Happy Fourth of July to all of you! It looks like summer has finally arrived. After getting torrential rain on the official first day of summer, June 21, I was beginning to wonder if we were going to see any warm weather this year.

I hope your gardens have finally decided to come up and grow. I know it was discouraging when the corn kept rotting in the ground and had to be replanted again and again. They say we're in for some good old hot weather now. That should make the heat lovers such as corn, tomatoes, peppers, squash and melons happy. On the other hand, the lettuce and spinach will bolt and call it quits.

Have you ever had the experience where you bought a nice healthy looking plant marked "perennial" and it didn't come up the second spring? If you purchased a hollyhock, foxglove, canterbury bells or bergenia, this is what happened. These plants are all biennials, not perennials. There is a big difference. A biennial has a two-year life span. The first year, they grow a low rosette of foliage only... no flowers. The second year, in addition to the foliage, a tall flower spike will appear and bloom. That is their life cycle. Once they bloom, they are done for.

Most of these plants produce quite a lot of seeds. If you don't cut off the stalk after the flowers fade and let nature take its course, they will often reseed themselves. I don't know about you, but I have a strong urge to cut those stalks off once the flowers are finished. Resist that urge and you will be rewarded with seedlings like the parent plant. If they get a good start growing that summer, that will count as their first year and they should go on to bloom the next summer. Otherwise, they will skip a year before they flower.

Other biennials include silver dollar plants, (lunaria), Sweet Williams, forget-me-nots, wallflowers, malvas, (common mallow) and bidens. The last one is a very prolific seeder. I don't plant that one anymore. It is commonly sold in mixed hanging baskets and has loads of small yellow blooms.

I'm trying a plant that's new to me. It's called Poor Man's Orchid. There are two plants going by this nickname. I've grown the one named schizanthus before. They have long sprays of small flowers, resembling orchids and do well in cool weather. The one I'm growing is the second plant using the Poor Man's Orchid nickname and is harder to find. It is part of the impatiens family, even though it grows 2 to 3 feet tall. The proper name is Impatiens Balfourii. They originated in the Himalayas.

These plants do well with morning sun/afternoon shade and plenty of water. They bloom with large lavender, pink or white flowers which do resemble some types of orchids. When the seedpods dry in the fall, they have the habit of shooting them out of the pods when disturbed. Gathering seeds can be quite a challenge.

If you haven't pruned your lilacs back, do it now. If you wait any longer, you will be cutting off next spring's flower buds. Wait until a month after bloom to dig and divide your irises. Most varieties need to be dug up and divided every three or four years.

Another chore to do now is to cut the mums and asters back about a third of their height. It works well to do this on Memorial Day and Fourth of July. The holidays make it easy to remember. This way, they will be shorter and stockier come fall.

A very special visitor came by today. The first butterfly of the season, a big yellow tiger swallowtail. Hopefully, we'll see lots of butterflies this summer as they were few and far between last year.

The Fourth of July and watermelon seem to go together. It's always fun to get together with a few friends and have a seed spitting contest. I enjoy this contest, but somehow never quite got into the cow pie throwing version!

Elaine Cerny has gardened most of her life, starting as a kid in 4-H. Since then, she has always kept a garden of some sort, growing everything from fruits and vegetables to flowers and house plants. She has belonged to garden clubs in three states. She is an active member of the River City Gardeners Club in Post Falls.