Vegetables are great and all, and I love the neat and tidy rows of a well-organized vegetable garden… but the flowers are stunning. The unknown of our flower garden this year - what I call "Garden Surprise" - very nicely balances out the orderly toil we've put into growing vegetables.

Greens that looked like weeds, but that I've resisted pulling up, are now colorful bunches of flowers whose names I am finally learning. Sweet William spans the patch in front of the hoop house, with bunches of daisies and pansies interspersed here and there, and a low layer of poppies waiting to take over later in the summer. In front of the barn are bleeding hearts, peonies, poppies, clematis, mint, and a few other things I don't know yet.

I've also started to add a bit of my own (well, my mom's) touch: allium, sunflower, impatiens, nasturtium, lupine, and zinnia. The allium and impatiens are doing well, and we're still waiting (hoping) for the others to come up.

Usually I don't like chaos, but in a flower garden, the messy mix of this and that and here and there is just perfect.