We made it through another week!  Did it go by really fast to anyone else?  Guess that happens when you are busy.

We have had some beautiful weather here this week. Almost perfect fall.  And speaking of fall – time to change the garden flag!

Guess I should iron that.  If only I could find my iron…

Not much fall color here yet, but some leaves are starting to drop, so it will be coming soon.

My garden is in end-of-season mode:

Birds love to pick all the seeds off of the coneflowers heads that are all black. Goldfinches, especially.

My marigolds are still blooming now.  They had better since they were so flipping late!

Along side another scentimental bloom.  These marigolds are surprisingly fragrant. If I brush against them, the scent sticks to my skin.

Alyssum:

Plus some purple ones:

My knockout rose is in full bloom again.

Potted mums are really bloomed out now.

There are also a few straggler blooms on my clematis:

I have lots of bulbs to plant this weekend, but rain expected, so hopefully I can squeeze them in before it starts!

Have a great weekend!

I have a new flower to show you!  First up, though, is the revamping of the garden bed.  Remember this picture?

I labored away Labor Day weekend and made it a reality!

I still need to amend the soil as it is pretty sandy.  Most of the planting will occur in the spring, but I will be putting some bulbs in and possibly moving a couple other plants over.  I think I might have hurt my shoulder digging this bed, too.  My clavicle looks a little odd.  😕

So the new flower?  The flowering tobacco finally bloomed! Only one of the plants.  Here it is.

It’s very pretty, but I have to say not worth all the fussin’ and a feudin’ it took to get this going.

My scentimental has a bloom on it.

However – my rose looks terrible!  It got black spot, which is a mold and the leaves all fell off.

Eek!  This is a disease resistant cultivar, but it was humid for a while and this is the result.  I need to clean up all the dead leaves and spray the plant with a baking soda/water mixture to prevent any new mold spores.  I will have to put that on my other 2 bushes as well to protect them.

I also have a sunflower that popped up from near the birdfeeder.

Gotta love that.

The butterfly weed blooming again, with some aphids.

And here are my 2 feral kitties.  Boo and Lily.  They don’t like people, but they like being by the garage because it is quiet.  John and I are probably the only people that don’t shoo the kitties away, so they hang out here.  I am starting to get attached to them, the little fleabags.  I am now very worried they are going to get hit by a car as we live on a busy road.

There’s no room at the inn, though.  I apologized to John for being such a sucker and he said “there is one born every minute.”   Sigh…

Friday time again!  Boy the time just goes speeding by.  It’s scary sometimes. Work was surprisingly slow today.  I think maybe there are some last minute vacations from people and the physicians before school starts after Labor Day.  That meant I was trying to get things done that I planned for later after I was finished with work.  I’ll be spending a Friday night working, boooo…

Anyway, here is the garden and what’s been going on.

More snapdragons.

My sweet potato vines and half nicely done porch.

There is still half the porch to be finished to the left.  Not sure I will make it by the end of the month, but I will try.

This is the other potted plant on the front porch.  It’s called Calibrachoa – or Million Bells if you don’t want to figure how how to pronounce that.

My sedum continues to get darker.

I’ve almost got a marigold bloom!

Maybe this will be open by September? 

A couple random asters here and there.

The shade bed where I talked about getting rid of the ferns?  Here it is before I got in there.

Afterwards.  All ready for planting!

I tried to keep as many lily of the valley’s as I could, but their roots were all intermingled with the fern roots, but that’s okay.  They spread and will come back in short order.

I am getting some tall Astibles to put in place of the ferns.  I am thinking Bressingham Beauty.  It’s purple 😀

I also neatened up the rest of the shade garden.

It really needed some weeding.

I’ve got to work tonight to make up for all the garden fun today.

Midseason garden time and I am already making plans for some bed renovation.   This all stemmed from finding a rose that I really, really want in my garden.  This one:

Pumpkin Patch. I am very particular about my roses.  They can’t be tea roses and they have to be hardy, disease resistant, rebloomers and be fragrant.  This one meets all of those criteria!  So, I had to do some thinking.  BTW, Edmund’s has fantastic roses.  If you don’t buy them local, get them from Edmund’s. You won’t be disappointed.  They didn’t pay me to say that, either (although I would take a free rose bush!!)

I am going to expand out the front of the garden bed like so:

Thank you picmonkey!  (I am having fun with that, BTW).  I am a real arteest 😀

So, that means using spray paint to draw the line in the yard and then digging the crabgrass sod up.  I will be using the lawn mower to decide where to make the curve.  No point in making a garden bed that is hard to mow around.

I also am going to move those white cone flowers that are in front of my sign. Not sure quite where yet.  Of course, that gives me more room with that extension to add other plants besides the rose!  Yay!

My teddybear sunflowers are taller now.  They have reached the 2 feet that they were supposed to get to and now have bigger blooms.

Cute!

Lots of blooms on the butterfly bush as well.

My potted petunias just keep going and going.

My new bird feeder.  It was $3.99. Big spender that I am.

Moving around to the side of the house.  The shade garden is also going to get some work.  My ferns always die out in the mid summer and look terrible.

So, those are going to get removed.

Maybe more astilbes in place of them.  Not totally sure yet.  I have time.

My white lirope popped out in blooms this week.

No sign of the purple yet.

More pots on the back stoop.

The driveway showcases them nicely, don’t you think?  😀

It’s going to be a muggy weekend, but hopefully not too rainy.  John is out of town now and I will have a new biking partner this weekend!

Friday blooms!  Plus the new driveway.  Heehee!  It showcases my shade garden very well.

All those tall lilies are pretty much gone.

Sometimes I feel very “adult” when I love home things like the new driveway or our new windows.  Yeah, I know I am 44 and technically an adult, but it’s all in how you feel, you know?

We have had rain the last couple of days.  The ground just soaked it up like a sponge! The crabgrass has greened up. Now maybe the rest of the lawn will as well  😳

That’s the home for our car for a couple days more until we can drive down the rest of the driveway.  View from the garage.

It’s going to make snow removal so much better this winter.  Not that snow removal ever is really all that great, but it will be easier than a driveway with pits, holes and grooves in it.

Anyway, I digress from the garden.

Loving my coneflowers.

The milkshake coneflower is now completely white.  Pretty cool!  They need to create one called peanut butter or something like that.

Another shot of the globe thistle.  These blooms don’t last long.

I had lots of garden visitors this week.  The monarchs have been all over my garden this week.  This guy flutters around all day.

He visits a lot of the flowers, but the butterfly bush is the favorite.

Then there was the return of the sphinx moth!  This is the moth that looks and acts like a hummingbird with antennae.

This is a cool shot. You can see the nectar ‘string’ as he backed out of this flower.

The butterfly bush certainly is the star of the garden right now as far as the insects go.  Living up to its name!  This is a black swallowtail.

He was hard to get a shot of because he kept fluttering his wings.  Thank you sports setting!

Lily The cat with no name is enjoying the path.

She actually wants no part of me.  See how she is poised to run if I get any closer?  If I crouch down and move slow, I can get closer to her, but no petting.

Lovely smelling Scentimental rose.  Ali – this is for you!

It mixes well with the smell of fresh asphalt.

Had to sneak in another shot of my favorite combo.

I am already planning which plants I am going to move around in the fall.  Obsessed much?  I am also sort of thinking of expanding the front of this bed outwards.

I think I might bring a curve out from the center.  There is a rose bush I really want to get, but I just cannot find space for it, even if I move plants around.  So, guess I will take up more lawn!

Hoping to ride this weekend. Think Saturday is shot with rain, but Sunday looks good.

**My thoughts go out to family and friends of the Colorado shooting victims.**

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This has been a long week.  Lots of things done, work completed and people visited with.  It almost felt like the weekend already and work was slow for both John and I, so we actually decided to take a ride for lunch.   Please watch your retinas – this was my color combo:

Yes – they really are that neon.

We biked to Celia’s Table.  This restaurant opened up in the space Wholey Crepe used to be in (which I miss).

We sat outside al fresco because it was about mid 70s and so nice to be outside.  Bikes parked right back there 😀

I had half an egg salad sandwich and a bowl of chicken pot pie soup.

I think that basically just the filling for their chicken pot pies 😀

This was a good lunch and reasonably priced.

My garden actually seemed to enjoy the heat.  Or most of the garden did.  Now that cooler weather and a bit of rain came it – it really perked up.

The globe thistle is fully blooming now.

The bees love this flower.  It goes really nicely with cone flowers, too.

Sweet potato vines on the front porch.

I didn’t know that the sweet potato vines actually had flowers.  They are only open early in the morning before the sun hits them.

This is annual salvia.  I wasn’t too impressed with this, but now it seems to be doing better.  These are in pots on the back porch.

We have been getting tons of monarchs lately, too.  I did plant with butterflies and hummingbirds in mind, so nice to see that actually works.  Here is a butterfly sitting on the railing post.

Lovely ball on that post, eh?

Here is the little paver path that the mail carrier uses through the garden.

We put that in because the mail carrier was cutting across that area before the garden was put there when we first moved in.  It seemed like a nice natural path through it, which helps with weeding and such as well to get in there without trampling plants.

View from the porch:

You actually have to sit right by the railing to see this.  If you are back on the porch, you can only see the tops of the tall plants.  I pull my chair right up close.  That empty hook used to hold the hummingbird feeder, but we had some strong winds and it fell off and broke.

Still have some sundrops going.  These are lasting quite a while!

And the little teddybear sunflowers.

The heliopsis clematis has left behind its truffula trees.

And more blooms on the scentimental rose.  Funny how they are all on the edges and bottom of the bush this time around.

That’s a solar light.  We have a couple and need more to light the little walkway.

Tomorrow is going to be in the low 80s and sunny.  Absolutely perfect for biking and we are both jonesing for a cupcake!  Long ride, here we come!

What’s blooming on Friday the 13th?  It’s a good luck day in the garden!  Long-blooming perennial time now and the garden is full.

The knockout rose is starting to bloom again.

I also have buds forming on the scentimental bush as well.  The second flush is always smaller than the first, but looks like there will be a good number of blooms.

I know I knocked on petunias when I talked about doing this planter, but these have really grown on me.

Such an unusual color.  Of course, I love the planter, too, which helps.

The armeria keeps sprouting up new plants.  I am going to deadhead these and see if they come back next year.  Excuse the watering can – that’s what I was doing 😀

Close up.

A few more close up blooms.  Gaillarda

My lilies, which are still going, although not as prolific.

And the milkshake coneflower.

My globe thistle is almost in bloom here.

It’s in the hard prickly stage now, but it will get little bloom bursts on it.

We have a little visitor that has been sleeping in the garden at night for the last few nights.

I hope she belongs to someone, but I am not sure. Pretty skittish.   Must not try to make friends… must resist…

My butterfly bush is finally blooming.  It’s about a foot shorter than normal, but at least I still have it.

 

Full view – avoiding the crispy part of the lawn.  It’s always green in a ring around the garden because of watering the garden. We don’t bother with the lawn because it just goes dormant.

Driveway angle.  That’s my new flag in the corner there as well.

You can see the butterfly bush really well in that picture.

Have a great weekend everyone!  Stay cool 😀

Boy, was that a short week or what?  I think I could get used to working Mon and Tues, having Wed off, and then working Thurs and Friday.  That would be a nice work week.

I knew some heat was going to be coming in today, so I was out before 7 am to take a bike ride!  Glad I went early, too.  It was fairly quiet.  I took the paths mostly.  Lots of birdies singing and a few people, but not many.

Refreshing!

I really find it just sets up my whole day to exercise in the morning.  I tend to get crabby if I haven’t done my morning workout.  I never used to be a morning person, but somehow became one.

15 miles done and I was home. I made up a quick breakfast (I had a workout shake before leaving the house for the ride).

1-minute muffin topped with peanut flour and jam.  Kind of looks like dessert, doesn’t it?  It’s not very sweet, though.  I am always amazed at how long I stay full with this muffin.

Worked and watched the Tour until lunch.  I didn’t want anything heavy, so I made a scrambled egg sandwich!

With hot sauce  – kinda messy, but Yum!  Haven’t had one of those in a while.

Garden tour time!

This makes me so happy.  I stand out there with a big smile.  I love flowers.  It makes John laugh when he sees me get all excited in the garden.

Lilies are still going.

I put one of my attic-find planters with the lilies for now.

It gets more sun here at this time of year.

The Hot Papaya echinacea have more blooms.  I love how these open orange and then turn red.

My 3 ‘expensive’ coneflowers all together.

See how the milkshake one turns into a white fluffy ball?  So cool.

My other coneflower friend.

I have Japanese beetles now, which are eating some plants.  You can see the holes in the petals on this plant.

Snapdragons.  These are just plants that popped up where ever from when I deadheaded the flowers last year.  I like seeing where they end up.

Liatris.

One of the pots on my back porch with flowering tobacco and alysum.

My heliopsis clematis is finally blooming.

It’s about half the size it normally is at this time of year.

Ready for a snack?

My obsession.  Time to buy pineapple futures everyone.  Just a tip.

Leftovers for dinner tonight.  Chicken on a baker.

Plus something for my sweet tooth.

I have to work more tonight, but will be taking a break to walk up the street for a kiddie cone.  I budgeted it into my calories for the day.  It’s a good day for ice cream!