It’s a crystal clear day with gorgeous views of the Cascades. We’ve had zero rain in June, so I spent the morning watering and weeding.

Big changes have been taking place in the north- and south-facing beds against the house at Coppertop. Plants have filled in before the start of summer, and I’m amazed at the vastly different look of the beds when compared to a couple of months ago.

Taken in March, north garden before:

And now, with hostas, dicentra, and hellebores:

Taken in March, south garden at the side of the garage before:

And now, with delphinium and peonies ready to pop:

Other plants that have come in rapidly are the golden hop vines. Here is one just a month ago: 

And now:

We had one fun surprise this week. We’d shopped for tiny goldfish to add to the pond, and when we tried to find them the next day, they of course hid among the pond grasses, but we saw some of them darting about in flashes of orange. Something drew our eye deeper into the grasses, and we found this:

It’s hard to tell from the photo, but this fish is at least 8 inches long. Either our tiny fish ate some wondrous food and grew overnight like Otto in the Dr. Seuss/P.D. Eastman book, A Fish Out of Water, or we’ve had a beautiful carp all along that we didn’t know about.