Gorgeous pics on this thread! Hummer plants are so beautiful! Renee your album is fabulous. Birding nut, you must get great sightings of the hummers on the flowers from your front door and windows. Molanic, I agree awesome Trumpet vine, hope your neighbors appreciate that too. :) My Hummingbird Garden is in the back yard. It has the most hummer plants, although there are other ones scattered in the rest of the yard. These 2 pics were taken in July - front and back of the Hummingbird garden. Then in August and September the annuals start to come on strong - like the Zinnias, Salvia, and Cardinal climber.

For years I had a tube feeder full of nyjer seed, but sparrows used it more than anything else. Only once in a while I would see a goldfinch eating from it. A month ago I replaced the tube feeder with a sock. There was an immediate increase in goldfinches, with up to a few of them on it several times the first week. After one week there was a big increase in goldfinches and it has not let up yet. There are almost always 1-4 goldfinches on the sock and several times, including today, there have been 8-12 fighting each other to get a space on the sock. They are such beatiful birds and it is great to see so many of them now. I hang the sock from my tree about 6 feet from the ground and so far I've never seen any squirrels messing with it.

It says in the plant description that this plant can be propagated by division and that it is a particular variety called a interspecific hybrid. This is my first year growing this particular variety. My guess is any seed produced would, if viable, revert to a more common blanket flower. In the past, I've grown the variety, Goblin, and because I deadhead regularly, I don't even know if that variety produced seed. Being away from home all last season, I lost all of my blanket flowers so am starting fresh this year with this one. It is even stockier than Goblin so I think will be very good for my area. Mary

Nothing exotic here, just the stalwarts reappearing on schedule. Garden phlox in the Phlox Protection Zone. There's Grenadine Dream, Wendy House, and Purple Kiss in there. These are all medium height phlox and bloom before the tall ones. The rambling rose in the background is fading. I saw a woodchuck a few weeks ago but it doesn't seem to have noticed the phlox, hopefully because of the fence and the soapwort. The woodchuck was eating birdseed on the ground which is fine with me - better to eat birdseed than phlox. The daylily Frans Hals is blooming in several locations, here next to a Bosnian pine and an American Revolution daylily (and a soapwort). An inherited No-ID daylily is blooming. and Corky is still opening. Hemerocallis 'Pardon Me' has been around for a while. And Hosta 'Blue Angel' is still blooming, getting bigger every year. I still have late daylilies in bud that won't bloom for a while yet. And late garden phlox (woodchuck-permitting). Lilies are in bud, waiting for whatever lilies wait for. Claire