Garden Bloggers Bloom Day -- August 2013

How can it possibly be Garden Blogger's Bloom Day already? Here's what's been blooming in my garden in the month of August.

A patch of Echinacea, towering for now over a golden Catalpa, which I'm hoping will one day be much bigger

I love the orange buttons in the center

Rudbeckia

Still to open Rudbeckia, with a surprise hanging under it -- looks like a Daddy Long-Legs

Monarda 'Raspberry Wine' which the hummers fight over endlessly

While I stood here in front of this bed taking photos, two hummingbirds, soon joined by a third, were buzzing all around me, chasing each other and chattering away. Impossible to get good photos of them zipping around at warp speed, so I just delighted in the moment. Every so often, one of them would stop in mid-air and fan its tail feathers, a display I wasn't sure was aggression, or aeronautics.

If you click here, you can see photos from earlier in the year when I had just finished redoing that bed. At the time I said that there was still plenty of room in the bed for more plants. Mmmmm....maybe not.

Here's a view of that bed from my back porch, where I sometimes sit with a cup of coffee and a book in the afternoon. The hummers can be a distraction, as watching them is more captivating than reading.

Clethra alnifolia 'Ruby Spice'

Lobelia cardinalis

Lobelia siphilitica

Liatris and a sleeping bee

Coreopsis 'Red Shift'

Penstemon

Echinacea 'After Midnight'

The center buttons are much redder than the species, and the stems as well

Penstemon 'Tubular Bells'

Aging Hydrangea quercifolia flower

Helenium

Dahlia (I'm sure I could find the name if I really tried)

Another Dahlia

Tiny Hydrangea flower on the dark-leaved Hydrangea that I bought earlier this spring

My Asters are starting to flower, a sign I usually think heralds fall....

Noooooo! A Japanese Anemone, another sign of the dreaded fall

I may be making a mountain out of a molehill, but...

A mole, maybe a whole family of them, is messing up my dry stream/rock edging

At least they're not coming up in the lawn, or in the middle of the bed. But I'd prefer that they not come up at all.

Stargazer Lily

'Black Beauty' Lily

Helenium 'Red Shades' -- I saved seeds from this last year, but none of them sprouted, so it may be sterile. Or maybe the bits that I saved weren't actually the seeds.

Blackberry lily, with its adorable twisty candy-like spent flowers

Eryngium 'Blue Hobbit' -- another plant that I saved seeds from last year, which sprouted. We'll see if the seedlings retain this small stature

Monarda 'Jacob Cline'

It's flowering well, but very floppy. I moved it here from a different spot in the same bed earlier this year. I don't know why this one flops and 'Raspberry Wine' stands so nice and tall. The 'Raspberry Wine' is in richer, more moisture-retentive soil, and gets afternoon shade. This is a sunny, drier spot with sandy soil. I'm thinking I may move the 'Jacob Cline' into the back garden in the fall, where the soil is better, and see what happens next year.

Here's that bed from the other side, my neighbor's view

And here's a visitor to the Agastache in the gravel garden, captured a couple of days after they were buzzing me in the back garden. I love its tiny feet all tucked up.

Garden Blogger's Bloom Day is a blogging meme started by Carol Michel of the blog May Dreams Gardens. Check out her post here as well as all the other links from blogs all over the world, celebrating their flowers for the month of August.

I usually join in Foliage Followup, the day after GBBD, but I may not this month. In fact, my blog may be quiet for just a little while. My son is coming for a week's visit in a couple of days, and we have all sorts of plans!