I've missed some
Garden Bloggers' Bloom Days this summer due to travel and so forth, but I have had flowers! And still have them, though things in general are looking pretty tired what with the absurdly hot (and recently dry) weather. I hear we'll be having temps in the 90s into October - well, thrills.
As usual in the worst part of the summer the weeds took over, but I have noticed the results of my work earlier in the year clearing and planting new areas. Yes, knee-high grass and other undesirables snuck in when I wasn't looking, but it took very little time to clean up in the places I'd paid attention to earlier in the year. Next year: even more mulch, and getting the ground covers in. The filled-in areas have hardly any weeds at all except for the #^*@@!! morning glory.
I'll start back there in the Food Forest Thing, which also includes a lot of herbs, native plants, and whatever else I feel like growing. One goal next year is to put in a lot more milkweed. I did have seed for both tropical and swamp types this year, and the tropical was planted in a fairly timely fashion and has done well:
whereas I just put in the few surviving swamp milkweed plants a week or two ago. And apparently some monarch butterfly found them and laid eggs, because they are getting chomped.
Which I think is terrific, except that they've completely defoliated one of the plants and are likely to do the same to the next; I hope they've rooted enough to come back next year.
Some of the other plants currently blooming in my yard (the others didn't photograph well):
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| Orange cosmos |
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| Borage |
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| Blurry hardy begonia, but I like the light through the leaves |
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| Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) is done blooming but had a great display |
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| Black-eyed Susans |
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| Bad photo, but this is balsam |
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| One of many zinnias |
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| Ceratostigma plumbaginoides |
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| Mint, in the sea of mint |
And the things that are not flowers:
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| Beautyberry |
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| Aralia racemosa, so glad I put this in this year |
Also, this is a rather successful (if unfinished) pallet garden considering that I haven't watered it at all:
And I got a bottle tree (shrub?) for my birthday:
