looky looky, they're heeere...

its our own field of dreams story. we planted a butterfly weed plant (asclepia tuberosa) in the hope of attracting monarchs. what a joy it was to walk outside and see two, three or four of them fluttering around the plant and stopping for nectar and apparently more...

we have had multiple caterpillars so we know now that those butterflies did more than just flutterby, they made more butterflies!

oh so pretty!

when we went to florida last month, we wandered around pensacola and saw the largest crepe myrtles ever! to get an idea of how big those trunks are, look at the next photo

the trunks are larger than a fire hydrant and they are single trunks. most crepe myrtles are multiple trunks growing in a cluster. not these!

one of our favorite finds was the garden gate, 3268 fordham parkway in gulf breeze (FL). the little house is very inviting and the owner/staff are some of the nicest people we have met. they spent so much time with us answering all of our questions, showing us many plants and helping us to decide what to buy so we would have success with it in our garden.

so many beautiful plants to choose from!

more plants to check out

a funky mushroom in a fruit trees pot. we finally settled on a goldenrod and an iron weed for the big border bed we are building and a small selaginella (golden fern) for the front shade bed.

my beautiful roselle plant.

a close up of the roselle

wow-what a show the basil is putting on in the temporary bed!

the whole bed is bursting with herbs

they are hard to see but if you look closely at the rock, at about 10 oclock you will see the ironweed in the patch of dirt that touches the rock and at about 1 oclock is the goldenrod. these are the plants we bought on our trip. the little group is part of a larger bed that will eventually make a border between our yard and the idiot next door who will not mow his yard.

another cluster of plants and an interesting tree stump that are part of the border garden

just walkin' the dog

on occasion, darry laments the fact that he is no longer a part of the trendy food scene. he has worked in many top notch restaurants, hotels and country clubs where the food must be of the current trends and fads or classically prepared from high end ingredients. however, he is reminded somewhat frequently of why he left that scene; scheduling and benefits. this was the case on labor day when we had a not so frequent monday morning together. what did we do with that opportunity? not much, we just took the time to enjoy a quiet and lazy day together, reading the morning paper with a cup of coffee and then walking the dog the long way around the neighborhood. we live in an old neighborhood, no new development in the last 20 years and it is right next to the nashville zoo.

pretty little flowers growing along the road, some call them weeds but i want some in my yard in the new wild flower border we are building.

persimmons on a tree by the road, we can't tell of ours have fruit but several in the neighborhood are loaded.

one of the treats of living by the zoo, seeing the giraffes as they walk from their house to the display area. look closely in the center of the photo and you will see one.

there goes another, they have 2 males and 1 female. they are all masai giraffes.

here you can see two of them walking

this one spotted us, most likely he picked up the scent of our dog

sometimes, they get confused and return to the house rather than go on to the display area. that meant we were able to see two of them up close at the same time.

heading the wrong way again!

it's falling and i can't stop it...

it's labor day weekend and that must mean summer is over...living in the south means that we should have at least another 6-8 weeks of warm weather, warm enough that plants will continue growing and producing and coats will not be required to work in the garden. i like fall; the smells, the crispness to the air, the colors and the lack of high heat/humidity. even so, i will miss summer and i will wait patiently for it to return.

this summer we finally built our patio. we did it real cheap; free stones from a stone yard that manufactures architectural stones and moss plugs from our own back yard. now all we need is some outdoor dining furniture.

a preying mantis in the perilla plant in the herb bed

thai roselle plant, it is a member of the hibiscus family. if you are a fan of herbal teas, that big red calyx is what is used when hibiscus is added to teas.

nasturtiums and lemon verbena in the herb bed

our little fig tree has a little fig!

the little fig tree has more than doubled in size this year and we will most likely get a bunch of figs next year, i can't wait!

the bed out front has really filled in nicely. i like the morning glories that are growing on the metal bed frame better than last year's cardinal climbers.

now that fall is approaching, the flowers last longer into the day and i get to see them more.

our petunias and yellow flowers in the bed

seeds of change

with summer winding down, many flowers are producing seeds. if you collect them, you can plant them and grow more of your favorite plants next year. sometimes, the seed heads are just as interesting to look at as the flowers themselves are. some are even beautiful in their own way. these are some of the flowers in our yard that are actively producing seeds.

peonies have some of the prettiest seed pods. we have always let the seeds drop since we were under the impression that propagating them was difficult. this year, we noticed several new plants sprouting so perhaps it is not as hard as we thought.

some of the heads had 2 pods, some 3 or 4 and a few like this one, had 5 pods.

crape myrtle seed heads are also pretty. we always leave them on the branches and so far, we have yet to find a seedling.

cosmos look a bit punky or other worldly. however you look at it, they are as interesting as the flowers.

morning glory seed heads look like little tomatoes

coneflowers; goldfinches love the seeds so we never remove the heads.

liatris on the left and black eyed susans on the right. the black eyed susans are another favorite of goldfinches and we leave them for a while but since they propagate so easily, we remove them eventually.

liriope will sprout from seeds and rhiozomes. if you leave the seeds you can count on many more plants. that may be a good thing or a bad thing if you do not want it to spread.

we had an interesting visitor in the crape myrtle. some sort of fuzzy caterpillar eating the seed buds.

skippers like the butterfly weed.

our pretty little flower box at the end of the driveway. "proven winner" plants really do well in planters and beds. we picked up the petunias and coleus late in the season when tants plants was having a clearance sale and we only paid a dollar per pot. they have filled in nicely.

a garden fit for a king...or queen

a monarch in my butterfly weed!

the same butterfly went all over the plant drinking nectar from many flowers.

what's coming up in the garden this month

i realize that i have been slacking in the update department-sue me...it's been a busy summer and i must have blinked and missed it because school started again today. where has the time gone? at least we have been getting rain this year and have had to do little watering.

some of what we are growing this year:

japanese trifele tomatoes

ananas noire tomatoes

chocolate cherries

lemon cucumbers, they are getting ready to give up and i will miss them. come on spring...

patty pan squash

golden zucchini, we do better with this than the green ones-they just do not grow in our garden

hubbard squash

habaneros-who wants some pain???

the temporary herb bed is overgrown-see what a little rain can do to a garden

lasagna garden-it's so easy to do, i urge everyone to try it!

one of my new favorite plants, native butterfly weed. see the seed pods in the background, they look kind of like okra pods, we will be able to save the seeds and grow more next year!

my garden success story, our patio. i dug up small plugs of moss all over the yard and planted them in between the stones, hoping they would spread and expecting it to take a long time. well i have been very pleased to see that the rain fall has encouraged rapid growth (rapid for moss) and it is already spreading out and helping to anchor the stones. come on out and visit the garden and see it for yourself, we'd love to have some visitors!