August 20th, 2009

The days are hot and sultry, - typically August. It is hard on the garden and the beautiful white phlox is looking tired and bedraggled, - even disheveled.

There is a faint and delicate flush of roses, (as opposed to a hearty one) and the Cannas grow more lovely every day.





The first of the asters is in bloom - the bush grows tall and elegant and soon it will be a marvelous purple bar for bees and butterflies. As the sunflowers are for the sweet gold finches that frequent the strip.

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Here are the Canna lilies, as promised. Still not in full bloom, but showing promise of being absolutely spectacular.



I walked with Dorothy to the car when she left this morning, but didn't make it back to the house for an hour and a half. There are three quite enormous piles waiting on the driveway for the wheelbarrow to trundle by. The garden is beginning to look less 'jungle-like' (except of course for the barn flowers) The rain was welcome, but very hard on the phlox, and it bent the barn flowers side-ways so that they are leaning precariously atop the delphinium that are putting on tremendous growth right now.

Around the perimeter of the garden where the delphinium have spread, eager for a little space and a view of the meadows, some of them have budded and in a week or so we will have a second flush of lovely pastel bloom.

The nasturtiums remind me of my grandmother's garden where they grew along the pathways. And the chickweed. It grew abundantly under the back 'stoop', cooling the crawl space and making it green and moist and inviting when the afternoons grew hot and sultry.



The delicate pink poppies keep opening their paper thin petals to the hot sun, and are matched by a pretty pink double cosmos, a volunteer from last year.