So enough with the crabbing already… what IS going on in the burrow? Here is a list in no particular order
Tall spikes of liatris dominate the back 40, butterflies are happy 🙂
.Day lilies are a riot of color everywhere
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The trumpet vines are drop dead gorgeous and covered in every pollinator imaginable(esp. hummingbirds) from now until frost. They are a plant that requires ALOT of pruning and weeding out when they try to spread , but I love them so am willing to do what it takes to have them behave in the garden.
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Annuals steal the show in most areas of the garden, I was never a real fan before, but in the past few years have added more and more for sheer bloom power and continuity
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………………………………………..Bacopa, snapdragons and amaranth (above)
One of my favorite containers, more petunias, and cosmos.
Some of the other annuals I have added to the gardens are;
nicotiana(flowering tobacco below), guara (not quite hardy here), nasturtiums, dahlias, sweet peas,and sunflowers
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The sunflower to the right was knocked over by a storm and the stem broke almost clean through. The
piece keeping it alive is about 1/8th of an inch thick, yet it is about to bloom. Tells you all you need to know about the willingness of plants to survive, even thrive in lass than optimal conditions, It also takes the fear out of gardening a little doesn’t it?
Check out how I match my container flowers to the patio chair cushions , nerdy, nerdy nerdy. Do you do that? admit it…we all can get a little weird out in the heat of summer gardening. The last picture is an adorable little fungus that sprung up in the side of a pot of sedum and sempervivum. It looks like those “living stone” plants. It was cool till it died. .
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At the end of the summer I will go out and collect seeds from the sunflowers(although I leave most for the birds), the sweet peas (wait until the pods are dry and brown), the snapdragons, the amaranth and the cosmos. The petunias will self seed , just make sure not to weed them out in the spring.
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If you are interested in an easy way to spruce up the garden in late summer and early fall some annual vines that are fun to try and really easy to grow are the beautiful hyacinth bean with it’s gorgeous purple leaves and flowers and even more spectacular bright purple pods, bottle gourds that you can dry to make birdhouses, and black eyed susan vine, which here does not bloom until August when started from seed outdoors but is splendid for the two months of flowers in fall (in the picture of the red birdhouse it is growing up the pole and soon will bloom and I will take another pic, the hyacinth bean is VERY late this year due to rabbit damage but when it blooms I will post it as well). Once I get the garden going in the spring, I want constant interest and color until early November, then I will be deathly sick of it all and grateful for the frost and a nap, but until then I will tolerate no lapses in color and drama ….from the plants I mean, my drama extends year round 😉
