How Does Your Garden Grow? Frontyard Edition

So it's unofficially summer here in L-town! The weather has been hot and sticky for a week or so. But thankfully it's not sweltering at 8 am...yet...
So I finally had a chance yesterday to take some pics of how the front yard is shaping up so far this season!
Our front yard is only flowers, no edibles, but I'm considering changing that next season. We'll see. Regardless, here we go:


Below are some sweet peas! They're starting to get some flower buds on them FINALLY and I'm hoping it won't be long before they'll bloom! The sticks they are climbing on are their trellis. These puppies can get up to 12ft tall!

These are cosmos. They look pretty healthy, but have yet to put out any buds. Don't really know when to expect them since this is the first time I've grown cosmos so wait it out a while longer and see.

Next up are our roses. We've got two rose bushes. The first below is a Knockout rose, I believe. That sucker will bloom until about the first freeze. It's a fairly mature plant, but has little fragrance. It was one of only a few flowering plants on the property when we bought our house (BORING!), so in it stayed. I need color and excitement in my garden. I can't stand anything that is shrub only. Blech.

 This one is a hybrid tea rose. I planted it around Mother's Day as it was one of two that were intended for Mother's Day presents to my mom and myself. I let her pick which of the two she wanted for her new garden. She chose a beautiful bicolor with cream and dark pink edging. Mine is VERY fragrant and bloomed out to about 5 inches just this morning!

This coneflower is the first of it's kind to bloom this year! We were very excited to see it! I'm considering planting some white and dark pink ones, because I love how sustainable they are to this area. They are considered a native species so they support the "natural insects" that come around here.

These below are daylilies! I've become a daylily fan over the past year or so. These are Stella d'Oro and we have several of these around our front yard. I just love how sunny and cheerful they look! I've got some purple ones planted but they're not quite mature enough yet. I'm excited for them to bloom soon!

This is our very young butterfly bush! It won't be big enough to be much of a showstopper, but it seems to be happy where I've planted it.

Below are some of my FAVORITES this season. These are asiatic lilies I bought last year but planted too late for them to bloom. I've been awaiting their return since last spring! (Sigh) and they were so worth the wait! They are called Commander-in-Chiefs and I'm so glad I bought them. I can't find them anywhere else.

Well, that's all for now. The backyard looks very different now too, so expect another update on that another week. Maybe this weekend we'll update on how we're planning on doing NOTHING. Thank goodness. Hope your weekend is just as relaxing!