Hello everyone:

I smiled when I read the caption on the front-page photo. in this morning's newspaper: Rain, Rain, Go away - the same as in my earlier post. And they had our statistics for June and July: 39 rainy days(ties the present record); average number of raindays in June and July - 27; longest stretch of days without rain in June and July -4. And here we are heading into the August weekend and rain is in the forecast for each day. I must say my grass looks very lush, but there are so many mosquitoes still. I have noticed a lot of dragon flies as well, and yesterday I saw one sharing the red aphids on my sweet peas with a ladybug!! It's nice to have nature keeping things under control. All my annual flowers are small and the foliage have that nice lacy pattern of slugs and earwigs!! But today I was rewarded with a beautiful and fragrant bloom of a new lily - pure white Oriental Casa Blanca. What joy! The butterfiles eventually came yesterday - Monarchs and for the first time a Painted Lady! Got a few pics. which I will post later. My cucumbers are a little behind and although I have lots of small tomatoes and blossoms, they are growing very slowly. My petunias, which I have grown (WS) for a few years are all the size of callibrochias; my salvias are about 6 inches tall with one puny bloom; Yvonne's salvia are about 12 inches tall but no buds or blooms, my zinnias are all about the size of a quarter (still waiting for blooms on several), but my black eyed susans (annual ones) have buds and should bring some colour to the garden in a few days. So that's how things are shaping up here in Ottawa. What about you?

Northerner.