WHAT IS THAT PLANT?????

I HAVE HAD more people stop this year than any other time I remember asking what "those" flowers were. I have also found that most people don't know the name foxglove any better than they know digitalis - but at least they have heard of that as a heart medicine. Go figure. I also got arguments from folks who told me that digitalis does NOT grow any higher than 3 feet at the tallest. Since I have never learned how to photoshop pictures to distort them, you will have to trust me, this is next to my patio, count the square foot patio stones from the digitalis to see how far away they are from the Adirondack chair (2 feet) and you will get an idea of how tall they are. The next to newest peonies bloomed. The newest ones are still growing. This is a good thing. Peonies seem to be scarce around here. Maybe it is just that they are so unbelievably expensive in the Garden Centers, I don't know. I brought my oldest ones down from PA, pieces of roots from peonies my grandfather planted years and years ago. He died in 1954, but the beauty of his garden lives on and on. Also, up in PA, there is a grocery store where they have the most beautiful miniature roses that usually sell for $5 or $6 in a little pot. I am a sucker for them, too. They never get taller than 1 foot, if that tall. I have brought a few home and they used to be out front. When I lost my big maple tree, the power company people that came and cut it up piled the logs right on my garden, and right on the mini roses. 2 managed to survive so I brought them out back to my St Francis garden. This is the time of year when my rarest plants bloom. I am proud to say plants since I now have 3 of them that have survived. No one around here knows what they are. Do you? This is Mountain Laurel, the state flower of PA, and it grows wild up there with bushes 8 feet tall in places. This one is just under 4 feet tall. Can you imagine a jungle of Mountain Laurel and rhododendron? Up there the Mountain Laurel blooms first, usually it's in bloom for Father's Day, followed by the rhododendron which also grows wild on the mountain sides. Rhododendron blooms for the 4th of July. I have also had questions about my tiny iris. They are about a fourth the size of my standard iris, which seems to be normal for Siberian iris.

Again, I thank you for wandering around my garden with me. After all, what are gardens for if not to share? Beauty shared is beauty quadrupled!

And PS - thank you Pat for coming and "fixing" my computer - getting it so it works again more or less the way I want it... Now I just need to figure out a way to get the pictures to load in under 2 hours per picture! I know, I need a new computer... but if I can keep this old slow poke running enough to do email and my blog and keep up with my classes, well, I guess that is what I will do. Stick with what you need, not what you want!