As is usual, I’m learning, at this point in the year here in north Texas, though I do have a tolerably alive outdoor property (thanks to probably over-watering it), it looks a bit tired and stressed. Everything plantlike is wilting gradually before the season-ending genuine drop in temperature will give it a short revival. Assuming everything continues to go as usual.
In the meantime, I will let our mowing crew change their usual routine this week and dig up some of the lawn they ordinarily mow, putting in a stone-lined gravel path from porch to road so that guests don’t have to traipse quite so far out of their way in the dusk when heading from their cars on the street to the dining table on a visit. But I’ll still feel a little bit wistful when I look at my fainting ‘nursery’ of clearance-sale plants, where they huddle in stolen bits of shade and get thirsty for their next watering an hour after the last one because of the continued high temperatures.
So I will cheer myself up with a little imagined wandering through the garden at earlier and cooler times by sharing with you a few vignettes of some of our plants in happier, hardier moments. If I can’t quite ‘stop and smell the roses’ without them or me getting roasted to a crisp, I’ll inhale the memory of their sturdier selves and hope to nurse them back for a smaller second-coming before winter actually arrives.
Art-Colored Glasses 
Beautiful photos. I just noticed today that my Cape Honeysuckle is perking up. Once things hit the 90s it stops blooming, and then begins again when the days shorten a bit and the temperature drops. It’s good timing, because the hummingbirds like it, and I hear they’re on the move.
May your Cape Honeysuckle grow as large as my sister’s–which, when we visited her place in June, was nearly dwarfing her front porch. It’s no wonder hummingbirds would love such an explosion of trumpet blooms!!
Lovely photos, Kathryn. You’re trying to coax a second coming and I’m getting ready to start pulling and tossing. How quickly Summer passes.
As you’ll see from today’s post, I’m getting some unexpected help with aeration, pest control, *and* pulling and tossing of weak plants!!
Beautiful photos – I so enjoyed our tour around the garden.
One thing that’s great about macro shots is that they can ‘ignore’ the contextual disarray when needed. 😉 But I do enjoy every bit of prettiness that my garden will put forth for me. 🙂
Just lovely…all of the Fall Stuff is coming on now, even though this is the first morning to really feel Autumnal…Angel’s pumpkins have the barest blush of orange, and the asters are just about to bloom…
Ooh, Autumn. A season I do rather miss out on for the most part hereabouts. So I enjoy it all the more vicariously when I can pop in chez toi and revel in it.
Kathryn, what magnificence you have in your garden. Everything still looks fantastic! The only thing that gives me solace in your cooling summer into autumn is that (hopefully) my summer is just around the corner. I will take good care of it before sending it back to you again.
🙂 Mandy xo
Isn’t it nice that at least we can act as off-season caretakers for each other’s spring and summertime!!
xoxo
Kathryn
It seems us northern hemsiphere gardeners are winding down, along with our gardens. I’ve just been taking photos of the last blasts of colour that are soon to go, the sead heads are appearing now and the lavender has all but died back. Time to plot and plan and dream of next year !
I think I enjoy the plotting and dreaming just as much as the reality of it all, to be honest, but I seem to forget that when I’m seeing the reality fade each year. Thanks for the reminder!! Meanwhile, among my plots and plans is the desire to create better off-season beauties out here with said seed heads and such other fall-and-winter decorations as I can incorporate over time. 🙂
Beautiful! Foliage I’m not privileged to in NJ!
One of the joys of blog-gardening is exactly that! I love seeing what I can get to grow here that I’ve not been able to grow before, and even more, what can be grown by my friends in NJ, back home in WA, in England and Sweden and South Africa and Guatemala and India and-and-and . . . ! 🙂
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