GBBD - Come have a seat in the blooms

Self-seeding impatiens.

It's the 15th of the month and time for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens.   A walk through my garden with the camera this afternoon was more rewarding than I expected.  At this time of year it seems that everything is worn and frayed and many of the blooms are spent.  But there are a few plants that are at their peak now.  

Drifts of lantana in the front bed have always been a magnet for butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds.  The butterflies have been few this year, but while taking this photo a hummingbird flew all around me as if he was asking me to move.  If only I'd been able to capture him in the photo!

August is also bloom time for liriope, sometimes called "monkey grass" or "lilyturf"  It can be invasive, spreading by runners, but I love it all the same - and it's very pretty when it blooms.

bordering the sidewalk to the side porch

In front of Homestead Purple Verbena, also a reliable August bloomer

Some of the beauties from early in the summer are still hanging in there, displaying a bloom or two.

This is the lone bloom on the Luna Blush hibiscus.

The Meadow Beauty, a native wildflower, isn't blooming as profusely as it was, but there are still plenty of delicate blooms around the birdbath.

Several varieties of coreopsis have been faithful all summer.

There are a few newcomers to the garden that have proven reliable through the August heat.

Kerria Japonica

Multiblue Clematis

If you stroll around my garden you'll see these and other blooms - zinnias, knock-out roses, hot lips salvia, blue speedwell, May Nights salvia, Becky Towe Phlox, red yarrow, dianthus, and more.  But if you want to be surrounded by blooms, you'll want to have a seat in one of those Adirondack chairs.
Click on over to May Dreams Gardens and see what's bloom in other gardens around the world.

One hundred and counting

This is my 100th post to Ginny's garden.  I was off to a slow start in 2008, with only 15 posts that year, and only 22 in 2009.  I started my blog in the dead of winter, without anything much to blog about.  I had decided that I needed to keep a garden journal, with pictures and notes to record what I had planted, what worked, and what didn't.  In February my husband brought home some yard art that he had purchased at one of our favorite local shops and that was the subject of my first post - three pictures, a nearly empty garden, and just a few words.  I posted the picture below in the Spring of 2008 when we planted the bed in front of the fence.  The hostas you see in front of the fence had been planted where they received too much hot afternoon sun and needed to be moved. We added some small azaleas, some impatiens, a little Japanese maple, some hellebore, a fern, and a few other things - with plenty of room to grow.

June 2008

In June of 2009 it looked like this

Much to my delight, the impatiens had re-seeded throughout the bed

Last fall we lost all of the shade provided by the trees on the other side of the fence.  I blogged about that here, here, and here and still grieve over it.  We've planted some Carolina Jessamine and are patiently waiting for it to grow along the top of the fence to soften it.  

Now at the end of June in our first season without shade,  the impatiens have once again re-seeded and are growing well where they have shade from shrubs and structure, such as the bench.

Some of the hostas, on the other hand, will have to be moved - they're sunburned already.  I don't know what I'll replace them with.

On the up side, I planted zinnias that I grew from seed just to the right in front of this bench, and they're doing well.  Zinnias are just about the cheeriest flower I can think of.  I've also added brazilian verbena, some mums that will provide color in the fall, some purple verbena.  Sunflower and cosmos seeds have sprouted.  

Meanwhile, impatiens have popped up all around the yard.  I grow them in pots each year on my side steps and they've sprouted in the cracks of the steps.

The brick keeps the roots nice and cool - I don't have to water these much!

I have been learning and growing as I've written these 100 blog posts - growing older but I hope I have also become more humble, patient, and accepting.  (Losing those trees has been my greatest test, and I'm not sure I've passed it yet.) I think the next 100 blog posts will come much more quickly than the first 100 as it's a joy to be able to share what's going on in Ginny's garden with you.

I think the true gardener is a lover of his flowers, not a critic of them. I think the true gardener is the reverent servant of Nature, not her truculent, wife-beating master. I think the true gardener, the older he grows, should more and more develop a humble, grateful and uncertain spirit. ~Reginald Farrer, In a Yorkshire Garden, 1909