The white astrantia has been blooming all summer. This is its second year in the garden and it has grown super well. I have been watering it regularly as it has been a dry summer but still I am surprised at how well it has been growing. I have picked some of the flower clusters and dried them so I can enjoy them through the winter.
I had some left over ageratum and zinnia seeds to I tossed them in a planter that had a few potatoes planted in it. The potatoes didn't do much but the flowers have come along nicely. The ageratum is pretty leggy especially the magenta and white so it has fallen over but I kind of like the sprawling effect of it.
The magenta gomphrena was seeded in the pot in May so it is just coming into full bloom now. I like having some plants that are just getting going at the end of the summer as they have a freshness to them that the flowers that have been blooming longer don't have anymore. I will dry the gomphrena as well as it does very well as a dried flower. There is a bit of yellow statice in the pot. With the dry weather, it didn't do as well as other years . It was also direct seeded in May.
Here is some yellow hyssop with lavender blooms. Again it was direct seeded in May. The flowers are very attractive to bees. I like the chartreuse leaves that are so bright. With the bright pink petunias, they make a vibrant combination. The hyssop is a perennial but other times that I have grown it in the ground, it has not survived our winter so now I am just growing it as an annual.
The marigolds are still blooming profusely. I started them inside towards the end of April so they were pretty small when I planted them out. They grew really quickly and I had blooms by the end of June. I think they established better than if I had bought flats of plants already in bloom.
Some late blooming phlox with some sedum. Some phlox is very late blooming such as this one and I have an orange one that is still just in bud. I hope it will eventually open.
The yellow pear-shaped cherry tomatoes are tasty and also bright on the plant. It's been a good year for tomatoes as they enjoyed all the sun we had. I had so many full sized tomatoes that I even made tomato sauce something I almost never do. The tomatoes are full of flavour and sweet.
I haven't been able to get a shot of him or her but the bright green tree frog that hung out last year in our white plastic pipe railing on our back deck has been back for most of the summer. I presume it is the same one. Pretty cool that even a frog would return to a happy place from one year to the next. He is very shy and scoots away from us if we try to take a photo but I'm still hoping that I can sneak up on him.
Hope your gardens are doing well and here's hoping for good days ahead.
