It was mega hot again today and I came home to the first two lily blooms of the year:

Hooray! There are lots of buds looking ready to bust open any day, and I'm ready for the glorious color!

More photos at Flickr.

Originally published at LibrariAnne.

So I finally decided that I've had enough of the neighbors walking on the seedlings in our front garden (nee yard) and put up a temporary fence to keep the garden safe.

It stretches all the way along this side of the yard, so hopefully it will be effective. We could theoretically fence off the other edges, too, but I'm not convinced that's necessary. As you can see, I also planted three new bushes there - blueberry, black raspberry, and red raspberry. I usually like to get edible plants from heirloom seed or from the farmers market (or other reputable organic sources), but I gave in and got these from Lowe's - the farmers market had nothing to offer and the seeds I'd planted here got trampled to death. I'm guessing that I'll need to protect these from the birds once they start fruiting. Anyone have suggestions of effective ways of doing that?

In other front garden news, a number of the other plants I put in are doing pretty well! The dark lord geranium is looking good:

I also noticed that something is sprouting up through the mulch on the side of the house - I think it might be grapes. Can anyone confirm or deny?

In the back gardens, the daylilies and asiatic lilies are budding and getting ready to bloom.

The lilies beside the garage are really, really tall! Some of them are approaching the point of being taller than I am!

The golden sweet snow peas are still blossoming, with a gorgeous purple color:

There are also scads of pea pods! I've been eating them right off the vine while I wander through the veg garden. They are so sweet and the texture is divine!

So the other day, after I finished hosing off the aphids that were hanging out on the potato plant blossoms, I noticed what I thought was an odd-looking ladybug. It wasn't a ladybug, it was a colorado potato beetle. Yipes! I picked it off and killed it, and found, picked, and destroyed the leaf under which it had laid eggs. I searched but didn't find any others, but then a day later, I found these!

They're larval colorado potato beetles, and they were chomping the hell out of the potato leaves, as you can see above. Ugh! I think I've gotten rid of all of them now, so hopefully we're done with that. I did order some ladybugs and praying mantis eggs which should arrive soon. I fully expect them to fly away, but hopefully a few will hang out and make a home in my garden (and a meal of any other pests). We already have some good pest-eaters in the garden, one of whom made an appearance this week:

Originally published at LibrariAnne.