idle

Learning gardening in Texas -- where there are actually two growing seasons, early spring and fall, I am used to the pattern of working hard in those cool periods and only providing minimum care and attention during the hot interruption of summer.

Indiana has been quite hot and humid -- Lord, I've whined about that, haven't I -- and the mosquitoes, absent from the first of the year, are now out in full feeding at just the time I would putter in the garden.

So for the moment, my garden is what it is, with the coneflowers starting to look shabby, and the daisies (beckies) almost over, with the coreopsis starting its second wave of yellow flowers, with the tall summer phlox lording over all the other perennials with its persistent pinkish blooms, with the tall white trumpets of my large green hostas, with the on-going transfer of blooms on the beautyberry to what will be purple fruit in the fall, to the beginning stalks of japanese anemones, with their brackets of pale pink soon to arrive, and similar flowers from the perennial begonias. The tall pink sedums (brilliant) are ready to color, their white beads fat in preparation for bloom. The black-eyed susans, late to the party, are still in full color.

The roses are trying to recover from the hordes of j. beetles, and the heat and humidity. And the cooler air will help -- both them and me.