So, since I have a little time for a break between the two novels I’ve been working on, I thought I’d do a new post.  This one celebrates the success in the gardens that Yang and I have had this year.  First, I’d like to share with you how lovely the flowers have been.

We had lots of beautiful flowers this year.  Toward the end of April, Yang kept up his tradition of putting in the Impatiens by the end of the driveway.  Boy did those guys thrive all summer long!  If you can believe it, they are still going strong now at the end of September!  We had put in some pansies on the level above them, but now the pansies have passed.  Happily, one of last year’s Mums has returned and I will soon find a companion to plant with it.

The Black-Eyed Susans were especially prolific this year.  They were here when we moved in, and every year they come back. We’ve added some variations to the standard version, so there are some nicely differing versions.  These are one of Yang’s favorites.  He even keeps an old driveway spot clear so they can proliferate there.

We even have our share of roses.  Years ago, my mother-in-law gave me two roses, one yellow and one pale peach.  The yellow one is still going!  sometimes I get two flowers; this year only one, but it is a lovely one.  And it has such lovely associations for us.

 Last year we also rescued some mini-rose -shrubs from our cemetery Memorial Day decorations for family.  This year, the roses came back just lovely and the bushes, though still small are growing much bigger!

Our Morning Glories are quite a pleasure to see every day when we get up.  I did buy some more seeds this year; however, I always harvest seeds from the orchid and magenta colored ones.  There are so many deep purple ones (default color), I don’t need to save the seeds of those.  I especially love when we get a hybrid, the orchid one with a streak of deep purple or even half and half colors.  Later in the season, we also had white with pink centers and large blue or white with light blue streaks.

I also have flower boxes, which I love to arrange with complimentary colors and shapes of flowers.

We also had quite a crop of sunflowers.  These pictures were taken before everyone had attained his full height.  So, some are much bigger now.  They were very gallant, fending off the June bugs that usually devastate them in particular.  It didn’t hurt that I went out every afternoon before dark and sprayed a water and tabasco sauce mixture on them for a month.  I’ll try to post some more recent photos later, though their flowers  are now a bit droopy.  The birds are enjoying the seeds, anyway.

I’m not sure what kind of sunflower this one is.  I’ve seen the rusty colored sunflower as a single stalk and maybe one or two flowers.  I’ve seen the gigantic, multi-headed sunflower before in yellow.  I’ve never seen the shape and color combined like this before.  Well, maybe on The Outer Limits.  Anybody out there who can identify this one?

Well, anyway, let’s close with one of my favorites, a delicate wildflower.  The Asiatic Dayflower.  The shape is so delicate and the blue petals with the yellow stamens make a beautiful color combination.