Hey everyone. John and I have been battling the crud. John started getting sick last week and was feeling terrible. I thought i was in the clear, but Sunday I started with the sore throat. I did not end up getting it as bad as John – in fact, he is still coughing from it – and now I’m feeling mostly better and back on the bike again.

The garden is still enjoying the rain that has been coming regularly.

The coneflowers are getting a bit tired, but still look pretty good.

Hibiscus:

This orange one is my favorite. I’m going to try bringing this one inside for the winter.

The zinnias up front are all happy and blooming. This is what the ones in the back look like:

Leaves and buds all nibbled off.  Sigh.  I started spraying with neem and some leaves are starting to sprout again. I don’t know if the neem helps keep the critters away, but it can’t hurt.

Our dead magnolia tree was removed last weekend.

I was hoping they would grind the stump down, but John didn’t ask them about that. It’s pretty low and I couldn’t put anything there anyway even if it was ground down. So, I planted a couple of peonies around it that i got in a clearance sale. (Yay!!)

Superman is guarding the new peonies. This was something we found attached to our fence when we moved in and i kept it for whatever reason.

I think I just find him funny. 🙂

The tree hydrangea:

Once the flowers start to bloom, the branches droop down when it rains.

My giant hosta:

I actually have some baby hostas that I’m going to put around our water feature. It’s hard to get things to grow there, but hostas are like tanks. Maybe they will work.

Like my “baby” Joe Pye Weed?

I like the plant, but if I had known it was going to get this tall, I would have it about 6 feet further back. I need to read and see if these tolerate being moved. It obscures the path through here, too. I don’t want to walk through it because it gets a lot of attention from the bees:

Flowering tobacco:

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Cardinal flower:

We have 2 hummingbirds that come by and they like this flower a lot.

This weekend is iris planting time!

I bought some chicken wire to cover these with so they won’t get eaten like last year. I’m also making plans of where to move plants and what new ones to put on my wish list 😀