Autumn Joy & Friends

The last couple of days it feels like fall. The grasses are blooming and colors are deepening.

Sedum 'Autumn Joy' with  Hardy Ageratum (Conoclinium colestinum) It is hard to capture the real blue of this wandering native but I wouldn't be without it even though it is hard to control it's spread. Muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris) is just starting to open it's pink blooms I love this collaboration with Autumn Joy

Thomas Jefferson's in my Garden

Last week we were at Monticello. http://www.monticello.org/site/visit
We have not visited there for 30 years, my how it has changed!
We took the garden tour & it turns out TJ & I have some of the same plants in our gardens.  I think I actually got my Blackberry Lily seeds from Monticello many years ago. (The shop,  I didn't pinch them.)

Above, in my garden, Zinnia pauicflora (small flowered zinnia)  this seed I got from Select Seeds it is called Red Spider. It has fallen over & sprawled over a large area. My friend Pam & I saw this annual at Montrose years ago in a fall garden it was spectacular.
At left Belamcanda chinensis the 
Blackberry Lily the seed pods are opening to display the origin of it's common name.
TJ also grew the scarlet runner beans from a previous post.

I bought a packet of Purple Calabash tomato seeds as that was still producing fruit & the gardener told us it always won the tasting tests.

We shall see.

Life Goes On, Really!

My friend Teresa reminded me that I haven't added to my blog in a month. Frankly I have felt somewhat depressed about the garden. It has been a hot, humid, rainy few weeks & I have not been able to garden much for various reasons. As usual for this time of the year the weeds seem out of control. However a new yoga program and some cool days have me feeling I am going to make it!
(All this 'woe is me' must be emanating from that Victorian novel I'm reading)

Here's a hot house cyclamen Teresa gave me. I almost killed it several times since the beginning of the year & then put it outside in the ground where it bloomed finally!

Just to prove life really does go on, I noticed the lettuce (Black Seeded Simpson) plant I let go to seed in the front veggie garden has self seeded. I have collected seed from it for the spring & got the original seed free from some publication. Hooray!

Lettuce take a long time to go to seed & not the most beautiful thing in the garden whilst they are doing it.

(Halloween decoration anyone?)

But I am always delighted to see self seeding.

What's less work that that?