My main flowerbed has many large clumps of Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldstrum' (or maybe it's R. hirta, whatever the common wildflower is) and they put on quite a show. My only complaint is that they tend to rest in between flushes of blooms - so there are long periods where I don't have any color. And the pattern of when they bloom or not bloom is totally up to the weather and is different every year. Mixed in with them is every color of Garden Phlox available and they bloom up til the first hard frost in my yard (which is usually November). I also have Obediant plant. In my bed it isn't much of a thug. I planted it last so it isn't winning the turf war with the phlox or black eyed susans. The bed endures long periods of dryness and only gets 4 hours of stong light in the late afternoon so that may be why it just sorta limps along and pops up here and there between all the tall bloomers. I grow a lot of Goldenrods and especially like 'Fireworks' which tends to bloom around mid September. Stokesias do well for me as long as they are out in front of everything else. They tend to bloom now and then rest and rebloom in Sept or Oct. I really like using baby palms (Sabal minor) as foliage accents mixed in with all the bloomers. Once they get tall they tend to dominate everything - but with my lack of strong sunlight that takes forever. You don't really see the 'fan' shape of the leaves just long pokey spikes sticking up and through the clouds of blooms. I know, most folks would want the palms front and center but I like them this way. I have two perennial mums and I don't know either of their names. One is a pale apricot, sorta wild flower looking and very stunning with the right shades of yellow or oranges around it. The other is like stubby white daisies and it blooms way late in the year - like after first frost and on til Christmas if the weather stays mild in the daytime.

Well, the last two years, particularly late in the year, around August-November, there have been more butterflies than ever in our neighborhood. My neighbors have even commented on the number of butterflies they've seen! I just kind of chuckle to myself (tee hee hee). But, it is harder to attract them in an urban setting, when their habitat is usually prairie, either tall or short grass, woodsy areas, and wet areas, and not an urban garden. Slowly but surely, they are stopping in more often. My neighbors around me usually let their backyards go wild, too, so maybe that helps as well. My friend Linda, in Kingfisher, though, just gets tons and tons and tons of butterflies in her garden that she grows specifically for butterflies. In fact, she got pipevine swallowtails this week for the first time ever! Hers have been planted about 3 years now. It takes awhile for the vines and/or plants to grow, and then to populate them with the butterflies you're trying to attract. But, she lives in a smaller, rural town. Here in the city, it's a different story. Last year, she helped me get started with Monarchs, Gulf Fritillaries and Silvery Checkerspots. Once I had a few eggs, it was Katie Bar the Door. I had Monarchs everywhere, and raised 100+ myself. I've had Black Swallowtails for several years, as well as Giant Swallowtails - but in small numbers. I don't get the HUGE numbers like you guys in more rural areas. But, if I had more, I wouldn't have the food supply for them either. One thing for sure. Once they find your garden, they WILL be back next year. It's like they have some kind of built-in radar that brings them back year after year. I had to do a lot of things, though, like I had to quit using even the most innocuous pesticide - like Safer soap for instance. I cannot believe that 6 years ago I was using BT on my cleome to get rid of the Cabbage White caterpillars! Oh, my - I was a butterfly exterminator! I had to plant host plants. You'll get a few butterflies with just nectar plants, but with host plants you get so many more butterflies. It has been a work in progress (still is), a lesson in patience (still is), and the best experience of my life! I would not want a garden without butterflies and moths - ever! Or, the other critters that come along here and there, too. I appreciate so much more in life by undertaking this personal journey with God's creatures. I feel a connection with the earth, the air, the sky, the water, the wind that I never felt before. Do you know what I mean? My spirit was never fed at all by working in an office. But, gardening and especially butterfly gardening, fills my spirit with such love and a realization that there must be something more out there beyond this physical existence with which I connect at a deeper level. Oh, I am getting gooey, huh? Where else are the butterflies going to go but the city, along with many other of God's creatures? We have driven them into the city by taking away their resources, their food, their water, their homes. If I can provide just a small, tiny area to help them along, then I am doing my part. What would it be like if we all did that? Susan

that blueweed looks like bugloss we have around here. I think they are pretty. the ones I saw were growing next to the railroad tracks. I don't understand why people spend so much money putting chemicals down to get rid of moles, voles, weeds and such. I mean they spend all this time and money to get a lush green lawn only to have to mow it constantly because they fertilized it to death. I mean what is up with that? don't people realize that by eradicating these things they are throwing everything out of balance and wonders of wonders they wonder why their grass is dying when there is a mild drought. And of course by killing off the beneficial insects and rodents they have to extra treat for pests on their lawns, and of course these are toxic and cause all kinds of health problems and enviromental damage you don't directly see, and in fact they found that many people were getting sick from pesticides which they didn't attribute to the pesticides until all other things were ruled out. I have dandelions, our bees just love them, we have violets growing in the lower pastere, of course I wish they didn't take up so much space away from grass. I like sweet joy pye weed, and all the goldenrods, and I love those ironweeds, and honeysuckles which grow in the woods. They smell wonderfully all summer long. I like the fact that my grass doesn't have disease or pests problems or problems when we have the occassional drought, while everyone is watering like crazy when it doesn't rain for a while I don't have to everything keeps growing all I have to do is mow occassionally. I have moles voles bugs galore and yet no problems that I know of or can see. the little voles are cute, I used to have horses and I put the manure in the corner of my pasture, and they took up a home under the pile after it aged awhile, and when I went to dig up some to put on the garden, there must been a hundred that came from under the pile. they ran every which way. I have moles too as I can tell by the raised parts, but that is no problem when I mow it flattens those spots. there are few weeds I don't like, even poisen ivy is not a problem as I seldom react to it and when I do I do so only very mildly. I love virgina creeper for it's leaves and how it changes to red in the fall and how it tally's up the trees and is red while the trees are still green, quite beautiful. they also hide the ugly posts that line the pasture. Anyway weed I would love to have around is the queen of the prairie it is quite spectacular, and of course I would love the giant reed type grasses I see growing around here they grow more than 10 feet. I feel like I am walking in a jungle. RR

Rebecca, I understand about plants that do their own thing despite what we think that ought to be doing. I think every gardener has at least one type of plant that behaves bizarrely in their garden. I do think that morning glories and moonflowers just behave that way sometimes. I had trouble getting them to sprout in the soil here the first few years, though I have no idea why. Admittedly, it was awful red clay and we were in drought, so maybe the soil, even though I was amending it every year, just hadn't reached that right point yet. Now, and you just have to laugh, they reseed everywhere with wild abandon and have become a royal PITA because I want a few dozen morning glory plants to grow along the south and east garden fence of the front garden and enough sprout to cover every square inch of the garden in morning glories. They sprout irregularly too, so I am yanking out MG volunteers literally every single week of the garden season. I've never grown them in the back garden for fear they also would run amok back there, but this year some Grandpa Ott's popped up back there, perhaps planted by the birds, so now I am sure I'll be yanking out millions of them back there too. It baffles me that they were so hard to get started in the early years and now you cannot stop volunteers from sprouting and growing to save your life. And, in that same way that tells you plants have their own minds, we have had Milky Way and/or Blue Star morning glories pop up in a crack in the concrete near the garage for over a decade. They get no irrigation, no food, no care, no compost, no mulch and no relief from the hot summer sun beating down on them and the concrete---and they come back every year and grow like mad. I guarantee you if I had built a bed for them back there and tried to grow them on purpose, there probably wouldn't be a single one there. These are plants that know their own mind. Nancy, Hydrangeas do not do well at my end of the state---we are just too hot and too dry for much of the summer most years, but your soil and weather up there is very different from mine. There's a lot of plants that grow really well in eastern OK that don't grow well in other parts of the state, and I think hydrangeas are one of them. It isn't really the 95 degree days or 100 degree days that get them down here, but in those years where we have a lot of days over 105 in combination with little to no rainfall, you can just see the life leaving the hydrangeas even if you're doing your best to keep them well-watered. I started out with a lot of hostas our first year here, and the deer taught me they were deer chow, so we have none now. Daylilies do great here as long as they are within the fenced garden where the deer cannot reach them. Crinum lilies are an unstoppable force of nature down here and they don't care how hot and dry it gets. They bloom in the worst of the heat. Will they eventually wilt and die back to the ground if we are hot and dry for months on end? They will, but since their root clumps are the approximate size of a Smart Car, they surely do not die, and I've never had deer eat them either. The crinums will just sit there dormant and wait for better weather so they can green up again and regrow. I have had crinums in the same spot for over a decade and need to dig them up and divide them but don't even know if it is possible at this point---it might require the use of a backhoe or some other form of earth-moving equipment. Speaking of hungry deer and the lengths they'll go to in order to eat....a friend of ours a couple of miles north of us had to release two deer from the hog trap (these hog traps are not big enough for the deer, but try telling the deer that) the other day. I guess the bait in the hog trap was too attractive to the hungry deer, they crawled in and couldn't get out. That happened a lot in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, but hasn't happened since. I guess the fact it is happening again shows how much the autumn/winter drought has hurt their winter food supply. Kim, lol at the cartoon. Dawn