The critters are what keep me gardening and yes the pretty flowers are a plus also. I think I need to start the show with photos from the past as this year has gone nowhere but downhill. Rain has been nonexistent with very clear hot sunny skys. Perfect for the beach goer, but not so for a halfway decent garden. We Long Islanders always brag on how good our earth is. No clay to speak of, loose rich well draining soil. The only time it is not to our benefit is when we get summers like I/we are having now. Even with running the sprinklers every other day, it just wasn’t enough. That’s when I had to make the decision to just shut-em down and let nature takes its course. There are plants like my hydrangeas and my newly planted red butterfly bush that still gets water, but not much else. So with that lets look at some past pics and finnish up with how it looks today.
I hope a few may remember last years zinnias, which were stunning. They really put a smile on my face as to how many butterflies they brought in. I planted a larger bed this year, that I’ll show later in the comments.
Another exceptional show was this phlox. And now that I’m looking at this photo, I have to wonder what happened to them. I can only think they suffered from late year bindweed strangulation.
This is two years back and if I must say I think it was the best color combination of all my past gardens. Like jayden has said, yellow really makes everything pop. It really helped to bring out the blues. What do you think?
Oh looky, the one and only time I actually grew a clematis! Completely forgot about this.
Okay now moving on to this year. I’ll do the good first. The balloon flowers seem to like the hot, dry weather.
This year I bought three different colors of what they called volcano phlox. I guess considering the crappy summer I shouldn’t complain on how well they are doing. You may have to peel back the weeds to get a good look.
The next photos are for jayden. Roughly a month and a half into growing the yellow torch tithonia.
Let’s finish up with the good. For three years now I’ve been crying over not getting flowers on my hydrangea. Two bad winters and one hungry deer took its toll on them. That following year after the deer nosh attack I split and moved it to a safer place. This year it’s paying dividends big time, for me anyway. They are growing close together and a little difficult to tell there are three bushes there, so I’ll separate them for you. This one I’ve had for the better part of sixteen years, which has been moved for various reasons more times than I can count, followed by a lace cap, which I think is called candy stripe. The last photo is an offspring from the first plant shown.
The bad…… Self pruning hosta.
Impatiens for GUG. No whites this year.
And lastly. The ugly……. Nothing but wilt. Way in the background is actually the butterfly bush that the hummingbird moth is sipping on in the header photo. That is six years established, but you would think it was planted yesterday in the dead of the heat. So there you have it. Happy gardening all. Sit down, grab a cuppa and join me in the comments below. I look forward to your thoughts or reactions.
One last addition. (okay two) I spotted this little guy rummaging thru the phlox this past Thursday.
This last photo I’ll leave up to kishik to explain what we are seeing here.