more September blooms

Kind of a quiet, boring day here - we spent most of the day leveling a space for my new garden/storage shed. Hopefully, I'll have photos to share of the new shed within the next week. Tonight we went out for pizza with friends - a very fun evening of catching up.

Here are more photos of this weekend's blooms.


This is by far the best photo I have ever taken of spiderwort. Usually they come out looking very flat. This one is perfect (if I do say so myself!). About a month ago, I cut most of the spiderwort back, and now they are blooming again.

This is the wild coneflower that's been blooming all summer. This is a workhorse!!

The mountain bluet is blooming again also. I love these spidery blue blooms.

I have a snakeroot plant that has been moved many, many times. For the last few years, it hasn't been very happy and hasn't bloomed. So last fall, I moved it to yet another home. When I dug up the plant, it split into 3 plants. They all look healthy, but they are just now sending up these little flower stalks. I think they're the same variety as the ones I showed blooming a couple months ago - big, beautiful flower spikes. I'll give these another year here - hopefully, they'll bloom earlier and better next year. (If not, I do have a couple more places to try :) !)

Here's one of my dark snakeroot - I believe this one is "Brunette." It's just starting to bloom. Again, not terribly impressive. This one may not be getting as much moisture as it wants - it's right next to the river birch clump. Gosh, I hate to move these things all the time.

The physostegia - or obedient plant. This is a fun little plant that should keep increasing in number every year.

Turtlehead. Not a great photo - but look at all those blooms! I love these plants.

I think this is the last veronica in the garden still blooming.

Brown-eyed Susans are still going strong.

A tuberous begonia. These finally started blooming last week - way too long to wait for container plants!! I had some red and some yellow that did quite well this year, but the rest were only so-so. I may decide to not do these next year...

The white "David" phlox is still looking very pretty. Some of the other phlox have blooms, but they're coming to the end.

The Japanese anemone are still looking good.

Another shot - I just love these airy little blooms.

I just took some under-performing begonias out of a hanging planter by the streetside door, and put in these pansies. (And then the temps jumped into the 80's for a couple days - of course!!) I absolutely love this color.

7 random garden facts

Over a month ago, Kitt at "The Kittalog" tagged me to do a "7 Random Garden Facts" meme. (And you didn't believe procrastination was my worst habit!) I'm not sure why, but this has been a hard one to do. So I'm just going to write 7 things that jump into my head right now, and that will be that. Kitt - thanks for tagging me - I probably seemed like a natural for this meme - but evidently, not so much!!!!

Early this summer, we were out on the boat one day cruising the shoreline, looking at houses and yards. I said something like - but why don't these people do gardens???? Without missing a beat, Mark said, "Maybe they have lives." OUCH! But yes, my first garden fact is that if you're really into it, gardening takes a heck of a lot of time.

Nothing has to stay in one place forever. An alternate definition for gardening could be: moving things around in one's yard. I have some plants that move yearly - some gardens that undergo complete renewals every year or two... you get the picture. I love that if you goof or change your mind or whatever, you can grab a shovel and do it over!

Gardeners love to share their gardens. They love to have people walk through their gardens and ooh and ahh over everything. They love to talk gardening. If you garden, you can strike up a conversation based on gardening anywhere in the world. This is the primary reason I started blogging - to have people ooh and ahh over my gardens. :)

And, they love to share their plants. Plants always need dividing, etc, and most gardeners are thrilled to share their extras. My experience has been that gardeners are very generous.

Being able to grow plants in the dirt outside does not necessarily mean you can grow plants in little pots in the house. Indoor and outdoor gardening are two very different talents.

The more you play in the dirt, the more confidence you will have in your abilities to garden. Most of my gardening friends and I have acquired our design talents from doing. (I'm not actually claiming that I have talent, but I'm better at figuring out what I want than I used to be.)

When we first moved in here, we had an almost totally shady yard. I grew up on a farm. My mom's gardens were total sun. So I went to a small nursery near our home and asked them to design a shady garden for me. The gardens themselves are long gone, but I still have some of those plants - snakeroot, turtlehead, geranium, Jacob's ladder, lungwort - things I didn't even know about when I started. Everyone has to start somewhere, and it's okay to get some help.

And, because I took so long to do this meme, a freebie: Rototillers (and the men who run them!) are a gardener's best friend!