I was walking around the garden the other evening trying to get pictures of the big moths that come to the Datura. I didn't have any luck finding moths. All I found were these late working little bees.
In the near darkness one sees their garden in a different light. The Hosta blooms clearly show up and most have a light fragrance more noticeable than during the day.
As I walked along the back perimeter of the garden along the chain link fence that I keep trying to hide I was jolted into the fact that I had not developed the ribbon of a flower bed I started to create last fall. I pulled a few of the violets to see how hard the ground might be here. To my surprised they came out easily. I wasn't going to donate too much blood to the mosquitoes so I decided to wait until the next morning to work on this area.
While I have rarely, if ever, thought of August as a month to do much planting this year the last week of July and this first part of August is receiving the rain we should have had in June and first part of July. Being a highly unusual year for weather has brought me to this point. I have made a new planting.
I bought a selection of wildflowers that I have been wanting and got busy planting. Hairy Wood Mint, Northern Wild Senna, Blazing Star Liatris, Spotted Beebalm and a couple of grasses, Little Blue Stem and Switch Grass.
This area isn't full sun but it is the most sun I have in the back garden. We will see how well these plants adapt or if they even can adapt. I really hope this Spotted Beebalm Monarda punctata is quickly becoming one of my favorite plants. It adds color and an exotic look to the garden. The hummers and bees really like it too. You can click on the photo to see the spots and the exotic orchid-like parts of the blooms.
As I got about half way through in this area my Dearly Beloved must have noticed a slowing down of my progress as I dug and pulled on all those violets. He came out to the rescue. So all was planted.
In another spot in the back garden I had some rather thugish pink campanula that I wanted to remove. I was tired of having to keep a constant vigil to stop it from overtaking everything in it's path.
After my DB removed the offending plants I jumped in to plant this section with more of the Liatris.
Happily we have had an 1 1/2" of rain since we got these into the ground. All of the plants are looking quite happy out of the small pots they were in.
Have you dared to plant up an area at this time of year? I would love to know if your planting survived the typically dry hot August weathers.
