I have a couple new blooms to show this week!  Nothing like late bloomers (see what I did there?)

I still am stuck on close up shots of the garden. Looks like a Daddy Longlegs on the coneflower.

 

 

Did you know that DLL is not really a spider?  I saw some science show the other day that said that.

Off to the back yard. This is the back patio work in progress. The middle windows are the dining room that overlook the back. From the front of the house, that is the ground level, but we have the walkout basement.

To the right of that tree is the in-progress shade bed.  This was one of my plants I just put in there. Solomon Seal:

The hydrangea flowers are starting to turn pink now.

Some of the blooms are amazingly massive and weight down the whole branch.

That’s one bloom!

So, I planted 3 types of flowers by seed this year. I did french marigolds, moonflowers and teddybear sunflowers.  Two of those are just blooming now.  Here are the teddybears:

 

I know they are supposed to be a dwarf sunflower, but these are tiny!  Not sure what happened with them. They don’t look like the picture on the seed package.

Autumn Joy sedum, now in color.

Cardinal flower:

This one kind of glows in the evening light. It’s very pretty.

I also have what I believe is some kind of bittersweet maybe:

I left this up. It can be kind of invasive, and actually this is pulling heavily on the shrub that it is intwined in, so I will probably remove it.

Out front I am just about ready to pull the cosmos and the remaining cleome.  I think I might get some hay bales and put pumpkins out or something to fill the space.  The cosmos have a few blooms left and a bunch of new seedlings, actually. I am going to leave those and see how big they get before frost.  Anyway, a birdie must have dropped a seed here because a little wild sunflower popped up.

I was beginning to think my moonflowers were never going to bloom this year and I walked out the other day and boom – I saw a huge bloom!

There are a lot more buds, too, which look pretty neat:

Moonflowers open up at dusk and close in the morning sun. They are like the opposite of  morning glories.  The blooms are very fragrant – and the plant is poisonous, so don’t eat it.

I’m glad to finally get some blooms on these. I do seem to have trouble growing plants from seed.  I might invest in a grow light to do more annuals indoors this winter and start them earlier.

We hope to see more balloons this weekend and go on a hike. The weather should be pretty nice to be outside.  It’s just about my favorite time of year!