More glorious photos from commentor Jeffg166:
Top pic: I don’t plant the morning glories. They come up by themselves. Real thugs over running everything else.
8.15.2021: Crape myrtle with sunrise.
I don’t like Rose of Sharon. My neighbor has one. The seeds get carried or blown into my garden. They are weeds in my garden. I pull out lots every year. This one by the birdbath was left to serve as a perch for the birds.
8.21.2021: The sunflower my neighbor gave me.
***********
Sidebar, for your amusement: An essential part of astronaut self-care:
#THREAD: The extreme conditions of Antarctica make it an ideal place to test technology that could allow us to grow food in inhospitable settings like Mars. But plant scientists are testing something else there too: how fresh produce impacts well-being. https://t.co/Rdh7GL48zr
— The Counter (@TheCounter) August 21, 2021
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
eclare
Love the sunflower!
OzarkHillbilly
First things first:
Vivien Louise
19 3/4″
6 lbs 5 oz
5ish am
Aug 22, 2021
MawMaw is a happy Mawmaw even if she was checking her phone every hour all night long. Pawpaw is ready for a nap.
OzarkHillbilly
Now that that is out of the way, thanx for the pics Jeffg, especially that glorious crepe myrtle.
steppy
In a word, tomatoes.
In many words, we are getting tons of Romas and Genuwines. Canning sauce from the Genuwines that we don’t keep for slicing and canning crushed and whole Romas.
Lots of okra, still getting zucchini but slowing down a bit, green beans are close to finished.
Those are getting frozen, canned and dehydrated for the most part.
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly: Congratulations! Another Baby Girl…
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Atta boy!
Dorothy A. Winsor
Anyone who plants morning glories better be sure they like them, because those suckers are forever.
Pretty flowers.
@OzarkHillbilly: Congrats! Much happiness to everyone involved.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Congratulations Pawpaw and to Mawmaw and the proud parents! Great news!
OzarkHillbilly
@eclare: @raven: We hope to meet her this evening, depending on covid protocols. I’ll find out in a few hours.
Mama had a difficult and long labor. Her blood pressure spiked and they had to induce so she came a week and half early. Just wasn’t quite ready to meet the world I guess.
raven
The princess has crape myrtles all over and I hate the one in front of the house. I risked my life putting the gingerbread on our house and the damn thing blocks the view. It also sheds really sticky crap all over the car! Boo!
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Aw, hopefully it all smooth now.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
?
Mousebumples
@OzarkHillbilly: congratulations! Hope mama is recovering well.
satby
Well, I love morning glories and I really love those wonderful bicolor ones up top. Serious crepe myrtle envy too!
It’s going to be a humid and possibly rainy day today, with another hellish week of high temps with even higher humidity before things cool back down to average warmth and humidity. I’ve gotten a few tomatoes, but when the temps stay over 70° at night the fruit doesn’t set, so not as many as in a less steamy year.
A suggestion I read online to improve my sandy soil was to mix in biochar and plain clay cat litter. Once things cool down I may be digging up and replanting a lot of my plants in a new soil mix with both of those. Heavy on the kitty litter ?
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Congrats!
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Congratulations ?! How many is that now?
One of the two Trump supporters in my neighborhood has a crepe myrtle (didn’t know what it was until now, thanks). They just pruned it back pretty viciously. Will it bloom next year?
raven
@debbie: crape murder, they come back
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly: Congrats, Gramps.
We’ve done what we can to prep for Henri, now we just wait.
SiubhanDuinne
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh, happy news! Congratulations to everyone, and a big loving welcome to little Vivien Louise ❤️?
eclare
@debbie: People around me prune their crepe myrtles way back, too. They come back. I think that is pretty typical.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: 4! Count them: Cora Eileen, 1! Addelyn Rose, 2! Lyriel Persephone, 3! Vivien Louise, 4!
I’ve got a thumb in reserve for a 5th baby girl.
Kay
I love Morning Glories. They do self seed all over but they’re easy to pull and there is nothing like that blue. I grow batchelors buttons for the same reason- they’re rangy and floppy plants and they look a mess by midsummer but they’re really blue.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
Congratulations??????
rikyrah
Beautiful pictures?
Betsy
That Antarctica plant-nursery photo looks like the cover of the latest Kraftwerk album.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: Congratulations! Another little one to spoil.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Sweet! Don’t let them grow up too fast
ETA: And you’ve got a whole ‘nother hand!
debbie
@raven: @eclare:
Thanks, I can stop glaring at the homeowners whenever I walk by the house.
Mary G
@OzarkHillbilly: Congratulations to your entire family! All your granddaughters have beautiful names, and now you have one more to adore and spoil.
That white and lavender morning glory is gorgeous. The usual kind grow up a telephone pole in my neighbor’s yard so I get to look at them without constantly having to beat them back.
eclare
@debbie: If they are Trump supporters, feel free to still glare.
LiminalOwl
@OzarkHillbilly: Congratulations! ?
@jeffg: Thank you for the flowers. I love both morning glories and Rose of Sharon. And that’s the prettiest sunflower I’ve ever seen.
LiminalOwl
@rikyrah: Good morning!
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: Almost a basketball team! Congratulations :)
HeleninEire
@OzarkHillbilly: YAY YAY YAY ?
Geminid
@eclare: One of my customers wanted their two crepe myrtles pruned back low, because he noticed that a friend had done the same. His wife had just brought a horticulture maven out to instruct me on proper thinning of upper branches so as to a achieve a nice looking, tall plant. So the husband got ignored. He generally leaves gardening projects to his wife anyway.
JPL
Sunday mornings at Balloon Juice are the best. Flowers and babies, who could ask for more.
@OzarkHillbilly: How wonderful and congrats.
Immanentize
Love the pictures of some of my favorites! I also am no Rose of Karen — they always are asking to talk to the head gardener.
Meanwhile — Devo in Space?
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: Congrats. Be careful picking up the nippers when you see ’em! Also take that nap.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:&nbs;
Congratulations!
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
Congratulation to the parents and to Pawpaw and Mawmaw; and a big welcome to Vivien Louise.
Immanentize
Meanwhile, (now) Tropical Storm Henri has decided the Ocean State is a nice place to land. We should be getting a couple three inches over the next few days. I got the grass mowed yesterday. I love the feeling of getting summer mowing done just before it rains.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: I guess I was a day early on the something good thread! :-) So happy for all of you! Especially happy for the mama who had a tough delivery.
I love all those old-fashioned, traditional names.
Benw
@OzarkHillbilly: congrats!
My garden is full of rain!
Falling Diphthong
Morning glories: Years back I tried planting them along the fence by the road. Nothing. A few years back a different color (so wild) showed up in gardens by the driveway. As here: pretty flowers, but they try to consume everything. (Also, why would they not climb the fence, but will climb the deck?)
I quite like rose of sharon, planted after enjoying them at my aunt’s slightly warmer climate (coastal New England) and trying them here (inland) and was pleased at how well they have done. It’s our main August bloom-giver. My attempts at rhododendrons always died.
waratah
@OzarkHillbilly: I envy you as I do not have any. I really love the names of your grand babies. I am ready for the next one.
TheQuietOne
The ONLY reason to like rose of Sharon is the hummers they attract. Potted cherry tomatoes and potted peppers are doing great right now in KC area.
Kristine
Love the morning glories.
Still in drought here in NE Illinois. Yesterday’s expected 0.25-0.5″ fizzled to zip before it reached me. But the front did bring a 10F cool-down and drier air, so I’ll spend part of the morning mowing the areas of lawn that sprang up after the rains of a couple of weeks ago. After today, humidity and higher temps for the next week, but little if any rain. I am over summer.
Even so, Rose of Sharon shrubs still drawing bees and hummers. The Limelight and Annabelle hydrangeas in the shade garden have flowered, and the mums are just starting to pop. Stuff in pots–the dahlias and my beloved Gerbera daisy–are still blooming.
Been hit twice by wasps in the last three weeks. Paper wasps, I think. The nests are on the deck, but the mornings haven’t been cool enough for me to even think about getting rid of them. I may need to call the exterminator–the reaction I had to the last sting bothered me.
I’ve never seen wasps go for the birdbaths like I have this year. I think the drought made them crankier than usual.
sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I have morning glories attacking my strawberry pots.
Kristine
@Kay: I let the Asiatic dayflowers live in my garden for the same reason. The photo in the linked article doesn’t do justice to that blue. It’s one of the truest blues in plantdom.
Betsy
@eclare: @debbie:
That’s called “crepe murder” and while common, it’s pretty bad for the trees, as well as destroying their natural, beautifully muscular and picturesque branching form.
People do it to stimulate lots of weak, straggly flowering shoots. People keep doing it because they see everyone else doing it. Monkey see monkey do
debbie
@Betsy:
Okay, back to glaring then! It’s squat and ugly-looking now.
Betsy
@debbie: In my experience at least, there’s about a 90% correlation of Trumpism and crepe murder, which makes sense when you consider the common threads being vulgarity of aesthetic taste, ignorance, and a general feeling that plant growth (being part of nature) should be hacked back to nubs.