What's Blooming on Shore Drive - August 16th Edition

Yes, things are still blooming here. I haven't reported on my garden in a couple of weeks, so I thought I would give you all an update. Things still look very nice, maybe not quite as thrilling as they did a month ago, but I still have plenty of blooms. We are entering the time of year that I find most frustrating as a gardener of flowers. Its a great time to be a vegetable gardener, since the cucumbers, tomatoes, beets, eggplant and kohlrabi are producing like mad and I get to reap the benefits of all my hard work. But try as I might, I find it very difficult to keep a steady stream of blooming plants throughout the summer.

But before I complain too much, here are some of the things in my garden that are doing very nicely in the late summer time frame.

The purple cone flowers surrounding our deck are starting to fade and look a bit tired, but I still like them. For one thing they are pretty carefree, and self sow profusely. I've put a few of them in my new meadow garden, and I plan to put more next spring.

In the corner of the deck I planted dill and purple hyssop (which smells like licorice but is not edible). They look really pretty together. Hyssop is a great late summer plant.

I have giant purple hyssop growing in the front flower bed, but it is way too huge and tall for that bed. I really like it, but I'm moving it into the meadow in the spring. I'll have to think about what I should put in its place....

Maybe more phlox? I LOVE the phlox I have growing in the front - white, purple and pink-candy cane. I wouldn't mind more, and its a wonderful late bloomer here.

I'm so pleased that the black-eyed susans have finally gotten themselves established. It took a lot of coddling, and much sprinkling of deer and rabbit repellent, but I think they are okay now. Now I just need them to spread around in the meadow garden too!

By diligently discouraging the blackberry brambles and pokeweed in the meadow, its given other wildflowers a chance to get established. I have a wonderful stand of Joe Pye Weed in the back of the meadow. Its a beautiful late summer bloomer.

Here is a surprise! My grandiflora peach roses bloomed earlier this summer, in June. They stopped blooming and I went ahead and fertilized them like the instructions say. Then they started blooming again! I don't mind at all!

Along the driveway great swathes of jewel weed are blooming. It has a very interesting flower that looks like a little orchid, but the plants themselves are kind of spindly. But they are in an area where, at least for now, nature gets to do whatever it wants.

On the other hand, the lobelia on the right is a bit of a disappointment. I grew it from seed, and I thought it was the red cardinal flower type lobelia, but its turned out to be purple. Its pretty but I wanted red! Oh well.

Finally, here is a mystery. Why do the native hydrangeas, pictured above, bloom and spread like crazy, but the cultivars I planted don't bloom? This is the third years without hydrangea blooms.  I have no idea why.

And, my rose of sharon bush died last winter, but I have a nice collection of volunteers that I'm nurturing, at right. Will they make it through the winter? We'll just have to wait and see!