I’ve been slack about keeping up lately, but I took a couple of vacation days, and it’s raining right now, so I can’t dig the post holes for the trumpet creeper yet anyway, so…

I finally got my little butterfly bush in the ground.

Bee balm. The taller “Oswego tea” kind. Everything loves this stuff.

I had a few little viny (it’s a word) things in Sarah’s garden, and although I thought one was honeyvine milkweed, and the others bindweed or wild buckwheat, I checked with the botanists just to make sure. I was right, so this little dude is going to get a spot of its own where it can’t choke anything out, and I’ll clip its pods so it won’t spread everywhere. I know it’s a weed, and I know it can be aggressive, but so can common milkweed, and I grow that.

I’d never bothered with single-colour zinnias before except for a few last year that I just mixed in with Cut and Come Again, but I will definitely grow Cherry Queen again; they’re such a deep, beautiful red.

Scarlet pumpernickel is starting to bloom. Not as tall as I’d like, but I’ll take red hummingbird flowers however I can get them!

Light purple butterfly bush is starting to bloom.

Cindeh-flowers. Sturdy, reliable, and pretty, and once they start to go to seed, very popular with the goldfinches.

Liatris that I’m surprised hasn’t drowned. The stuff in the concrete bed hasn’t bloomed yet, and it’s taller. Bees don’t care how tall it is; they love it however it grows.

Virginia stock is cute, but I don’t think I’ll grow it again; it’s a bit too delicate-looking for that long flowerbed along the fence line.

Annual catchfly. Might grow this again; it’s pretty.

It’s taken me so long to post this that I have a couple of open blooms on the Goldfinger Mexican sunflower. Blooms have to start somewhere, though.

Red and orange crocosmia coming along. Actually some blooms now; again, because it’s taken me so long to post.

I forget which penstemon this is, but it’s the one that isn’t Husker Red, Red Rocks, or Prairie Twilight. Purple something?

I’ll put the rest in another post…this is getting looooong!