The garden is really starting to wind down now, although we had some very warm days, which popped some late blooms.

My tippy pots:

This is a surprise marigold, which I don’t think I planted near here last year, but decided to grow from whatever seed LOL

Lots of mums:

Still lots of zinnias:

It’s October, so it’s time to click for breast cancer awareness! The pink picture of the day:

This is a gift certificate to a salt cave that I received and am looking forward to taking some me time to use!

We hope to get some leaf peeping in this weekend, our area is reaching peak and it’s a short window for the beautiful colors.

Have a great one!

Fall has arrived – and it finally feels more like fall, too. Glad we went to see some balloons last night because the launch didn’t happen today with gray and windy conditions.  Hopefully they will be able to take flight tomorrow.

Lots of mums a poppin’ now.

I’m not sure why, but I have had great luck with taking those cheap $2 mums from the big box stores and putting them in the ground. They survive the winter and thrive. Maybe they have a different kind now because they never survived for me before.

I gave my petunias a massive haircut – pretty much to a stub – and stuck a mum in the pot as well.  I didn’t realize how well they would match in bloom 😀

That was a fun surprise!

This year I did another really hard prune on my rhododendron. A lot of the growth was still at the tips, so I took more branches way down to hopefully force new growth at the bottom and it is working!

I’m not giving up on this plant.

Zinnias still going pretty strong.

The butterflies appear to have moved on, but the bees are still around. Speaking of bees, I moved some of my bee balm up here where the zinnias are. Hopefully those transplants take. They should since bee balm is a real spreader and divides well. Even my parents got bee balm for their garden from the same plant 😀   Gardening, the gift that keeps giving.

Potted hibiscus and a tiny marigold. And some weeds…

The balloon flowers keep going.

Appropriate for balloon festival weekend 😀  I’m so happy at how these are reblooming.  I don’t know if the pink ones will, but who knows?

Finally the moonflower.  I wait and wait for this one hoping that frost doesn’t come early and kill it before it flowers:

The blooms only last a day and sometimes I miss them.  The ones out back have buds, so hopefully those will get a chance to open as well.

I planted a couple of Cimicifuga – or bugbane – a few years ago. I actually forgot that they bloomed!  This is the back corner of the shade bed. I was surprised to see a flower spike:

Mixed in there is also some Virginia creeper, which is all over the place. I try to keep it off other plants, but it spreads so fast. It turns such a lovely fall color, which is why it gets to stay.

Now the sedum are in full color mode:

True sign of fall right there.

Hopefully we will get some decent riding in this weekend. Both John and I are swamped with work, so that has limited ride time a bit, but we will sneak in some.

Happy fall!

Another week has gone by. So much for my goal this year to post more LOL.  And this summer has been like the summer that wasn’t. It went so fast and we didn’t do anything really for vacation or long hikes with how busy we have been.

A second flush of flowering on the rose plants is happening now. Fair Bianca:

I love this plant.

Othello has put out a few blooms. It doesn’t really bloom that much and the blooms last only a day once they are open. It’s definitely a strange rose bush.

This is that planter that I did back in early spring. Still looking pretty good!

It’s in the dry partially shady bed as that needed some filler while the bushes get bigger.

Flowering tobacco:

These are very low to the ground, unlike the one I have out back.

Mullein:

These are charming. I obviously have a cottage garden style and these fit right in.

I have started renovating the back sunny flower bed. After the fence came down 2 years ago, the design I was going with now doesn’t work very well. I need to move the taller plants into the back.

So, last weekend I got a bee in my bonnet and started moving stuff.  Irises have been moved up to the front.

I moved the really tall globe thistle to behind the bird bath. I think I got a bit over zealous with moving since we had super hot and muggy temps this week and it really stressed out the globe thistles:

Not sure all of them will survive, but they have left a lot of little babies that I can move easier as the tap root isn’t as deep on those.

Another big project was digging up this mess of whatever.  It was a mix of bittersweet vine, some sort of viburnum and another tree – which I imagine wasn’t supposed to be there, but grew in it from neglect.  I had chopped it all way down in the spring and decided the stump needed to come out.

That stump has to weigh 40 pounds at least. It is soooo heavy. It left quite the crater behind – and bonus that I did not re-injure my bad shoulder digging this up 🙂

Thinking about a rose of Sharon bush there or maybe some small tree. It’s a partial sun spot, so there are quite a few options.

I guess I could do another hydrangea, but something different would be nice.

Speaking of hydrangea, more rain and the branches drooped more:

I have to say that I really like the way it looks. Almost a weeping willow appearance.

Labor Day is coming up and that means getting ready for fall! I couldn’t resist the baby mum pots:

Now to pot those up.

Have a great weekend!

This is going to be the close-up edition of What’s Blooming this week. I had my good camera out for shots today.

Black-eyed Susan:

These look really good still in the front and the back. I’m hoping for some babies from this plant. It looks like some seedlings started this year.

Butterfly bush:

Smells like honey. This is a miniature version, so if you have a smaller garden, it will fit in perfectly rather than the really tall ones.

Million Bells, aka Calibrachoa

Zinnias:

Isn’t this one fun? The quills haven’t opened all the way, but I thought it looked cool.

Marigolds:

The last gasp of the lily:

This one  blooms for a long time from the bottom up.

Calycanthus bush:

Blooms all summer long. It doesn’t have a very neat habit, but the blooms are nice.

Snapdragons:

I still have a critter problem out in the back yard. The woodchuck was back. He left me with this nice bare spot:

Grrrr…  We’ve got some Repels-All and Molemax to apply this weekend.

I think a squirrel did this:

Remains of a heuchera. Wahhhhh!!! It might live, but I’m not holding my breath.

I divided up some of my irises and planted those new rhizomes I got last week. Here is my solution to keep the critters away from them:

The rock on top is insurance that the bigger guys won’t just flip it over. I’m leaving this on through the winter and into spring.

My beeooteeful hydrangea. Flopped over from the rain, but so pretty:

Sedum just starting to get a bit of color. A sure sign the season is nearing the end.

Potted begonia:

It’s really a pleasure in the garden right now. Always something new to see when I go out there.

Have a great weekend!

Hey everyone. John and I have been battling the crud. John started getting sick last week and was feeling terrible. I thought i was in the clear, but Sunday I started with the sore throat. I did not end up getting it as bad as John – in fact, he is still coughing from it – and now I’m feeling mostly better and back on the bike again.

The garden is still enjoying the rain that has been coming regularly.

The coneflowers are getting a bit tired, but still look pretty good.

Hibiscus:

This orange one is my favorite. I’m going to try bringing this one inside for the winter.

The zinnias up front are all happy and blooming. This is what the ones in the back look like:

Leaves and buds all nibbled off.  Sigh.  I started spraying with neem and some leaves are starting to sprout again. I don’t know if the neem helps keep the critters away, but it can’t hurt.

Our dead magnolia tree was removed last weekend.

I was hoping they would grind the stump down, but John didn’t ask them about that. It’s pretty low and I couldn’t put anything there anyway even if it was ground down. So, I planted a couple of peonies around it that i got in a clearance sale. (Yay!!)

Superman is guarding the new peonies. This was something we found attached to our fence when we moved in and i kept it for whatever reason.

I think I just find him funny. 🙂

The tree hydrangea:

Once the flowers start to bloom, the branches droop down when it rains.

My giant hosta:

I actually have some baby hostas that I’m going to put around our water feature. It’s hard to get things to grow there, but hostas are like tanks. Maybe they will work.

Like my “baby” Joe Pye Weed?

I like the plant, but if I had known it was going to get this tall, I would have it about 6 feet further back. I need to read and see if these tolerate being moved. It obscures the path through here, too. I don’t want to walk through it because it gets a lot of attention from the bees:

Flowering tobacco:

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Cardinal flower:

We have 2 hummingbirds that come by and they like this flower a lot.

This weekend is iris planting time!

I bought some chicken wire to cover these with so they won’t get eaten like last year. I’m also making plans of where to move plants and what new ones to put on my wish list 😀

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!

Happy Friday and happy weekend everyone! With all the rain we have been having, the garden is enjoying being fully hydrated – and I don’t have to water it!  Our lawn still doesn’t look great. It’s green again, but mostly crab grass that flourished in the wet weather. Sigh…

On to the blooms. Flowering tobacco:

I know hummers are supposed to like these, but I never see one at these flowers.

One of my favorite color of snapdragon:

I’m making a mental note to scatter the seed pods from this one around the garden. Or maybe I should really write that down if I want to remember LOL.

I was a little surprised to see the mullein sending up more flowers. I really was not expecting these to bloom this year, so bonus!

There is something like 200 species in the mullein family. It’s actually historically a medicinal plant, although I think most of that is folklore. You do find it in some herbal teas in stores.

Black-eyed Susan and hydrangea.

This hydrangea is now 3 years old. It’s called Strawberry Sundae and it is supposed to have pink-tinged flowers. This is the first year that I have seen the pink and only on the largest blooms. Maybe it just needed to be more mature.

It’s very pretty.

Tons of flowers on the globe thistles now.

It’s bee-palooza back here. 🙂

Second flush of blooms from Enchanted Evening:

This one smells so good! And I need to do some weeding 🙂

We had a nice visitor to the feeder this week. A juvenile downy woodpecker:

One thing about the baby birds – they are not afraid of people. The chickadees sit very close to us and I was maybe 6 feet from this guy. He just kept munching away. In fact, he ate seed the whole time we were eating our lunch outside!

There was a mixture of thistle and safflower seeds in that feeder. I’m pretty sure he was just picking out the safflower.

I’m happy to provide him all the food he wants.

John’s birthday is tomorrow, so whatever he wants to do for the day is on the agenda! Have a great weekend!

Happy weekend everyone!  We have had much needed rain this week. Maybe a bit too much, but it certainly was a good thing to have.  I didn’t have to water all week.

On to flowers.  More Black-eyed Susan:

These are so prolific and stay in a nice shape. Not spreading, either.

Hydrangea:

This is supposed to be Strawberry Sundae, but it pretty much stays white. I don’t know if it is just a weird plant or maybe the pH of the soil. Still pretty.

Zinnia:

I’m so irritated with the critters in the back garden. Somebody (somebunny) went through and nibbled the buds from every single zinnia in the back. Argh! Time to get the repellent.

Anyway, this is from the front:

I planted some mullein this year. I couldn’t resist the $2.99 pots. Who can say “sucker”?  They were small and I wasn’t expecting blooms. I was really surprised to see this:

This should get much taller and will fill in the back where I was trying to grow foxgloves, which don’t seem to like me very much.

Balloon flowers:

I love these because they bloom for a good month.

Another hibiscus.

It’s a little more orange than this shot shows. This one I will bring in over the winter.

I tried some passion flower from seed and they actually are growing!

The front plant is a sweet annie. I had tried these from seed a couple of years ago and for some reason this one popped up in the walkway to the back this year. So I moved it into this pot. I looooove the scent of the leaves.  Gardening is always a surprise.

I have started composting. We collect in a bucket compostable stuff like coffee grounds, banana peels, fruit cores and the like, which I take outside and put in a pile along with dried leaves and plant material. I made a pile last year and this spring I got some nice compost. All of the things composted over the winter were in one pile to “marinate” and I made a new pile for this season:

Small piles, I know LOL. The one on the left can be spread in the fall. It has broken down nicely already.  I think I did a good job considering I don’t know what I’m doing 🙂

Reblooming lilac that was gifted to me last year for my birthday. It’s reblooming!

It’s amazing to smell lilac in late July.

Last night I was in the back garden and a hummingbird came right up to the beebalm I was standing by. I wish I had a zoom lens on the camera, but you can still see it:

Usually this guy comes around lunch time like clockwork. He loves the beebalm.

And speaking of bees, sort of, the globe thistle has opened and all the bees are flocking to it.

Look at these two:

I was about 3 inches from this flower and the bees didn’t care at all. Too busy gathering. Have at it bees – it’s all for you!

Hopefully there will be biking this weekend as the rain is supposed to clear some. See you on the flip side!