I was outside this morning doing yoga and meditating before the kids woke up- with the dogs because Jack likes to join me for a little downward dog and Sparrow is visiting for the weekend. The garden is simply amazing right now. We have had our first cucumbers and cherry tomatoes and the peas are still going strong. There are a ton of flowers out there as well. Eva's poppies really took hold (she used the old dump-the-seed-packet-on-the-ground method) and the carrots from last year are blooming white and purple carrot flowers (aka Queen Ann's Lace). The cardoons have their first blooms and the sweet peas, one of my new favorite flowers, are flourishing. I love it and can't get enough of it!



The tall yellow flowers in the background are fennel and the white flowers are sweet peas. Samuel's pansies are in the front, along with some wild daisies. The chamomile is stretching itself out longer this year but is nearly gone and is being replaced by another favorite of mine, the ubiquitous pansy. This is from a couple of days ago, so you can't see the cardoons blooming yet, but you can see that they are well over 8 feet high and a bee's paradise! On the other side of the garden, the purple cone flowers (echinacea) and hyssop are thriving along with the oregano, which is blooming, and the sage. Mint that I have planted in containers on the patio is blooming and I expect the huge patch of mint by the roses to start blooming soon as well. Out front the blueberries are darkening and the chickadees have started munching on them.

The other day when the kids and I returned home from somewhere, I went to let Jack outside and saw a thread waisted wasp (the one at the bottom is very much like the one on our patio) building a little nest in the runner of our sliding glass door. She was going to get mud and slowly building a tiny shelter for her eggs. I did quite a bit of reading about thread waisted wasps- I had never seen one before, only in my bug book, and they are quite something. They purportedly don't sting because they aren't attached to a hive, but they don't have to because they are kind of freaky looking enough to keep most "people" away. I decided to close the patio when she flew out for more mud and wash down the nest she was making. She kept trying to get into the patio for several hours after that. It must have been a good spot. I have been happy to see a couple more thread waisted wasps out in the garden eating insects and nectaring and gathering mud from the containers, so apparently she found another good spot!