It's looking really great Annie! I was afraid you'd be trolling around the garden in a canoe. But the garden fared well.
What I am wondering is how your orange cosmos are so much ahead of mine :) Mine re-seeded and are only a few inches tall still. It's very weird. Yet the August blooming daylily is blooming now??

I love the gardens and all the views. Take some pictures of the chickens too, please.

DAISIES

New bed I built in January 2009. Still heeds work. You can see the Variegated willow in the back corner that I grew from cuttings that GG sent me sent me two years ago.
{{gwi:690849}}

There is Magenta Bee Balm, Daisies, 2 varieties of Phlox (not blooming yet), Deep red and magenta Mums (ditto), Indian Blanket Flower (just beginning to bloom), and the Pink Faery Rose. Behind them are Red Hot Pokers. On the back side I planted Forsythias and a Mock Orange. On the far right end (not shown) are Mums and Larkspurs, tall Garden Phlox (beginning to bloom) and very tall Australia Cannas with their Purple & Maroon leaves and bright red flowers (not blooming yet). I just planted Oxeye daisies in there and several Impatiens. Very shady under that Mulberry tree, so trying to find things that like DRY SHADE, as the Mulberry zaps the soil of every bit of moisture, even with several inches of mulch. The wild birds are taking care of the Mulberry fruit right now, so are not eating much of the bird seed I put out every day.

{{gwi:690850}} Closer view of that corner

The double ruffled Daisies - up close
{{gwi:690851}}

I grow four kinds of Daisies in my gardens: Shasta, Silver Princes, Becky, and Oxeye

{{gwi:690853}} Silver Princes

Shastas {{gwi:690855}}

{{gwi:690857}} Snow Maiden

Oxeye Daisies, Forget-Me-Nots, WallFlowers, Cosmos, Sweet Allysum, Wild Snapdragons & Sweet William in this Wildflower Shade Garden that leads up into the Woodland garden
{{gwi:690859}}
Sweet Annie (Artemesia annua) growing along front were volunteers. I love the fragrance of them when I brush by them or crush them underfoot. They grow up to 7 ft tall, so have to be trimmed back or moved. I let them grow willy-nilly all over the garden

{{gwi:690862}} Closeup

Forget-Me-Nots {{gwi:690865}}

DAISIES

New bed I built in January 2009. Still heeds work. You can see the Variegated willow in the back corner that I grew from cuttings that GG sent me sent me two years ago.
{{gwi:690849}}

There is Magenta Bee Balm, Daisies, 2 varieties of Phlox (not blooming yet), Deep red and magenta Mums (ditto), Indian Blanket Flower (just beginning to bloom), and the Pink Faery Rose. Behind them are Red Hot Pokers. On the back side I planted Forsythias and a Mock Orange. On the far right end (not shown) are Mums and Larkspurs, tall Garden Phlox (beginning to bloom) and very tall Australia Cannas with their Purple & Maroon leaves and bright red flowers (not blooming yet). I just planted Oxeye daisies in there and several Impatiens. Very shady under that Mulberry tree, so trying to find things that like DRY SHADE, as the Mulberry zaps the soil of every bit of moisture, even with several inches of mulch. The wild birds are taking care of the Mulberry fruit right now, so are not eating much of the bird seed I put out every day.

{{gwi:690850}} Closer view of that corner

The double ruffled Daisies - up close
{{gwi:690851}}

I grow four kinds of Daisies in my gardens: Shasta, Silver Princes, Becky, and Oxeye

{{gwi:690853}} Silver Princes

Shastas {{gwi:690855}}

{{gwi:690857}} Snow Maiden

Oxeye Daisies, Forget-Me-Nots, WallFlowers, Cosmos, Sweet Allysum, Wild Snapdragons & Sweet William in this Wildflower Shade Garden that leads up into the Woodland garden
{{gwi:690859}}
Sweet Annie (Artemesia annua) growing along front were volunteers. I love the fragrance of them when I brush by them or crush them underfoot. They grow up to 7 ft tall, so have to be trimmed back or moved. I let them grow willy-nilly all over the garden

{{gwi:690862}} Closeup

Forget-Me-Nots {{gwi:690865}}

That's All Folks! (for now)
~Annie

Oh, this darned site! I posted the first one and it said, "Failed Message" - that I needed to change the title. So I did - re-posted it and now there are two!!!! Good Grief! Grrrr....

Here are the Native Oklahoma Purple Coneflower & Indian Blanketflower which I forgot to post. The Indian Blanketflower is our state Wildflower
{{gwi:690871}}

Oklahoma Indian Blanketflower - aka Mexican Firewheel {{gwi:690873}}

This is one I discovered in my garden: a new color. I named it 'Annie's Pink Sunbonnet' {{gwi:690874}}

I tried to get a Wildflower study group who develops flowers to take it and develop it for market, but they did not want to give me credit for the discovery and/or any legal rights to the profits made from its development. I sent them pics of it and they were VERY INTERESTED in it wanted me to send them cuttings. Well...poo poo on them! I have since seen a "New Variety" on the market just like it or similar that "they developed". Hmmmph! Copy cats!

OK, Rita, I will post a separate topic just for you of my chickens. :)

sweetannie4u

Annie, wonderful photos. Your blanketflower is just spectacular. I rescued one from a bargin bin and hope it will revive and do well.
Susan.

Annie, you mentioned a mulberry tree. If you do anything special with your mulberries, can you post that on "the other side" in conversations. Thanks. I have huge bags of them from friends.

lots of great flowers -- what a garden!

There's a wild pink gaillardia down on the coast of NC. I emailed a nurseryman about it and he told me that it wouldn't survive anywhere else.

GGG,

I've had folks giving me big bags of them a few times, too.

The only thing I think Mulberries are good for is eating them fresh...right off the tree...bugs and all! :)
When I was a kid and we came back here on vacation to see my Dad's family, I enjoyed eating them. It was a novelty. I loved them.

They kinda lose their flavor when cooked, at least to me. Just a goopy, mushy, nothingness with seeds.

Some people make pies out of them though, or so I've been told by the old folks. However, I haven't ever seen any Mulberry pies at family reunions or church socials. There are Blackberry pies, and
Peach pies, and blueberry pies...even Strawberry pies, Raisin pies, Black Walnut and Pecan pies, Pumpkin pies and Sweet Potato Pies and of course, Apple pies. I have even seen a few of my paternal Grandfather's favorite - Green Grape Pies. But Never a Mulberry pie - no not one! Kinda telling, don't you think?

After tasting them cooked, I figured out why.

The Wild birds and my chicken love them a great deal! Yum, yum. They are welcome to them!

Sorry I cannot tell you more than that.

~Annie

WOW that blanket flower is really spectacular, such a beautiful color. My shastas are one plant that hasn't flopped over from all the rain we've had, they're in bud but none have opened yet. I've said it before but your garden pulls at the old heartstrings, brings back a lot of happy memories for me.

Annette

How do you keep the woodlands in the back of some of those pictures from invading? Mine are terrible at invading if I plant near them.

That is beautiful Annie. It just makes you want to wander through to see what treasure is next.Such a wealth of blooms!
kay

"How do you keep the woodlands in the back of some of those pictures from invading?"

I work very, very hard to keep invasive plants out of my yard and remove them when they try to take hold of my garden, including unwanted trees, shrubs, vines and tree seedlings. It's my worst nightmare. I really get tired of it, that is for sure.

Although there are no vast, heavily wooded forests here, there are still the plants that grow in the woods that move onto the property and into the immediate yard. It is a continuous battle.

There are no heavy woodlands in the background. There are wooded areas along creeks. There is one small wooded area behind my back yard., I call "the Little Wood", and another slightly bigger wooded area further up the hill on my property, which I call :"The Big Wood", but no woodlands.
All the vegetation and trees you see in my photos are what I grew with only a few exceptions.

I live in the middle of the prairie.
Here is a picture I took of the land on the southside of my property, along my driveway just so I could show people what this place was like when I bought it, minus the trees.

{{gwi:690875}}

The white flowering Spirea, Jonquils and green grass along the fence is on my side along the driveway. {{gwi:690876}}
The trees in the distance are mostly junipers, elms, and hackberry growing along a dry creek. I don't believe any of those trees are native. They have become naturalized. The creek is dry most of the year but runs with runoff water after heavy rains. Farmers cannot plow there, so they leave them for shelter for their cattle.

Now, I turned 180 degrees around and took this picture of my front yard:
{{gwi:690878}}

All the land around me looks like the the above land or with even fewer trees and underbrush. Mostly prairie grasslands on rolling hills. Now, if you drive 30 or so miles northeast and southeast of here, you will start getting into the woodland areas, and far eastern Oklahoma there are pine woods and river birch, much like the rest of the South, but not here.

The worst thing I have to deal with is Bermuda grass and prairie weeds that blow into the yard, wash down the hill into the yard, or are carried into the yard by animals (via stickery seeds) or through animal and bird poop. Oh, they are awful!!!

We get Poison Ivy in the yard and it has to be sprayed - I am terribly allergic. Puts me in serious jeopardy.

We have Tall Ragweed that grows up to 18 ft tall. and the regular short ragweed There are sweetbriars, and all kinds of sticky, thorny, seedy vines. There are Cowpeas (Creeping Vetch), Wild Cicily, Buffalo Burrs, Stinging (Spurge) Nettles, Horse Nettle, Nightshade, Poisonous Sumac, Chickweed (from h*ll), Lamb'c Quarters, Virginia creeper (invasive here), Curly Dock, Poisonous Hemlock, Wild Cucumber, Wild Onions, Wild Carrots, Shepherd's Purse (oh so awful this year), and many, many more intrusive, weedy, prairie-type plants, as well as the woodland-type plants.
I work hard hoeing, chopping and cultivating all the weeds and weedy grasses out of my garden. I have to battle with weeds and wild grasses and vines all the time. Oh, I hate Johnson grass, Nutgrass, Bermuda grass, and all the other weedy grasses that plague any garden and those "sticktight" vines that grow rampant in trees, bushes and everywhere if they get started. Gads.

So, my answer is simply this: I work my arse off.

~Annie

Sorry if I sounded condescending or was preaching to the choir. I come from a long line of teachers, professors and scientists, and we are all verbose and enthusiastic about EVERYTHING. Vigorous discussions around the super table are dizzying and sometimes intimidating to the outsider, and even sometimes to some of us! Eee-gads!

~Annie

I am just amazed at all the things growing in your garden and of course you had to plant them all. Lots of work but it turned out fabulous.

LOL! You didn't sound preachy at all. I didn't see that you lived in Oklahoma, so of course we would have two totally different sets of weeds, invasives, and natural successions!

The worst in my backyard, and around here in general, are constant maple seedlings, various other tree seedlings, invasive thistles, and my worst enemy of all time, TREE OF HEAVENS!!!!!!! Those dam suckers pop up EVERYWHERE and they are impossible to get rid of!

In any event, if I plant too close to the woods at the end of our old property, the maples, american basswoods, and brambles start creeping in and take over :(.

Now I live in the middle of the city and the only thing that endangers my flowers are passersby that believe that having a rose of their very own would be just lovely.

I go out to our old house sometimes (still own it) and putter around and weed and garden. And take out more tree of heavens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have one tree that is a nightmare. It is the Paper Mulberry. It spreads by sending out yellow roots and starting new trees. The trees were introduced in N. America for shade trees, as they do make excellent shade trees. They pop up everywhere. The worst thing about them is that they wrap those yellow roots around other trees and plants and choke them to death. I have lost so many trees because of them. When I dug up my Koi pond to enlarge it, there were yellow roots wrapped around and around the plastic sheet liner. It killed the pink flowering crabapple and my large Corkscrew willow I planted and had growing by the Koi Pond. Those roots literally choked those trees to death. It is now the top priority in weeding on my property - pull out, dig up and spray every single tree and sprouted tree.

They are also the tree from which Rice Paper is made and other paper things, like the Japanese paper screens lanterns. I considered starting my own home-based business making Rice paper until I discovered how insidious those trees are. Now all I want to do is kill them out.

Just to demonstrate how far reaching their roots can growo, the trees in my yard sent roots thirty five feet to and embankment, then down another twenty-five ft to the road below, and then grew under the dirt road and sprang up on the other side. There is now a stand of these trees over there at the edge of a wooded canyon where it is nice and moist. That is over 100 ft away! They are so bad. They are listed on the NOXIOUS plant list in N. America.

I called the county and state about it and they told me to spray them with a high-powered herbicide that I could get at a farm co-op. I told them I was not physically able or financially able to do that, and since these trees are on the national list for noxious trees, shouldn't the state or county come take them out before they spread any further? Nope. Rots a ruck!

Below is a LINK that I just looked up for you on the web so you can look at pics of them and read what it says about them. If you have them where you live, get rid of them as fast as you can. They grow everywhere in N. America.

~Annie

Here is a link that might be useful: Paper Mulberry - Invasive alien trees

That's interesting. I've never seen those before anywhere!

There are regular mulberries allllll around (I am unable to identify if they are white, black, or red). In any event, they are about as bad as tree of heaven, but I believe regular mulberries are native, so I'm not too erked about it.

I wonder if long roots are a mulberry thing. I have a mulberry tree (it's a male - no fruits, so I don't know if it's a white, black, or red) on one side of the driveway. It's a two car driveway. I was digging a flower bed about 15 feet from the driveway and encountered all these giant roots. I thought, maybe it was some old ash tree the city cut down.

It was the mulberry tree's roots! Oooops!

It has shiney leaaves, so definitely not a paper mulberry. Although, it spreads like crazy. So does my Mom's.

Tree of Heaven is still the worst around here. Do you have tree of heavens around there?

Also, since you are one of the main cottage garden gals around these parts, I have some foxgloves that are doing just great! They wilt sometimes in the day because the soil is sandy and drains fast, nothing I can do about that.

Anyhow, they are sending up like 10 flower shoots. Do i leave all of them or thin them out so it can concentrate on just a few of the flower shoots?

-Stanly