Friday Fun Day!  Lot s of blooms today.

I try to carefully plan to make sure that I have at least some sort of blooms all of the time. One way I do this is to go to Bluestone Perennials website – or pretty much any online flower seller – and narrow the selection down to plants that fit in my zone. Then I choose the bloom time I want to fill and choose plants I like that fit the conditions I have. Sometimes that is tough, particularly in dry shade.

That works pretty well most of the time, although plants don’t always cooperate with what they are supposed to do. Even though I’m in Zone 5, it is on the colder end, so things tend to bloom a bit later than they might lower in the same zone.  Of course, you can always fill in with annuals, which bloom all summer long.

Here is my agastache, which I’m likely to start treating as an annual.

I haven’t ever seen hummingbirds in my front yard, only the back, but the bees like this one, too.

Supreme Cantaloupe is getting its ruffed center:

My balloon flowers are cooking along:

These bloom for a long time. The white ones still aren’t open yet. Slowpokes.

There is one Black-eyed Susan sitting behind these balloon flowers:

This one doesn’t seem to self seed as much as ones I have had in the past, which is actually good. Different variety, different results.

I am so loving the Cheyenne Spirit coneflowers:

This is a cluster of 3 plants. They just seem so happy and cheerful. Makes me smile when I go out the front door.

Fair Bianca is just about done with its first flush of blooms:

It’s like Cerberus only nicer. 🙂

This will send out a few more smaller flushes of blooms through fall. I love the reblooming roses.

In the back the gooseneck loosestrife are going gangbusters. They can be kind of invasive and spread pretty rapidly, which I agree with since I moved about 5 plants over here last year:

There are more on each side, too. Don’t you love how their heads all point in the same direction? Like little soldiers.

I might move some of these over to my shade bed and see what happens. It’s good ground cover at any rate.

And lastly, the drumstick Allium fully bloomed:

They are all drooped over because of some heavy rain overnight. They’ll perk up. These are maybe about 2-1/2 to 3 feet tall and sway in the wind like little pompoms. Very cute. I’m going to divide this clump in the fall and plant them all around.

Hope you enjoyed!