Welcome to the weekend!  We have still been having rain off and on, which has been nice for not watering the garden. Just some hand watering of some plants under the tree canopy, but that takes 5 minutes, so it’s like not having to water at all.  I’m kind of over the humidity, though. Yuck.

I have some self-seeders coming up.  This is the Agastache, which I dearly love, but it doesn’t live over the winter. These are from the seeds that drop.

There are a couple of other ones as well. I guess I will just let them reseed as long as they want to come up.

This one is a suprise – Cleome:

I had Cleome two years ago. This must have been seed that overwintered for two years!  It’s also very short. These normally are tall – or the parents were. That was fun to find. There is one other one as well.

Zinnias are blooming. One seed packet had different color flowers in it for some reason. There are several different colors:

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And this one:

It’s almost like the plant couldn’t decide between red and yellow and said, “Let’s do both!” 😀

I have a dwarf butterfly bush in the front and I must say, it is nice and bushy with lots of blooms coming on it.

It is doing much better than my really tall one out back.

Out back is the Joe Pye Weed:

Picture taken at eye level. The pollinators love this one.

Last year I planted some flowering tobacco – an old-fashioned kind. It didn’t bloom and I decided to dig up one of the plants and bring it inside for the winter. I replanted it in the spring and now, finally, it has bloomed:

This smells wonderful, but it was such a pain in the butt that I won’t be trying it anymore.  I might just pile a bunch of mulch on it in the fall and see what happens, although I don’t hold out much hope as they are hardy in zone 10 (I’m 5). Wishful thinking.

Cardinal flower:

I had some of these in the front, but they didn’t survive the winter. The ones in the back did. Who knows why that is. The vagaries of gardening.

It’s a very striking color. In this picture also is the Enchanted Evening rose and my Autumn Joy sedum – aka broccoli at this stage 😀

Weather will be a bit iffy this weekend, plus John got a summer cold and hasn’t been up to any biking. I’m going to try to fit in a solo ride at some point.  Have a great one!