way to go, General Mills

There was an article in the Minneapolis Strib today about General Mills donating a 19-acre nature preserve to the city of Golden Valley. Golden Valley is a first ring suburb of Minneapolis. The article talked about how rare it is for first ring burbs to receive gifts of protected land. The land was donated through the Minnesota Land Trust and will be protected forever from development. Way to go, General Mills!! Wouldn't it be lovely if other corporations headquartered in the Twin Cities followed suit!

An interesting tidbit: when General Mills moved their headquarters from downtown out to Golden Valley in 1958, they gave their staff a shorter workday to make up for the "huge commute." Today, you can get from General Mills to downtown in about 10 minutes! How times change.

General Mills has a beautiful campus - lots of green space, walking paths, cool sculptures, and gardens. The next time I'm enjoying one of their many products, I'm going to offer a little thank you to them for being good neighbors.

flowers too, of course

I have these tall lilies by the porch. I think I planted them 5 or 6 years ago, so I have a pretty good clump of them by now. They are pretty stunning when blooming.
These equally tall, but pink, lilies are in the same garden. Together, they put on quite a show.
These gorgeous red lilies are down by the gazebo. I adore this dark red.

Isn't this a great lily?

The coreopsis is starting to bloom. I think these little bright yellow flowers and fine foliage are very pretty. They brighten up the summer garden.

Had to show you this spiderwort. These white and purple blooms appear to be on the same plant. Many years ago, I put in what looked like one plant and it had both colors when it bloomed. Now I have at least 3 clumps that have both colors blooming side by side.

Most of the white blooms have this cool purple center. A few are totally white, but I like the purple centered ones best.

This coneflower is either a native Minnesota wildflower that volunteers in one of my lakeshore gardens - or it's from a packet of Colorado wildflower seeds that Mark brought back from the Denver airport many years ago. Whichever, it's very cool and seems to love lots of sun and fairly dry soil. The leaves are very similar to blue flax.

This is a volunteer bellflower. I love the little flower so much that I have a tat on my ankle that looks very similar to one of these blooms!

This I believe is a cluster bellflower that one of my gardening neighbors gave me. The blurry yellow behind it is the evening primrose. Kind of a nice combo. They are both spreaders, so in a few years, this may be what the entire garden looks like!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY,

DAD AND EVERETT AND MARK!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY ANNI & TOM!