I see broccoli! I see broccoli!

First sign of broccoli flower.  Very exciting.  I hope it will continue to grow well and produce a few beautiful broccoli for me.

I waited 5 years!

5 years ago, I bought a peony plant from a community plant sale somewhere.  The previous owner was an old lady who passed away.  Not sure why his family decided to dig this plant up.  In any case I thought it would be nice to get this plant which had some history with it.  I would like to imagine that this peony plant was loved and cared for by the lady and I wanted to adopt it into my home.  So I bought it, not knowing what the flower looked like.

I carefully selected a location in the backyard and planted the peony.  Watered it, fed it, looking at it, and talked to it.  There was plenty of leafs, but no sign of flower.  Same thing repeated year after year for 5 years!  Not a single flower.

Just as I started to give up on it, a couple of flower buds showed up this spring.  I was hopeful, but didn't want to raise the hope too high, because sometimes flower buds could dry up and just fall off.

Today, my peony bloomed!  The flower was just gorgeous, both colour and shape.  It was indeed a special moment for me and I couldn't contain my excitement.

CHEERS!  To my first peony flower.

What's going on in my garden

We just stepped into June and there already seems to be a lot of activities in the garden.

Arugula, mustard green, and kale are attacked by the flea Beatles.  There doesn't seem to be a good natural way to control this annoying bug.  I'm contemplating in creating a net to cover these veggies.

The swiss chard and broccoli are doing fine...so far.

The continuous rain these days is not so good for my flowers, but they still manage to be beautiful.

Dark purple Iris peeking through the Beauty Plant.  (Yes, beauty plant is its name.)

The lighter coloured Iris is falling all over the place, crushing the poor green onions.  I had to stake them.  Though the flowers already got mud all over.

My pepper field.  I found which can be the very first pepper of the year!

And I may very well have my first (and only) peony flower after 5 years.

Clematis bloomed.  I bought the wrong type.  I don't think this one climbs higher than 3 feet.  I need to get one that climbs  at least 6 or 7 feet.

Snowball is covered with flowers this year.  With the rain, the branches are so top heavy.  I'm worried that it may break.

Bleeding heart is also growing big.  Looking great and matches the white bell flower from Solomon Seal.

Lastly, but definitely not the least, my gorgeous sieboldii magnolia.

Even my weeds are edible!

Look!  Weeds are growing in the driveway crack again.

Oh wait!  Let's look again.

It's DILL!!!!!!