OK I realize that there are still 3 1/2 hours of August left, but I fear I may not stay awake until the witching hour, so I'll post this thread now - close enough!

These three Lewisia 'Elise' have done well and keep reblooming. They look great and I love the flowers. Two of them are blooming and the third has developing buds. I bought six this year as plants from Select Seed for about the cost of a 4" annual each. The other three, as you can see in the second photo, aren't as happy. I know they are finicky. If the happy three make it through the winter, I'm more than willing to keep investing in them, finding out where they'll thrive, hopefully ending up with a wonderful little collection of Lewisia.

The three "happy plants" look very pretty in their rock environment.

Those three "happy plants" do look pretty, deannatoby, and you've got a nice lichen collection in the second pic.

My yard is getting a bit jungly now, this is some of what you see coming in from the street:

Walking up the path, that's Sedum 'Matrona' on the right (with a lot of bees on it):

Then the daylily 'Autumn Minaret' is still blooming, although winding down:

H. 'Autumn Minaret'

Next to it, the daylily 'Challenger' is in its prime. It's the last daylily to begin blooming for me in late summer:

H. 'Challenger'

H. 'Frans Hals' opened its last flower bud yesterday:

In the alley, the Sweet Autumn Clematis is opening. I planted one but it seeds around and keeps popping up in unexpected spots. This one decided to climb up a storage shelf.

Yes, there is a storage shelf under there:

The rose 'Carefree Delight' is blooming. It doesn't have enough sun here, but it copes.

R. 'Carefree Delight'

A volunteer that keeps appearing is the native Carolina rose. At this time of year it's covered with hips, so you can understand why there are so many Carolina roses around.

And the white wood aster is everywhere too.

Claire

Susan, what a lovely yard and beautiful bounty!

Susan, the bough of that tree in the first photo is magazine-worthy. such a beautiful shot! Love the photos and the bounty.

Oh, thank you! That much-loved old gnarled crabapple has provided me with a frame for many pics over the years.

Well, I"m still hoping to see some pictures from Sped. I love the variety you always post!

Teddy bear sunflowers

Watermelon

Timbz, that is an impressive watermelon! I had no idea it was possible to grow a watermelon of that size here in the north. Love the fluffy sunflowers too; I have always liked those.

Your vegetable harvest is splendid, Susan, and I love your red sunflowers.

My box on the front porch kept us in salad greens through mid summer, I got enough parsley for a batch of macaroni salad and another of potato salad, dill for 2 jars of homemade pickles, and finally a handful of baby yellow squash for the soup. That was it for the harvest here, hahaha. This has been a strange year. I think the cool rainy weather set everything back.

The Joe Pyeweed is loving all this extra water. This particular clump is so spectacular that I hate to see the willow bush overtake it and cast shade that the Pyeweed won't like. I planted the willow but the Pyeweeds arrived on their own. Few things are as pretty to my eye as the wide swathe of yellow goldenrod mixed with the purple/mauve of the Pyeweed along our brook in early autumn, so I hope I can figure out how to plant more willows for screening while still maintaining a border of these sun and water loving flowers. The goldenrod has many other areas in which to grow but the Pyeweed needs the swamp.

Beauttiful pic, Sped! I love how natural it all looks.

Your Joe Pye Weed loves what we do not have this summer (water), but I'm surprised at how long the poppies have lasted in our dryness. The bread seed annual poppies have finally gone to seed and dried up, but these California poppies are still healthy even though there is only one bloom now. I thought that was unusually long for poppies, but one Vermont gardening journal says they self sow in a season and can bloom in late summer. Don't know if the originals lasted this long or if they reseeded, but if they did reseed, the originals never appeared to die off.

A couple blooms from today

last daylily

Crape Myrtle

Fall is such a nice season in New England gardens, as you all are showing!

A few current pictures in Plymouth, MA:

Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, one of the few "blue" flowers I agree is blue. The white wood aster placed itself nicely:

Hardy begonia, B. grandis 'Heron's Pirouhette' that I planted about five years ago. It's slowly diminishing but still hanging on. I'm torn between clearing the plants around it to give it space or leaving them there for winter protection.

A late-blooming inherited hosta, probably Hosta lancifolia, which goes nicely with white wood aster down by the road:

Another late-blooming hosta, probably Royal Standard:

The Blue Billow hydrangea flowers turn a nice fall color. That's Blue Angel hosta foliage next to it:

Autumn Joy sedums combine well with Grey Owl juniper.

And the Grey Owls have lots of berries:

I'm waiting for fall asters (besides white wood aster) and goldenrod to open.

Claire

Sometimes it's good to let 'weeds' grow, at least if you're a relaxed type of gardener.

This is a view from my deck - I planted the grasses and a few other things there - the white wood aster and Canada hawkweed (I think) planted themselves.

Claire

Some of my favorite flowers are those that plant themselves. These hen-and-chicks however, I planted myself this past spring. They have tripled in size and grown "chicks," so I'm guessing they like this spot amidst the broken cement blocks.

These two sunflower plants were the same height for awhile. Then the one on the right (in back) in the photo suddenly went on a growing binge and shot up. For reference I'm 5'5" and the plant on the left (in front) is my height, to give an idea of how tall the other one is. I should photograph the Hubbs (6'6") next to it. I'm guessing it's taller than he is.

Anyway these sunflowers are examples of a joint effort. I initially planted their ancestors from seed many years ago, and Mother Nature has been mutating them since then using cross pollination every year until these two beauties resulted this summer. Neither plant resembles the 3 original varieties that they sprang from.

As promised, here's a picture of my 6-and-a-half foot husband with the sunflowers. I still can't get over how this plant has sky-rocketed, and how many blooms it, and its shorter counterpart, have produced.

Sped, DH is a good sport, but using him as a model really shows how tall that sunflower is. What a winning plant!

I can't remember if the orange flower on the right in the last two photos is Tithonia or even if you have IDed it for us. I like it as well!

Actually he was a willing subject, NHBabs, because he thought we should have some photos of our giant sunflower plant. He's very impressed that we grew something on this scale. It's sort of like the plant in Jack and the Beanstalk, ha ha!

Thanks for the compliments. The orange flowers are cosmos, as are the pink flowers, but both are very different and have quite different foliage. I'm not entirely convinced they are of the same species. I've grown both for many years, saving the seeds each summer. The white-ish flower in front, low to the ground is one of a few snapdragons sharing this garden space.

Some of my annual self-seeding Nicotiana which perfumes the late afternoon to early morning hours. I bought a six-pack many years ago, and have had plants every year since then in shades of white through various shades of pink to deep red.

A few recent photos

red illicium

White illicium

Another type of ginger

Garden crop

I like that Nicotiana, NHBabs.

Timbz, nice harvest, especially that scrumptious watermelon!

My eyes are drawn to pictures of plants I once grew but lost for whatever reason. One of them is NHBabs' Nicotiana, and the other is timbz6's Liriope. Maybe I'll try again.

My big old inherited osmanthus is blooming! Unfortunately the blooms essentially disappear when I try to take a shot of the whole shrub/tree, so I'll just show a closeup.

It's right next to the big old inherited winterberry and I'm always rooting for the osmanthus to slow down and wait for the winterberry to fruit. There's a partial overlap - the winterberry berries are turning red but not at full display which occurs when the leaves drop.

This is the winterberry next to a 'Goshiki' variegated osmanthus which has never bloomed (I planted several of them hoping for an osmanthus grove). The big old osmanthus is just behind these.

The goldenrod has finally appeared; in many locations as it chose.

Here it is with the ceratostigma which was accompanied by white wood aster a few weeks ago.

And next to a 'Stained Glass' hosta, a miscanthus and some hardy geraniums..

And in the alley with more miscanthus just beginning to bloom.

Pretty much all of these goldenrods were volunteers. I did once plant a fancy goldenrod cultivar but lost track of it so I'm not sure if it's still around or hybridized or gone.

Claire

This morning the sun came out again - it's so nice to see the sun after a long long stretch of dreary rain and wind and rain and wind as Jose lingered offshore.

I looked out the kitchen window and decided to make one more try at showing a longer shot of the big old osmanthus in bloom behind the winterberry.

This is the best I could do; not a very good shot:

So I got a little closer with the zoom:

And then a little closer:

Oh well, the osmanthus doesn't have much curb appeal in blossom but it looks good close up.

Claire

Not a plant, but a colony of mushrooms sprang up in an old tree stump this past week. They are crammed in there like sardines!

These were taken last week, but I didn't have time to upload them. They were all taken of the garden behind the house, which is mostly viewed from above, either from the kitchen windows or from the back patio.

Agastche rupestris (pink), Caryopteris 'Snow Fairy' (herbaceous & variegated with blue flowers) and an unnamed Helenium (yellow) The purple grasses in the background are little bluestem (taller and darker) and Eragrostis spectabilis, both of which are wild.

Shrubby Caryopteris 'Sunshine Blue' with Helenium

Spirea 'Ogon' and a bit of Scabiosa and Veronica 'Georgia Blue' at its feet, along with more Helenium and Caryopteris 'Snow Fairy'

Clematis 'Rooguchi' has been blooming since July, though it might have taken a break at some point when I was out of town.

Ogon' is one I'm considering for a spot as I try to figure the whole "anchoring" concept. How old is yours and how does it perform for you? Do the blooms look nice and last a decent while? The spot will have good sun, more "part sun" than "part shade" for sure. Its shorter stature is a plus for me right now.

I have two, and they sometimes die back a bit in winter, but that is most likely due to the voles which are particularly bad in this bed. They should be rock hardy for you. The Ogons are 3 & 4 years old, started from rooted cuttings. The white flowers are early (before the foliage has mostly unfolded) and nice, but not super long lasting. To my eye, the foliage is the main attraction and really sings all season, delicate and bright yellow-green, transitioning to orange tones in fall. Mine is in full sun, and it may be less yellow in less sun.

There is a much older one in a garden a couple towns over that has foliage interest, and that one is in morning sun but is shaded by the house by midafternoon. It stays more yellow than the green plants and it's a beautiful fountain of fine-textured foliage all season. I think it's probably 6' or 7' high. I don't think this is a plant that wants a lot of pruning.

I really like your Caryopteris 'Snow Fairy,' NHBabs.

This aster of mine is always an autumn surprise. I purchased it, along with two purple blooming asters, from Bluestone Perennials, but they all struggled in the garden where I planted them. I finally gave up on them, and, rather than toss them in the compost bin, I transplanted them into an unmowed area where I forgot all about them. The two purple varieties disappeared but this pink one has bloomed every year and is spreading. It is buzzing with bees!

Sunrise this morning arrived with dry air and no fog after a week of high humidity. What a relief!

Hydrangea paniculata 'Quickfire' is one of my absolute favorite plants, blooming for 4 months starting white in late June and blooming until frost. It's this rich pink from September on, and a lighter pink in August.

Some new plants that seem to be thriving. They aren't much to look at, but they are doing well for their first few weeks in my earth. This Kerria arrived with its foliage cut back to almost nothing and only 3 or 4 tattered leaves. It seems to like its shady spot beside the brook.

This kiwi vine (Arctic Beauty) is dwarfed by the moonflower and morning glory foliage, but next summer it will have this spot all to itself. Its leaves were mostly green when it arrived, but they have developed a lot of pink.

And this lobelia began to bloom a week after planting. Its 5 companion plants have no flowers, but look healthy.

Sped, I have found great blue Lobelia/L. siphilitica to be an enthusiastic seeder. I removed it from the garden yonks ago for this reason, but it still pops up under shrubs and in the field grass between the ornamental gardens and the compost pile where it shed seed as I was disposing of it. So I expect you will have it forever. I really like that pink aster!

I hope I will have lobelia forever, but it will have to compete with the wild goldenrod and Joe Pyeweed to survive. Then, eventually, with the pussywillow bushes I intend to plant next spring, which may do in all of those flowers when they grow big enough to start casting some serious shade. Still your words give me hope. It's survival of the fittest here!

The pink aster came from Bluestone Perennials, and is "Alma Potschke."

All my seedlings of Alma Potschke fed the slugs and this year the same vendor didn't offer them. Your photos remind me why I wanted it in the first place! On the hunt...