'Tell the moon to wait and the sun to linger" My favorite end of the summer song sung by Barbra Streisand Here is the video of The Summer Knows written by Michele Legrand. Tell me if you ocan see it. Here is a link that might be useful: The Summer Knows

Took these today. It's been mild so far, but somehow I am guessing that things will be very different in a month or two...... The little red mums come back year after year, but the daffodils sprouting surprised me. The large-pad prickly pear cactus is loaded with fruit now. The pads are 10 inches long and the fruits are about 5. There are two photos of my yellow Knockout rose, still with a few flowers and one shows the hips. The foliage of the oak-leaf hydrangea is always a great color in fall. The last one is a mum that I've had for years. It blooms early, thrives on neglect, and best of all has a very large flower for a hardy mum, about 4-5 inches in diameter. Not shown are my camellia Snow Flurry (but posted in another post here) and the lavender, still going string, and a few flowers on my ice plants (delosperma).

tim, it's been a while since we chatted. Your yuccas are really spectacular! I lost a few things this past winter. Here I think it was that we had quite a mild season right through January, then February got to what I consider "normal" cold, up until Valentine's Day. Then we got hit with minus 9 degrees (!) all of a sudden overnight and only a high of 12 degrees the next day and then back below zero for a couple of more nights, Most plants weren't hardened off enough by a normal, gradual cooling. My 7 foot camellia was reduced to a 10-inch stump, although it's recovered and has a lot of new growth. But I doubt that I'll have any flower for a year or two. And if we get another really cold spell, well, who knows? My Magnolia "Bracken's Brown Beauty" came through fine, as did all of the cacti and Hesperaloe ("Red Yucca" - not a true yucca). Gardenia "Frostproof" was covered with a styrofoam cooler and was mostly OK when I uncovered it in spring. I would love to grow that hardy ginger. Could you tell me more about it, such as the species, and where you bought it?

Yesterday I wasn't able to get photos to load, but here is our first snow of the year. It was supposed to be just rain, but we got both more precipitation than expected and colder temperatures, so some of it came down as snow late afternoon. It made a messy commute since it wasn't predicted. Like a couple of others, my Iberis/perennial candytuft is still blooming, even after a couple of nights in the lower 20's and the heavy, wet snow. Magnolia 'Leonard Messel' is a three season plant in my garden, with spring flowers, fall color, and huge silver buds on gray branches all winter. Since it's in a perennial bed with lots of more interesting flowers and foliage during late spring and summer, it is just part of the background in warm weather. Here it is last week before the high winds stripped it of foliage. Prior to this rich chestnut color, it was a beautiful clear yellow for a couple of weeks when nothing but Fothergilla, dogwood, beech, and oak still had foliage color.