Strawberries, Roses and Mud puddles

Wow, this past week snuck away from me!  We got quite a bit of rain over the past week or so, and I haven't been in the garden too much.  I spent a lot of time sewing orders, which I really needed to do.  On Friday, I stopped at Varnau's, my favorite local nursery, and all their plants were 50% off (they're only open from mid-April to mid-July, so they're starting to clearance things already).  They had a few strawberry plants left that were only $1.50 each, and I couldn't resist.  I have wanted strawberries ever since we moved into the house 4 years ago.  They mostly had Junebearing, but I did find one everbearing (literally one plant).  I bought the June bearing "AllStar" and the everbearing "Ozark beauty".  Hopefully next year I will have a handful of yummy strawberries to eat.  I am not sure where I am going to put the AllStar, since I believe they send out a lot of runners being a junebearning.  The Ozark Beauty I am going to put in a pot - I just have to get a pot to put it in.  I also got a beautiful scented leaf geranium for $2 - I have a different variety in a container on the patio, and I love them.  Their foliage is always so interesting.

These are the strawberries, obviously...

The cool scented leaf geranium leaves.  I'll have to post a picture of the leaves of my other plant later - they're very different.

I also am excited to see the knockout rose that I transplanted earlier this year finally having new growth.  It was by our front stoop, and it tended to take over the flower bed and part of the front walk if not regularly pruned.  It's a red one and it was growing gangbusters.  This year, I dug it out and moved it to the other side of the driveway in front of the rain barrel.  I also pruned it back to about 12"-18" from the ground when I did so, so that it was more manageable to move.  It's been a big group of sticks for a month since I did this, while it tried to recover from the shock.  It finally is.  I was not really worried about it, as this is the hardiest plant I've had.  People say roses are tricky and need special care.  Not this one!  My hope is that it will grow and next year camouflage the rain barrel somewhat in the summer.  The barrel is functional, but it's not pretty.  However, I have had about 4-5 people in the neighborhood ask me about where I got it, how I made it, etc over the past year, so I'm kind of glad it's visible from the street.  I know of one other house in the development that made one of their own after asking me about mine.

I also have to share some photos from Sunday.  We had a torrential downpour (which of course started while I was driving home from Costco - it's about 3-4 miles away and it took me about 15 minutes to get home - roads were like rivers).  My rain gauge is broken I discovered, but the news said rain was falling at the rate of 5 inches an hour, and that doesn't surprise me.  I can't remember when I'd seen rain that hard last longer than about 10 minutes - my guess is it was about 30-45 minutes of serious downpour. Our backyard slopes to the middle slightly, and we had a river running through our backyard.  When the rain let up, Kate really wanted to go splash in the puddles, and of course Claire had to join her.  Who needs a pool?!?!