It's too bad that you cant go just a tad bit shorter than 2 to 3 feet, I had lots of suggestions for you that stays with the same one plant, but with color varations. One suggestions was to go with the Cosmic cosmos--all three colors red, orange and yellow which are totally stunning and vibrant mixed together. And incredibly easy to grow from seed! Another suggestion was Magellan zinnias, which will grow like dwarf hydrangea shrubs smothered with handsized blooms that last for months. I had blooms that did not need be removed for 4 months, I kid you not! And there is just about every color available, coral, ivory, yellow, pink, scarlet, cherry, orange, salmon. I am growing over 400 of these this year. Another suggestion was a mixture of Celosia 'Fresh Look' colors in red, orange,and yellow. Most people hate celosia because they have never had good luck with keeping them going, but the Fresh Looks are very stunning, lush, healthy plants that get just under 2 foot tall, if I remember correctly. Another suggestion was to do Gomphrena, in a mixture of colors. Gomphrena, if plants are kept together and properly spaced will grow to a 2 foot tall airy "shrub" that stands up to rain, drought, etc. I grow the "All Around Purple', 'Strawberry Fields', and other colors from Park Seed, including white, rose and bicolor rose. Dont underestimate those small colored balls! They can REALLY make a huge standout, if they are grown correctly. I second the idea of using Profusion zinnias. These are like the perfect daisy like flower! Also, the blooms did not need removed for 4 months, available in colors: cherry, white, orange, Fire (reddish orange) and Apricot (my favorite). Very easy to grow from seed. You may want to check into the Tidal wave Petunias. If you space them about 2 foot apart, they will spread out like you wouldnt believe and grow to about 2 foot tall. I have never seen a petunia grow like this before last year! Though, the silver would blend right into your house color, but they do make a purple, hot pink, and cherry color that I will be doing this year. Tidals have a massive branching system to them. Do a search on gardenweb and you will find lots of pictures and ideas for them.

Good news for you Brenda! So glad to hear you did get some rain. At this point, we will take anything we can get. We went to our 5 year old grand-daughter's softball game (those little girls are so much fun to watch) and wouldn't you know it, we got rainned out! There were actually two lines of storms that went through the area today and we got some rain from both of them. I'm pleased and so grateful. I'm also looking forward to a few days of cooler weather too. My plants are looking better already. Not only from the rain, but also because the relentless sun was in the clouds quite a bit of the day. stevation, we are also sad to read and hear on the news about your dry, hot weather and the fires you are having to endure. Hopefully, rain will soon come your way and things will improve. Linda

My garden actually looks better now than it did in June, after a very short spring flush due to too little winter rain and then a very hot wind storm that decimated the garden. This was followed by a much cooler than normal July and early August which enabled the garden to recover somewhat. I'm eagerly waiting for Young Lycidas to bloom and the transplanted Earth Song and Pink Rosette to put out new shoots, which they're beginning to do. Romaggi Plot Bourbon in its third year is finally beginning to bloom quite a bit, although I disbudded it this morning since we're expecting the usual hot weather now. Since I have quite a few new polyanthas and other roses I'm hoping that by next spring they'll make a showing, barring of course another practically rainless winter. I must have over 25 roses out of 80 that are very new and that has quite an impact on the appearance of the garden. I can't wait for the day when all my roses will be the right roses for my climate and I'll never have to remove another rose! Daisy and bart, how very beautiful! Daisy, I used to think we had somewhat similar climates, but I see now that mine is much harsher than yours; your garden is so lush with happy plants that would never thrive here. Ingrid

Pat, La Nina ended several months ago but its dryness did serve as a 'set up' for the weather we're exepriencing now. When it ended, I was hoping for a quicker return to normalcy, to the extent that Oklahoma weather ever approaches anything resembling normalcy. We are in what is considered a neutral period in the ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation). Both El Nino and La Nina will influence our weather patterns during the period when they are active, and I often base planting decisions on the knowledge that an El Nino or a La Nina are occurring (when they are occurring) but they're only one of myriad influences on the weather patterns we have here and their influence can vary depending on other things that are going on. In my county we have drought at least 8 summers out of 10 and sometimes every summer....it is just that in rainier summers the drought will persist for a few weeks instead of a few months. This year reminds me a great deal of both the summer of 2003 (my county had less than 19" of rainfall that year) and the drought of 2005-2006, which I think had hotter weather than 2003 and more rainfall in each year, but not significantly more rain and not well-distributed rainfall. For example, we thought our 2005 drought had broken when we had 9.25" of rainfall in one day in April 2006, but by late June, all that moisture was gone, it was in fact only a distant memory, drought had returned and wildfires were occurring. The 2006 drought was horrendous and for us it didn't really, truly end until the floods began in 2007. I don't know how much this is true of the rest of Oklahoma because I've only lived here, but it seems like we rarely have normal, moderate weather, only extreme weather. We tend to be extremely dry for long periods of time and then suddenly we'll be extremely wet. The drought of 2003 really ended for us beginning in May 2004 when maybe 6 or 8" of rain fell in that month, but then it really and truly ended for sure when we had over a foot of rainfall in June. A foot of rain! You can't do much with that much water in such a short time except stay out of its way. Suddenly, plants that had struggled to survive in rock-hard, heavily-compacted clay, were sitting in water for weeks and weeks and weeks. Growing up in Texas, I was well familiar with the old folk saying "it takes a flood to end a drought" and I thought I knew what it meant. Then we moved to Oklahoma, and I quickly learned that both the droughts and floods we had experienced in Texas were child's play compared to what we experience here. However, since that time, a recurring drought pattern in Texas has been harder on them, especially last year and this year, than it has been on us here and has been much worse than anything I remember in Texas. I do remember 1980 was a horrible, dry, drought year in Texas but I don't think it was a dry as this year...although likely it was hotter. Fort Worth had well over 60 days of high temps at or over 100 degrees in 1980. Since moving here 13 years ago, I've observed a general trend of more extreme swings from hot/dry to wet and back again. Look at just this year in Oklahoma: many areas had record snowfall in the winter and quite a few recorded their coldest temperatures ever. Then we had an abrupt swing to hot temps...some of us were below freezing and snowy for 5 consecutive days and then once we warmed up, we went from below-freezing daytime highs one day to the upper 70s the next and the snow quickly melted. That's not typical. We had extreme hail over and over, and several outbreaks of very strong tornadoes. Some folks in eastern and northeastern OK had several weeks where they had up to 6 or 8 or 10" of rain in one week while the rest of us went up to a month with no recorded spring rainfall. How odd is that? Many parts of the state have had extreme drought and extreme wildfires. It is only July! What other 'surprises' does the weather hold for us this year, or maybe we're all past the point of being surprised? We've had some peculiar weather since moving here. For example, even though I grew up only 80 miles south of where I live now, I'd never experienced thundersnow or derecho winds until we moved here. Oklahoma is just full of surprises, and they aren't always pleasant surprises. I love this state and its people with my whole heart, but the weather can be quite vexing. Dawn