Around the farm, early June

 Anne is the rose expert here on the farm and she does an amazing job of curating the collection of roses we have.  I'm happy to turn that whole realm over to her but once in a while I dip my finger in the pot.  I'm a sucker for rose names and when I discovered a rose called "Tottering by gently", well, who could pass that up?  It's a nod to old age - producing blooms, but not such spectacular ones, gentle yellow single flowers.  We ordered it, it came this spring and has just produced its first blossoms.

Anne made a meme of me and Lucy as we totter gently by the rosebush...

Hopefully it is predictive, rather than descriptive - I'm not using a cane yet and am not quite so slouched.  But I can see this being true in a few years!
In other news, the catalpa trees are blooming and last night's rain washed a lot of spent blossoms onto the lawn.  It looks like they are trailing their skirts.

Old farmsteads often had long windbreaks of catalpa trees along lot lines.  Many of these are gone but there are a few left around here and when the trees are in bloom, they are just stunning.  Catalpa is such an underrated tree in my opinion, easy to start from seed, fast growing yet strong, long-lived and giving lots of shade, not to mention the spectacular, huge, heart-shaped leaves.  The trees in that photo above were planted 11 years ago this fall and were little sticks.  Look at them now!  I've started quite a few from seed and have planted them wherever I found a space.  So fun to watch them grow by leaps and bounds each year.