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Good Sunday morning/afternoon/evening to my Six on Saturday friends! It was my intention to post this yesterday, but we have had a good stiff breeze here for the past three days, and taking good pictures was nigh on impossible! It’s still windy today, but not quite as bad, and I was able to get some decent shots out in the Terrace Garden this morning.

I am in love with this penstemon this year. It may be ‘Dark Towers’, though to my eye, these flowers are more purple than pink . . .

I was pleased to receive this penstemon as a division from the garden of a fellow blogger! It may be ‘Dark Towers’.

The dark maroon foliage and its height (roughly three feet) really help it stand out in mostly green late spring/early summer garden. Even before it bloomed, it added color and helped bridge the gap between the late blooming bulbs and the daisies and obedient plant that will come next.

There are three clumps of this penstemon growing in this area.

This is its second season here; I can’t wait to see what it does next year! I’m already making plans for places to put divisions of it once it’s a little bigger.

Penstemon is also known as beardtongue. It’s just so pretty!

I’m inordinately thrilled to finally have sundrops (Oenothera fruticosa) in my garden! I’ve wanted these ubiquitous, bright, cheery flowers in my garden for so long, but had a ridiculously hard time finding them. The same friend who gave me the penstemon gave me these, too. (Someday I should do a post on just plants he’s given me. It would take several Saturdays to cover them all!)

Another gift from my blogging friend, sundrops, brightening up the upper corner of the Terrace Garden while I wait for the stachys and coreopsis to bloom!/
Plenty more blossoms to come!
I promise this is the last sundrop picture, at least in this post!

A bit farther down, just about centered in the Terrace Garden, I have some pretty “weeds”. I’ve not had oxeye daisies here before, but I’m not wholly unhappy to see them. I’ll yank them out when they’re finished blooming, and we’ll see whether they show up again next year. They’re generally prominent back in the rock garden behind the house in early June, but I don’t see as many as usual this year.

Wild oxeye daisies right in the center of the Terrace Garden

Oxeye daisies always remind me of my best friend’s wedding weekend, back in the late 1980s. Because of the hearty partying I’d done the night before and the bright sun streaming through my windshield, I was finding it hard to keep my eyes open on the two hour drive home. I pulled to the shoulder and spent ten minutes walking around, picking daisies from the roadside to rejuvenate myself for the rest of the ride.

Here is a sweet little rose in its second year here, Oso Easy (registered) ‘Mango Salsa’.

‘Mango Salsa’ Oso Easy rose, currently about 8 inches high by 14 inches wide. Its blooms are just under two inches wide.

‘Mango Salsa’ should grow one to three feet tall and two to four feet wide, which would nicely fill the space it has here. Its current small stature may be due to a sad amount of neglect and abundant weeds I let accumulate up until about a week ago. I’ve promised it I will do better!

‘Mango Salsa’ blossom
‘Mango Salsa’ bud

I was considering buying another Oso Easy rose to complement this one, but I think I’ll wait and see how big ‘Mango Salsa’ actually gets . . .

I missed getting pictures of Peony ‘Raspberry Sundae’ when it was at its peak early in the week, and it very quickly did what peonies often do–flop over. I did use a peony ring around it this year in hopes of preventing the flop, but the bloom stalks grew quite tall, and we had two rather strong rainstorms within a couple days of each other while it was flowering. Next year I’ll use some tall plant supports as well. Here are ‘Raspberry Sundae’s’ last couple of blooms:

Peony ‘Raspberry Sundae’ was a bit bedraggled by the end of a week that brought two heavy storms and a couple days of hot, humid weather.
The final bloom of ‘Raspberry Sundae’. It had more blooms this year than ever before, at least a dozen!

Lastly this week, the Kousa dogwood seems to be at its peak and is having a fantastic year!

I’m very pleased with this eight year old Kousa dogwood!
The Kousa is loaded with white bracts this year.
The white “petals” are actually bracts, and the flower are the green centers. The flowers develop into red berries by late summer. Chipmunks love them!

You can read more about the Kousa dogwood here: https://cosmosandcleome.wordpress.com/2016/06/22/thursdays-feature-kousa-dogwood/

I am linking to The Propagator’s weekly Six on Saturday meme, which is a great place to read each week about gardens and gardeners around the world! I wish you all a great week in your gardens!