Love your pictures and your mess! I have a mess too, my beds look a lot like yours. I love marigolds too, I think they smell great. That big clump of Cosmos Sensation with the picotee edge mixed with the Bright Lights looks great. I grew one Chianti sunflower this year, and I love it too. I'll be doing lots more next year. Maybe this year I'll do some Love Lies Bleeding too. I have seeds, I just never got around to sowing them. I may try Black-Eyed Susan vine too. I don't have seeds, because I always thought it was more suited to the warmer zones. But it looks like yours has had enough time to get big enough to bloom, here in Mass. Again, very nice garden.

northerner,so glad to hear you didn't get discouraged! I didn't realize how lucky I am they are doing so well,until I started this thread!Thank you! Susan,I could snap pics all day in that bed! :) I just got my new camera for Christmas,isnt it exciting? Every Morning I get up and walk the yard with my camera,I take pics of just about everything! I recently discovered some Monarch cats on my pots of ws Milkweed,I have captured some awesome pics of them shedding. I also have some Swallowtail cats in various pots and gardens with Fennel and Dill. I have been snapping pics of those guys like crazy! I cant wait to show you guys the pics of my cats,they are special to me,because around here,you dont see many,due to the large amount of birds/wasps.I am hoping to change that, (not by eliminating birds,but with plantings...lol..I just realized how that sounded....lol...good thing for the preview option! ),and so far it looks like my first attempts are working out pretty good! I am doing lots and lots of Milkweed and Dill/Fennel next year,along with some other host plants,I just recently read about. My goal is to attract the Harvester,I would love those cats to hang around eating these awful little *#!*# aphids! I would love to attract them all here,but I guess I have to attack one goal at a time! ;) shemeows,I will have lots of seed I am sure,if you would like some just let me know. I will be cleaning them and offering them for trade this fall. I am keeping some individuals for a couple people,but the rest will be a mix,I am not sure if they will be true or not,being they are all together. I am going to collect seed from the shorter ones and make them their own mix and the same with the taller ones. I am definitely keeping a nice amount of seed for my self also. I still have seed left from the named ones,those I will plant separate next year,to help try to keep the seed true! Thanks so much for all your compliments,they mean alot to me,I really love taking pictures and I am so happy I have such a wonderful group of people that appreciate them,and of course who have their own collections of great pics,that I can appreciate! Thanks!:D

oops, never noticed that the pic for the cosmos psyche didn't go through correctly. sorry about that but here is the cosmos psyche Northerner, I surprised that your double click are only about 18 inches tall. It's supposed to grow to 4 feet. I had some last year and they did get that tall. I wasn't impressed with them so traded the seeds from that last fall and didn't grow them this year. Finally figured out what the orange and yellow cosmos is. It's cosmos diablo and I forgot that I had WS those seeds this year. Just have no idea what the orange ones are and the red one. I didnt' have those last year and only sowed seeds that I saved of gazebo lavender sonata fushia psyche white candystripe picotee diablo gloria sonata lavender daydream seashells white seashells pink pied piper versailles red sonata white so where it came from, the red is beyond me. I have no idea what that little white and purple petunia is either. I only know that the seeds came from a very dark purple petunia and or a very pale pink petunia that my neighbor purchased just before a local nursery closed for the month of August. She couldn't say no to the price and she planted them all in one pot. So the seeds where a mix. I have a string around the flower so that I can save seeds from it and not mix them up with the other seeds. Highaltransplanter, my plants are huge, but the toms are still small. Last year some of my cherokee purple did crack on the top but they still tasted wonderful, wouldn't be without them. The extremes in weather temps and water can cause toms to crack, but to me that is part of growing your won tomatoes in the garden and enjoying them. Tiny tim has a sweet but a bit tart flavor to it, and I didn't find the toms that small when ripe, about the size of a sweet 100. My 25 year old daughter likes them better than the sweet 100. I never heard of the mini bush yellow cherry and couldn't find much about it when i did a search. sounds interesting though and one I would like to try as well. I should have plenty of saved seeds from the tiny tim and my other toms for trades in the fall. Angie, thanks for the complement, not sure I would say I am an awesome gardener though. Some of my plants are about as sick looking as you can get and not sure why. Some has to do with the craziest weather I have seen in my life. At the moment the news and weather people are telling me that more rain has fallen in the month of July where I live than has fallen since the 1920's. Gee, didn't need to make me feel worse about the weather and all the rain than I already do. And the severe thunderstorms that have moved through on almost a daily basis for almost 2 weeks has been unreal. But that's the life of a gardener. Some years are better than others and it's either feast or famine when it comes to good weather. A pic of one of the storms that went through about 2 weeks ago, taken from the back door. No, I don't live in the tropics or a tropical rain forest. I live in a suburb northwest of Boston MA.

Thanks, Jo. It seems a spring fever has come upon me, and I spent almost the entire weekend browsing hosta catalogs and reading posts and doing some research about hostahostahosta. So....what else is new with the rest of the forum? Don keeps his garden so perfect, my first impulse is to ask him, "How many gardeners do you employ full time to keep it that nice?" Mine will never be so lovely. Somewhere I seem to remember pictures of the massive construction of curbed bed borders and paved pathways of this garden. THAT is total dedication, and also self-knowledge....Don knows his interest in hosta is a life long affair. I have to admire the garden on all points.