I think L. punctata, its from Kansas. It is not happy or else just drunk-- maybe its crawling from too much spring rain on the bottom of the slope? It put out those snakey stems in early August, then it put up a bunch of new straight ones that bloomed in fall which was sort of weird. The ones planted up higher on the slope were straight, much shorter & bloomed later. I sent a big bagful of seed south down Austin way. This post was edited by TexasRanger10 on Tue, Apr 15, 14 at 1:56

Pale yellow- Hibisicus Dark/orangeish yellow- Marigolds! How about adding one for deep yellow? This would be the black-eyed susan...the one that grows upright, not the vining one. It's actually the Maryland State Flower. I've seen the most beautiful beds of them along the roadside traveling to the Eastern Shore. Breathtaking!!!!!

Thanks for the encouragement, wendyb. hey_j, you got me thinking, too. Dangerous. Expanding ok, that's doable but not now and will think really hard about adding flowers. One row of hostas if they fill out like I hope should be fine and such an improvement over the mess before. I try very hard not to be impulsive like I was when younger, because mistakes can be costly in time and money, don't like running around carting stuff home but have to, of course, and try to consider all the options and not buy the first thing I see when I am out unless it's what I went after, etc. The extra layers of newspaper mulch, that will be fine for fall and spring on both beds and maybe other places, too, just learned about that this year, lined a long strip with it topped with mulch, really helped, but didn't want to bother cutting & folding it to fit around smaller plants and roses now that they've grown a lot and thorny ones. Oh you don't know how much I wanted to add something pretty lining both the outer edges, eliminated the scalloped because of the mowing and kind semi-artificial, like it where others have used it, no more black stuff w/rolled edges if I can help it unless as a temp fix 'cuz I have a couple extra pieces, and glad I had that done, but there are prettier ways of accomplishing the same goal. But I simply ran out of steam and had to turn to other things at that point, sure glad I got them better than they were and can do that myself even if it takes 3 times longer than it would some people. And glad I didn't if I'm going to run the borders out a bit more, 6" would be good and over the winter can plan ahead and smother (or Roundup which I've been procrastinating about mixing and using because I'm kind of afraid of it) what's there and not have to dig as hard by spring as what I did. It's so blasted hot and humid today, I did what had to be done and also pulled a few BIG weeds in front. I will try to test the moisture level as soon as I can get to it, and the bottles, if needed, wouldn't have to be buried as deep as I feared to hold them if I slant them a little and can find some spikes, can use those elsewhere now and then. I really hope I don't have to go to that extreme there now but will try to get some anyway just to have on hand. You have no idea how my mind gets going and I say too much, but I don't know how many times I've previewed my posts several times, got written what I want, and don't want to hit back to check if I read correctly, know you can do it and hit forward again, but fear losing it and having to start over, glad I'm not the only one who deals with that :-).

Oh yeah, RR, those are pattypan squash. If they are hard on the outside they might be even a little bit over-ripe. My girls liked it if I just cut them in half (take a slice off the bottom so it will sit flat if necessary, then scoop out some of the middle, saute that with some bread crumbs, cheese, italian sausage if we had it, then stuff it back in and bake the squash. We added onions, parsley, basil, mushrooms, garlic, whatever was on hand and tasted good. (grin) As LindaC mentioned, they can be used nearly any way you could use zucchini or the yellow crookneck summer squash while they are young and tender, but if the skin is tough, you might want to peel them and treat them more like a winter squash. Annie