I have two yards in South Texas and I can't believe it either. My unmowed yard has places that were struggling last year that are now over 30 inches tall. One spot is in full sun and the other is in half shade on the west side of the house. If I was mowing it would have to be every 5 days to keep up. Here is a pic from yesterday. The picture was taken early in the morning. You can see my dog's ears and the top of her tail in that picture. Her tail is 25 inches high. This is the part shade area facing west. My mowed yard gets it every weekend but I can't take a full cut on the mower width. I overlap the previous cut about half way.

I thought it was going to be a 'normal' season (for a change), but felt kind of "off". There were no big heat waves (so far), almost NO thunderstorms, wild swings of precipitation (13 plus inches in one day in Central, LI, most of which fell in only a few hours), now getting drier and warmer. Yes, Poaky weeds are bad this year. I refrain from using Roundup and other chemicals so it is hand pulling or my new weeding tool (so no bending). Poison ivy is the exception, I use Roundup on it was I am NOW sensitive to it, but see it popping up all over...big time under my Metasequoia. I HATE those weed fabrics! Used to use them all over but, weeds grow through the thickest ones anyway. My Pin Oak is starting to shed some leaves, so Fall is in the air, I guess. We could use a protracted rain event...not the 10 inches in two hours kind! Enjoy the last (unofficial) week of Summer all. This post was edited by njoasis on Sun, Aug 24, 14 at 6:55

Thanks for the tip Mike! They're def one of the more intimidating bugs to fight with. I'm pretty sure they started exploding in numbers from all that heat we got a a month ago when there was no rain in sight. Let those suckers drown in all the rain we're getting now! Thanks for the reminder hibiscus! I did get some good deals on fert last fall. Remember to check Amazon regularly too! Their prices constantly change but there are times when they suddenly drop for maybe a day before going back to its usual price. I like to use Camelcamelcamel.com to check the price history on Amazon items. Don't worry I'm not trolling you guys, it's a legitimate site lol

Sheila, I think one of the major differences between my garden and the one at Wooster was that when my spring starts, it progresses rapidly into summer. (Last year a local friend bought twenty roses and planted them in mid April and they didn't grow very much. Reason: allow a week or two for the roses to grow out into 'real dirt' and THEN the rose puts on growth. Except last spring we barely had five weeks of optimum temperatures. It was either very wet and no sun or too darned hot. ) The crop farmers felt it as well. I would expect you are far enough north to have several months before 'summer warmth' hits like a sledge hammer. The moss roses up in Ohio had huge bouquets of mixtures of buds and blooms and not all maturing at once. When one had three blooms, you could see several spent blooms, and about twelve more buds in different stages of maturity. My growing conditions don't make for a long spring and early summer bloom for once blooming OGRs. It just doesn't happen. Heat and sunlight happen and I learned that if I don't / didn't photograph them at the start of their bloom,. the next week the bloom would be over. In your part of the world, rose buds don't mature too fast, they get large. And the blooms get large as well. In Maine we saw a rose (once bloomer) and the bloom was five inches across. (The tight petaled white one with the distinctive green pip at the center.) I grew that rose and had never had a bloom more than three inches wide and my petals never reached the size of theirs). I do look forward to hearing about your mosses, I'd expect by year two, they will be magnificent. Ann