♫ See How They Run ♫ and Today's Garden Highlights

Ollie has been a very good cat. I thought I'd knit him a couple of new mousies. On the recommendation of my knitterly friends at Kniterary, I didn't bother with the ears or with stitching the eyes and nos - ergo, 'Two Blind Mice'. The pattern is from Michelle Ameron's Catwarming Set in "Stitch 'n Bitch Nation".
This morning, I took a walk in the garden to pick some peonies which are headed on their way 'out'. I love their fragrance in the house and thought I'd take some snapshots of them and the garden.
There are a few other lovely flowers in bloom right now. The blooms on this clematis are just starting and are about 13cm (5") in diameter.
This is the lone bellflower (campanula) that is in bloom. Many more are to follow.
You can see it above the mound of white cranesbill, just to the left of the turtle sandbox (where Skip keeps the dirt for the compost bins).
One dianthus plant is in bloom. There were others in past years but they may have been choked out by the blue clips (campanula carpatica) and bugleweed (ajuga repetans).

We have quite a lot of shade in our garden, particularly at the front of the house which faces north, but also along our fence. We have lots of different types of hostas, one which came from my mother's garden (she's been dead for almost 19 years) which I've transplanted to the garden of every home I've lived in since then. Another couple of them came from Skip's mom's garden.

I didn't used to like hostas much. I thought they were 'boring' (I was a know-it-all twenty-something at the time) but now appreciate all the different textures and colours. They're also a very easy way to fill lots of shady spots in the garden and require very little care - other than to hack them back every year as they continue to spread outward.

We are particularly fond of this rosebush which only has one bloom right now.
We like it because it is our only surviving rosebush but also because a friend of ours gave it to us for a wedding gift when we were married 13 years ago. Our wedding ceremony took place only a few feet away from where it is now planted.