Hi river (love that name, reminds me of River Song from Dr. Who!). Yes, the vine will twine on its own as long as you provide it with something to climb. I use canes to help it reach up to the porch and then it grabs onto the trellis between the rails and proceeds to twine across and around the rails too. If its a windy spot you may have to tie the young plants to the canes but if not I shouldn't worry. It will bend toward anything it thinks will help it grow upwards. Perhaps wait until the seedlings become a bigger plant before setting outside. Once it clings - it clings and the vines get aggressive. Don't water too much, only when dry. The Cup and Saucer is a very late bloomer - sometimes not until mid to late August. Hummingbirds seem to linger in our area for longer periods of time in the Fall more and more every year, but I have to admit I've never seen them visit the blooms very often. But mine are planted on a back porch that only gets bright morning sun, perhaps in full sun both blooms and birds would be more plentiful. Good luck and hope you post photos when yours is in bloom.

Helenium, a native, is always covered with a range of insects - bees, flies and butterflies. Stoksia is another plant I almost always see pollinators visiting and phlox is the most often visited by hummingbird moths. I have a large white Allium which is much loved by pollinators in late May/early June. Nepeta and lavender are both busy with insects during their long bloom seasons. There are a few plants that bloom near the beginning (particularly quince and rhododendron, though both are shrubs) or end (Cimicifuga/Actea and basil) of the season that despite shorter bloom periods are really valuable to pollinators in my garden because they bloom when not a lot else is available. Chrysanthemum weyrichii 'White Bomb', a groundcover mum with white daisy flowers, is another fall bloomer that is covered with a wide range of pollinators when it is blooming. Helenium 'Mardi Gras' blooms July into early September Cimicifuga 'Brunette' with a pair of visitors in late August Hummingbird moth visiting tall garden phlox. Bumblebees like to visit this bell-shaped unnamed Clematis pitcheri hybrid which blooms for weeks and weeks. Stoksia (Stokes aster) with visitors Flowering quince is great for early pollinators (though I wouldn't recommend it for its year-round ornamental value. Mine is getting moved to a back-of-the-border spot.) Olga Metzitt, one of many rhododendrons that are loud with bees in late May.

We have Anna's that stay here thru winter, so I have feeders up all the time. I noticed the Rufous are back early. They started showing up last week. I have 4 feeders in the front, an 8oz, 16oz, 32oz and 48oz ones, plus another 8oz one on the back patio and right now I'm refilling at least 2 of them every day! Even the larger ones it's 2-3days at most. The other evening I saw 8-9 hummies trying to get at the 4 stations on the 8oz one out front! They were sitting 2 on a perch feeding at the same time! They're sooo cute! I call them my "little green flying piggies" because they clean me out all the time! I have to buy the big 10lb bags of sugar at WalMart because they're so much cheaper than the grocery stores. This time of yr now, I'll be going thru close to 2 per month. The little guys fly all around me as I'm out in the yard and sometimes they've come pretty close to ramming into me! Had one swoop past my ear one day. They also let me know when the feeders are out. And they often fly by and "thank " me after I bring out the re-filled one by hovering in front of me as if to show their appreciation. Sometimes one will land right on the feeder as I'm placing it back on the hook. I just love them so much!

Rebecca, Well, the best we could do to beat the heat was 11:30 a.m. Fort Worth is so big and there's so many deaths and the funeral homes stay super busy, so you get the time slots that are available, if you know what I mean. I am not complaining.....at least it isn't an afternoon funeral. It is supposed to be the hottest day of the year so far, but no one here on this earth can control the weather. I think the recent high heat index numbers (ours have been in the 112-114 range on recent days) have fried my brain. We were out at the pool this evening and the temperature was 90-something and the heat index was 106 and I told Tim and Lillie "you know, this really doesn't feel bad at all". lol. I've lost my mind. I've always been impressed with how well tomatoes can bounce back some years. I have abandoned the garden in some hot dry years....stopped watering, closed the gate and walked away, leaving it all to the spider mites and grasshoppers. Then, a month or two later, I look and the tomatoes have tons of new growth and look great. You just never know what they'll do. I'm glad yours are showing resilience. Your flowers do look great. Jennifer, I know how badly y'all need rain and was hoping you'd get more, but any amount of rain is a blessing at this time of the year. I'm happy for all of you who got rain. We didn't get any, but we had some last week, so we aren't in terrible shape again yet. The dewpoints and heat index numbers are horrible though---as if the plain old high temperatures wouldn't be bad enough as they are. I believe Sun-Mon will be out hottest days of the year so far. Don't let the heat get to you! September is just around the corner and will bring cooler weather. Really, the NWS is showing cooler weather mid-week, so that's something to hope for and to look forward to, unless the forecast changes and that take that bit of coolness away from us. I hope you have many more years with your mom. Our mom never took care of herself (don't even get me started on that!) and we never thought she'd live as long as she did. When our dad passed away in 2004, we all thought mom wouldn't live more than a year or two longer. See how wrong we were? I know it will take a while to get used to not being so busy with the band, but y'all did your job so well for so long, and now it is somebody else's turn, and you and Tom get to have more free time for yourselves. That can only be a good thing, right? Today the weather felt quite a bit nicer here than on previous days. I think it was because our dewpoint was falling late in the day instead of going up, so our heat index peaked earlier in the day than usual, and it peaked lower---at only 111. How sad is it that this is what I consider a better heat index? How many days until autumn? Winter? Can we start counting? Need heat relief? Skip going to the nurseries and garden centers. Go to Hobby Lobby and walk around admiring all the fake autumn flowers, pumpkins, gourds, etc. and all the other fall decor, and then mosey over to the Christmas area and pretend it is winter time. See there---don't you feel better already? Drought is spreading rapidly on the U. S. Drought Monitor Map and our fire conditions are worsening. All we need is for southwestern and southcentral OK (and much of central OK and western OK) to get some rain like NE OK had this week and then things will get better quickly. If, and only if, that rain actually falls though. I looked at the 6-10 and 8-14 day outlooks and they don't look especially promising. I say this every August---where is a good old tropical storm or hurricane off the Gulf Coast when we need one? I'm not asking for a big damaging thing...just some sort of storm that will send a plume of moisture up over Texas straight to us. Unfortunately nothing like that is in sight either. Dawn