Ratibida!

Have you ever collected seeds from a plant you saw somewhere else -- a friend's garden, a shopping center planting, a field? I've done this a few times, but really have had only two great successes with it. One is with the Brown-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia triloba) that I took from a wild plant I saw at the edge of woods at a park and now is everywhere in my yard.

The other is Ratibida columnifera or "Mexican hat". (I always just call it "Ratibida" because it's fun to say.) The seeds of this one I took from the garden of some friends when I was charged with watering while they were out of town a few years ago. I really liked the flowers, and the small plants looked like a good fit for my yard.

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Some color lingers

We had another freeze the other night, but amazingly some flowers have survived, and the autumn colors are lingering, giving me a little final taste of what the garden was this year.

Soon I may need to refer to this blog as "browns and bamboo", but for now there are still some other colors.

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Morning blooms

As I promised, to help balance out all of the "creepy" posts about insects and spiders I've been doing lately, here's a look at some of the late summer flowers that are in bloom in my garden. It's really important to make sure you have plants that make the end of summer and start of autumn interesting. Although it's great having flowers all over the place in May and June, it's also pretty easy as most plants seem to want to bloom then. It's a little trickier to ensure you're looking at blooms now (in early September), but it's really worth the effort.

It really just comes down to having some plants around that flower late. In the spring when you're shopping for plants (most people get the majority of their plants in the spring -- only those really addicted to gardening will visit the nurseries all season long, right?) these late bloomers are the really boring ones, as they don't have any blooms or even buds to entice you to buy. They're all foliage and promises.

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Do a little planting

I decided to plant something at lunchtime today. I've been overwintering Tradescantia zebrina cuttings inside, and from two cuttings I've produced dozens of plants. They're taking over my plant table in the basement, so time to get some outside!

That's what they look like after Winter. A plant doesn't get much deader than that.

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