end of august stuff

Pat and I are back from the land of no weather. I mean 69-78 yesterday, today and tomorrow with no humidity was a nice change of pace, but really, is that weather? It was fun hanging out with Katie, Sean and the girls. I promised myself once that I wasn’t going to turn into that grandparent who showed everybody pictures of his grandkids. Well that was before I had a bazillion pictures to show. With a digital camera, there is no such thing as too many pictures.

One of our neighbors volunteered to water our containers while we were gone. I figured that the rest of the garden could fend for itself while we were gone. We are over a foot ahead last year in rainfall so how bad could it get? While August is traditionally pretty dry, it’s been raining what seems to be every other day. As luck would have it, we got a couple of gully washers while we were gone. We landed in the rain. Only a gardener would be happy landing in the rain. We had standing water in all the normal places.
I needed to get into the yard and get my garden fix. I have not spent nearly the amount of time in the garden as I wanted to this summer. The garden is source of peace and tranquility for me, sitting out there with the critters, birds, bees, butterflies and my books. I’ve taken a ton of pictures but haven’t had time to post. The wet summer gave us the best ligularia display we have ever had. You can hear the bees buzzing around the yard. Butterflies have dog-fights over the flowers almost every day. The front yard is also booming. The tall rudbeckia doubled in size from last year, as have the hibiscus.
Disaster befell our pumpkins this year. Something attacked the stems right where they broke through the surface. All our plants died. We pulled the vines up and replaced them with mums. Hopefully, we’ll do better next year.

Here are some pictures of the yard in no particular order. I chose them because they look cool.
Pat and I are going to split all our hosta and thin out the ligularia, probably in October. I’ll send them anywhere that doesn’t cause late night knocks on the door by some state’s garden police. So give a yell if you want any. I’m not good with names, but can match pictures.

 Everything we have planted in this soil tile has been eaten. In years past impatiens would big as giant ice cream cones and then poof! gone overnight. Lancifolia hosta would get huge and then, gone. I thought that maybe the deer or giant rabbits wouldn't like albomarginata hosta. Well before anyone brings up the whole insanity definition nonsense, I am going to move the soil tile in the fall, away from the deer path.