Solid white perennial Hibiscus moscheutos ‘Blue River II ‘ has produced seed this year . If you would like some, email your name and address. First 10 requests will get seed. Germination instructions will be included. US only.
You may call it smart weed, knotweed, or lady’s thumb. Since I found it produces lots of seeds that birds like, I let a little persist in my garden.
Canna foliage is sometimes more attractive than the flowers.
I am clinging to all that late summer allows. With cloudy gray skies and the leaves falling on the swimming pool deck, no matter how I try to avoid it, pangs of melancholy come, for my old friend summer is fading fast. The garden is no longer flushed with exuberant blossoms but transforming into a new beauty.
The last lily to bloom in my garden is Lilium formosanum. A trellis can be an attractive way to control top heavy plants. To contend with the bittersweet passing of summer, I decided to plan for the future and look for some of the plants I always say I am going to add to the garden but never do. Although I did not find what I was seeking when I stopped by a little nursery in my area, I did find a 50% perennial sale. I bought a couple of gallon containers @ $5 each of Leymus arenarius ‘Blue Dune’
and a couple of Japanese Painted Ferns/Athyrium niponicum ‘Pictum’ @ $4 each. I planted the Blue Lyme Grass in a concrete planter that is high, dry, and hot in summer and the ferns with some heuchera with purple undersides of leaves in the protection of shade. Luckily, I found Anemone japonica ‘Honorine Jobert’, for which I have longed since I can’t remember when, on Ebay and I have already received and planted it.
Wild perennials that bloom at this time in addition to Joe Pye weed and
Ironweed,
are hardy ageratum/Conoclinium coloestinum
white crownbeard/Verbesina virginica,
and yellow ironweed/Verbesina alternifolia. The more natives I have in my garden the better I like it.
I pray that the life of this spring and summer may ever lie fair in my memory. Henry David Thoreau
A thing of beauty
is a joy
forever.
John Keats
Photos by Father Time Editing by Mother Nature
Visit Father Time at Flash Black.
Native Turtlehead/Chelone obliqua is performing its best this year. It is about three and half feet tall and about that wide and is budding.
Cypress Vine has sprouted in the last few weeks and is beginning to scramble all over everything but I do not mind for there will be a lot of it when the hummingbirds visit on their migration south. I remove all the vines when the frost kills it.
Sedum telephium ‘Autumn Joy’ is budded.
Pink honeysuckle/Lonicera heckrottii ‘Pink Lemonade’ continues to bloom.
Can you see three goldfinches?
Shasta daisies are still blooming.
More and more Cleome hassieriana are blooming in the garden.
are still green and you can get big, vine ripened at the store at this time of year. And yet, we still plant them every year. 
The cherry tomatoes do better here.
We are having hamburgers from the grill today with a thin slice of onion to go with that tomato, don’t breathe on me, and all other fixings. Ribs, too. Yum. Life is good.
We’ll munch on these chips and Rotel dip until the burgers are ready.
Make mine a Pepsi, please.
Open wide. Chef Roger outdid himself today.
