September 5, 2016- September is here

September is here. Sometimes you are hot. Sometimes a jacket feels so nice. There was a wonderful cool breeze most of the weekend while we visited Julia's family in Chicago.
Today is Labor Day. I will celebrate that with a work day in the garden. Even with help, there is much to do.
I will get this blog post to you while it is dark. It is dark so much now in the morning.


First of all there was voting last week. The winner was the Night Blooming Cereus, an early favorite with the odds makers, for the contest this winter. The waterlily gave it a good contest, and I will not forget the one person who liked pink. Here was the final voting.
Night Blooming Cereus 22
Waterlily  16
Pink Hibiscus 1

What I particularly liked were the comments. Many people wrote in to explain why they liked a particular picture.
Comments tell you what other people actually think. In picking the waterlily picture I actually thought about whether the picture would be better as a cropped close up or with the background of the black water and different color leaves.

While I am not going to have a voting opportunity this week, you can certainly make a comment and tell me what comes to mind when you see a particular picture. Do you grow vegetables? What is the prettiest one? Have you ever grown okra? It looks a little like a mallow.

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So what's new in the garden.

The jack in the pulpit seed heads have gone all red. Here are pictures so you can see the change over time. The picture on the left is from August 25. The picture on the right is a week later.

This strange waterlily was pointed at me one day this week. Mostly they point at the sky. I have no idea what caused this one to be different.

Here is the close up of the same flower.

Vegetables can be beautiful. I do not have the sun to grow most vegetables. I do grow a few peppers on the steps up to our kitchen.














I continue resetting some of the iris beds. This week I reset the Louisiana bed. This is what one of the plants looks like. The root is designed to grow in wet conditions.









The problem with resetting a bed is that you wind up with twice as many plants that seemed to be in the ground.




The pictures below are a reminder of what Louisiana Iris will look like in June.

Brown is an interesting color in flowers. I like it as long as it is not the only color.

Here is the first fall blooming crocus.

The orchid is up to five flowers. I do not know why they can't all look the same direction.

I will close with this lantana. As I have said the color combinations seem infinite.
Have a good week.
Enjoy the cool breezes.
Philip