Beautiful Summer Gardens

Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting Carolyn who writes the blog Aiken House and Garden.  She found me outside watering my window boxes and asked if she could photograph my front porch for her blog.  Those of you who would like to see her photos can check out her Summer Porches post HERE.

While we are on the topic of gardens, I wanted to show off our rhododendron which reached its peak in mid June this year.

The secret to this showstopper seems to be, just ignore it.  Every winter it gets hammered with snow slide after snow slide off of our metal roof which has finally forced the main stalk to grow horizontally.  I have never fed the thing (we've been here 7 years) and a few years ago, I chopped the crap out of it.  In spite of the abuse, year after year it never disappoints!

Once it stopped blooming this year, I went at it again with the clippers and the new growth in such a short time has been amazing!  Is there a secret?  I don't know but let's just say I won't be digging up the ground anywhere around it any time soon just in case I find something buried there I don't want to know about!