Port Potager

Ok, so there are still not all that many flowers left for cutting, but at least I found a nice new way to photograph them. The vases are set up atop the closed piano keyboard. Also, check out the big daisy that rebloomed — it's the only one to do so in the perennial border, and it's a good one! Artemisia and Shasta daisy. Snapdragons. Chrysanthemums, echinacea seed heads, and marigold.

This is my last Friday of summer — from here on out it's work, work, work, with gardening squeezed in between getting home and sunset and chauffeuring kids around. I'll try to keep Flower Friday going through frost, but it could be a challenge.  Zinnias and echinacea. Snapdragon, zinnia, echinacea. Echinacea and artemisia "Silver King."

It's another gorgeous, sunny, record-breaking warm day here, so I am writing from outside: Since it's so early in the season, there is nothing to do but enjoy the sunshine. We did everything we needed to do yesterday, including cleaning up the perennial border. The perennial border out front is mostly in good shape, and the biggest pain of its clean up is already done . All that was left was to trim back some of the dead stems that I didn't get to in the fall clean up. Some of that was on purpose, as the chrysanthemums still had some life left in them; other parts were just laziness. Anyway, we raked out some leftover leaves, trimmed away parts of plants that had died back, and gave everything a good once-over: These are our baseline photos of the perennial border for March. There's actually quite a bit going on in there — lots of plants starting to come up, and not just the bulbs. It's hard to see it in these photos because they are small, ...