Rebecca, That's an incredible amount of rain! I bet your plants will go wild with new growth! I hope you can get a lot done in this pleasant, mild weather. Nancy, Stores might have some nectar plants available now or next week if you don't have new ones started to plant in the garden. Because I succession planted flowers instead of veggies, we have nectar plants everywhere. Obviously I've never had quite this many flowers in the veggie garden, since they now make up about 95% of it, and the hummingbirds, butterflies and bees are present in huge numbers because they've certainly noticed. And, well, because we were so dry there's almost nothing in bloom in the pastures---a few yellow daisies and white asters here and there and some Mexican hat and greenthread daisies in the front pasture are just coming back into bloom after previously being mowed down by Tim, but I think the liatris will bloom late or not at all because those plants in pastures were turning crispy brown from the heat and lack of water. I did notice some of our goldenrods in the pasture are forming buds so they'll bloom soon. With the pastures fairly bare of blooms, even more little flying critters have been visiting the garden regularly. I'm pleased to have so much in bloom for them this year. We haven't seen Lillie in almost 2 weeks and it looks like she's grown about 2" since then. I guess she's having a growth spurt. I think it is hard on the girls having opposite weekend's with each of their dad's because they don't get to be together on the weekends right now, but that will change at the end of this year and they'll get back to being on the same weekend visitation schedules with their dads again. Really, it might not be too bad for each of them to get to be the only grandchild on autumn weekends. Because of the five year age difference, really I guess it is 5 and 1/2 years, they like different things, including different movies so there's lots of of compromise in making weekend plans like where to go or what movie to watch when they are together. When only one of them is here, we can choose the movie that child specifically wants to see, so Lillie gets to see movies that are for older kids and Aurora gets to see movies aimed at very young ones. It might not be all bad to be the only child with the grandparents on any given weekend now that I think of it.....but if we take one shopping one weekend and buy her new shoes, we're careful to take the other one shopping for new shoes the next weekend so they know they are being treated the same. I think you'll just have to cut into your overgrown summer squash and see if it makes a good winter squash too. Some varieties are multipurpose and can be used either way, but some are not---some are just really stringy and seedy inside and are not good eating quality winter squash. I haven't tried it with Meot Jaeng I Ae so don't know what sort of flesh it has when it gets large. I have had them hide from me to the point that they were too far gone to eat as summer squash when I found them, and I just gathered all those (it was some of all three Korean summer squash varieties) and piled them up on the porch as porch pumpkins for fall. With white flowers, it depends on how heat-tolerant they are. I like the ones that are white and stay white, but some white flowers just cannot take our July and August heat and low moisture and turn brown on the edges of the petals almost the minute they bloom. I don't care for those. With so many whites in bloom in our garden this month (cleome, garlic chives, several varieties of cosmos both short and tall, several varieties of zinnias, both short and tall, daturas and jasmine), I am loving the way they look, especially in late afternoon and early evening when that white really pops against the plant foliage. I'm not sure what kind of nectar flowers you're hoping to have for fall, but maybe if I list what I can remember that's blooming in our garden and flower beds now, if there's something I have that you don't have, maybe it will give you some ideas. So, here goes, from memory and probably not a complete list of all that is in bloom, but I'll try: Coral honeysuckle, morning glories, mina lobata, cypress vine, cardinal climber vine, yellow bells (Tecoma stans), orange bells (I don't remember the variety, also Tecoma something....maybe Jubilee), hardy hibiscus (Luna), zinnias and cosmos in many heights and varieties, cuphea 'Diablo', roughly six different varieties of lantana, verbena bonariensis, dianthus, autumn sage--at least 4 different varieties, one with raspberry red blooms, one (Hot Lips) with red and white blooms, and two different ones with red blooms (Furman's Red and Radio Red), moss rose, Texas hibiscus, firebush (Hamelia patens), Mexican sunflower, cleome (Helen Campbell White, Violet Queen, Cherry Queen and Rose Queen), yellow butterflyweed (and the oleander aphids are all gone!), angelonia in shades of pink and purple, pink salvia, blue meadow sage, Yvonne's salvia, a dwarf form of gaura that stays more compact that any other I've grown, two varieties of Russian sage, Texas hummingbird sage, echinacea (about done, I think, unless the rain revives it), viper's bugloss, Jasmine (in pots to overwinter indoors), Pride of Barbados (Caesalspinia pulcherrima), Laura Bush petunias, gladiolas (about to finish up), salvia farinacea, marigolds, several short forms of celosia spicata, tons of the taller (up to 6' tall now) celosia plumosa, white and purple daturas, comfrey (cycles in and out of bloom all summer if I keep cutting it back periodically), sunflowers, globe amaranth, red grain amaranth, canna lilies in yellow and orange, trumpet creeper vines in yellow, orange, and red-orange varieties, chaste tree (a particular favorite, along with comfrey, of the bumble bees), four o'clocks and 'Dracula' cockscombs. Then, there's the herbs that are in bloom, and they include dill, sage, rosemary, basil and lavender. If all of that is not enough to provide nectar for the butterflies and hummingbirds and others, then I don't know what else I can do. It is likely that my coleus plants all are flowering now because I haven't been pinching them back lately. Not in bloom yet? The cape honeysuckle, which usually doesn't bloom until September, and the roselle plants, which don't bloom until Sept or Oct and always are in a mad race to bloom before the first frost or freezing weather arrives. I often have to harvest them on the night before the first freeze whether they're ready or not, and I do it in such a hurry that I just cut off the branches (they are huge monster plants 7' tall by then with a base at least 6" wide so I cannot pull them up) and carry armloads of them up to the house, where I then can harvest the calyces and preserve them. Later on, when I have time, I'll dig out the frozen/dead bases of the roselle plants and toss them on the compost pile. Really, it would be late to get much of anything sown from seed to bloom if you're sowing seeds now, so you'll be at the mercy of whatever the stores or nurseries have on hand now. I haven't looked at the plants this week to see what is in stock, but normally at this time of the year it is mostly marigolds, zinnias, moss rose, angelonias, lantana and, perhaps, the first chysanthemums (though we are still too hot for them here). There, I hope I gave you some ideas. This morning we awakened to the sound of raindrops on the roof. After waiting so long for good rain to fall, it seems like an abundance of riches to have it fall two days in a row. The rain was just quick pop-up showers and only showed up on radar as a very narrow band that didn't affect much of our county, but these showers gave us another 0.40" of rain, for a total this week of 2.4". Tim's far-fetched dream of mowing the lawn this afternoon just died because everything outside is heavily saturated and dripping with water---it is our own little rainforest here today. Maybe it will be dry enough to mow tomorrow afternoon. Who knows? We have shopping to do today, and the movies this evening, and swimming to squeeze in during the afternoon hours if we get back from shopping quickly enough, so I'm not sure when he thought he'd be able to mow anyway. The long-AWOL deer herd returned today and were standing in the neighbor's pasture staring at our back door when I walked out the door: three bucks (one is pretty big and the other two slightly younger and smaller), three or four does, and two or three fawns. They re scoping out the driveway, the dove-feeding area and the compost piles. I put out two buckets of cracked corn for them, figuring if I didn't put out extra for that large herd, then the doves weren't going to get any cracked corn today. The deer were too happy to see me (or, rather, to see the buckets of corn), and the biggest buck came within about 8' of me (with a 5-strand barbed wire fence between us) before I yelled at him to back off. Had he not moved back, I would have carried the corn back into the garage to teach them that I won't put out the bird seed if they cannot stay out of my personal space so I can do it safely. That's it for now. We're headed out with our girl. Dawn

Jennifer, I like the video. It reminds me of stories my mom, dad , and grandparents use to tell. Times must have really been hard for many years. I remember my dad telling the story of when he was very small, the Arkansas and Mississippi river flooding. The family was taken to what sound like a refuge camp, everyone lived in tents, he said disease was so bad that people were dying like flies. They worked along the Mississippi, or Arkansas river in the cotton fields, and never knew anything but hard work. Dad left home when he was 17. He worked his way to the west coast and back. He could not read or write, and the family did not know if he was alive or dead. He made it back home the day his family heard that he had been killed. He then started to work in the coal mines, when called for the war, he failed his physical, but he said that the miners were not allowed to quit the mines anyway, because the coal was needed for the war effort. Dad left the coal field around Paris AR., and came to the coal fields along the Arkansas, Oklahoma line, that was when he met mom. They knew one another 40+ days before they were married. Dad died of cancer about 15 years later. I don't think mom ever quit loving dad. Mom is buried next to dad, I had a stone made just like the one she picked out for dad, they sit side by side. I can remember mom telling about my grandmother, who was Chickasaw Indian, cooking meals out side, she used a very large rock to set the supplies on, and would build a camp fire by the rock. When I was young, up till I was married and had kids we would go on a large camping trip every summer and granny would do all the cooking. I wondered how she could cook so good on a camp fire, that was when mom told me that use to cook like that all the time. I am sorry, this has not been about gardening, but instead about memories that the video brought back to me. Jennifer, Madge and my neighbor are trying to get me to buy a new tractor. They tell me that I am getting too old to work on that junk, I don't see well and am not very strong, and my tractors range from 20 to 70 years old. I dont know what I will do, but I dont wont to just sit here and dry up, and I cant garden by hand any more.

Rouge, these transplant rather easily, you can move a few around as desired and weed the others out, I get sooo many 'GJ' seedlings that I'm insensitive to culling vast numbers. Nice photo btw !! Rosaprimula, agastache foeniculum is native here, not overly common, though once in the garden always will be some seeds sprouting over the years, plants are prone to some type of stem wilt. Others don't return for me, there's been no sign of the many 'Globetrotter' set out last spring, no seedlings as well, though have some languishing in a tray, should get to those! Some of these tall sorts will hybridize between themselves and interesting seedlings can come to be.

We are hurting for rain also. I am trying to water, but just cant keep up, it is hard ( and expensive ) to try to replace rain. The wildlife garden is hurting much more that the house gardens. I picked the first Ukrainian butternut, and Sugar Baby watermelon yesterday, they are growing in the wildlife garden. My "Seminole Cross" is looking good, but it is hard to get enough water to it. I planted a Walthum butternut and a Seminole pumpkin about 4 feet apart last year, hoping to hand pollinate them for a cross to get a sweeter butternut and a meatier Seminole. I got busy with life and did not hand pollinate, but these plants are two volunteers that came up in that location. One plant has 2 or 3 beautiful small pumpkins, colored like a Seminole, and a plant that has 2 or 3 pumpkins that look like a cross between Old Timey Cornfield pumpkin and a Seminole pumpkin. I am interested to see how these pumpkins turn out. They may taste like they were pollinated by a tumble bug rather than a honey bee, but that remains to be seen. Nancy I took a picture of the wild looking sunflower that may have come from you, it has more flowers on it than I was thinking, it has one large flower and 18 smaller flowers. I had some sunflowers planted in that area last year also. The strange sunflower may be a mutated reseed flower or one from the seeds you sent. That ever I have I am looking forward to saving seeds from them. I tried to check my sweet potatoes yesterday. The Oklahoma Reds vines look the best, but I am not sure they are out producing the Covington, both have potatoes under them, but I did not want to disturb them. I did not check the Red Wine Velvet, the vines look very good, but I only have two vines of them, so they get babied the most. The butternut I have in the north garden look like they crossed with a Seminole, they are shaped like a butter nut, but with much larger bulb, and small neck. All of my strange plants are volunteers. No seeds will be saved from these butternut unless something spectacular happens. I need to go repair some garden hoses. I try to pull my weight by working the ground and keeping things repaired.