need of a trim because it is so content. And the Nelliet hollies, these are a southern living plant collection, evergreen of choice for me. And look at all the new growth it's putting on in both of those areas where I used to have the olive trees. So it's interesting to me, and here's my question of the day. When I post on Instagram, particularly stills or carousels, pretty much anything, the posts that I do about this backyard really tend to get a lot more, well, elicit a lot more responses than the front yard. And that's curious to me because the backyard is considerably smaller, but it is very intimate. It's very private. It's very welcoming, I think. Perfect for entertaining. It gives back in the way of material for the kitchen and beautiful scents and fragrances. It's a great place to hang out. I guess maybe it's because it's more intimate and because I love the exuberance of the front, but the quiet of the back is more, as I said recently in an Instagram post, it's more like a park, like that of a park where you can just sit and enjoy the elements and have a cup of tea, a glass of wine. It's also quieter back here. It's not, obviously, not as public. So that's my question of the day. If you follow into the camp of those that really tend to be drawn to my backyard more so than the front, let me know. Let me know your thinking on that. Drop it in the comments below. I think it was also one of the reasons that the backyard of my fairy tale house was just so popular, because it felt more secluded. It felt more monastic, if you will. And by the way, we have made a second channel of nothing but the old house, the fairy tale house. So if you want to figure out the journey we've done here on the channel, starting over in that location and then migrating to here, plus it's fun to, I think, watch the old channel and just kind of see, or the old house imagery, to see what things were repeated here, what elements I carried over from there to here. And slowly, slowly, this garden, I shouldn't even say slowly, actually very quickly, this garden is maturing almost to the scale of the other yard. So you might enjoy watching some of those images on the fairy tale house channel. So thanks guys. I just wanted to give you a little update on this cool rainy, cool rainy morning. Because I kvetch so much, I want you to know that I also really, really appreciate it when we have this kind of English type weather. You guys take care.