Sad news from the vegetable garden...

We had to pull out, cut down and bag two of the tomato plants showing signs of late blight. :-( This is scary stuff. If you have tomatoes and/or potatoes in your garden, beware.

So, on to other things. The zucchini are still coming in strong. (The yellow squash is from our CSA, Common Ground Farm)





I don't know why I didn't take an after photo!

Silver Dollar Plant, aka money plant, is drying okay. Some other ones are moldy. Too much rain!



I told you the sunflowers were bigger now! These are ALL volunteers, planted themselves from seeds that fell from last year's sunflowers.



This one planted itself right next to the front steps. And amazingly, I was able to overwinter the canna!



These pretty "red" ones are on the west side of the front beds.



Voodoo bulbs, still going strong!



Lots of phlox. I really don't want this much phlox here. It's crowding out the echinacea.



Rose of sharon:



Russian sage, yeah, I need more of this, too:



Normal size cucumber and crazy big cucumber we obviously didn't see and pick till it was HUGE! And some zucchini and eggplant in there, too.



Just for fun, because I love them so. Finn:



Wally. Naughtiest cat in the whole world. I would prefer he *not* hang out right there on the counter!

It's August, where is the summer going?

Time is flying by... things in the garden are good, things are flowering, we are picking green beans, cukes, cherry tomatoes, zucchini and onions from the veggie garden. Here's a shot of Steve with the other winners of the Beacon Garden Contest. I'm so proud of him. He works so hard on our vegetables, he started 99% of them from seed, and has devoted a lot of love and attention to them, and they are delicious!



I love this! The Green Teens had these signs in front of their salsa booth this past weekend (follow the link to Flickr to see the full size photo if you can't read these):





These two Rose of Sharon planted themselves here a couple of years ago, but I'm going to need to take them out, because they are shading the hydrangea which is not doing so well this year.





Our mums are blooming, oops, a little early!



The white phlox is hidden behind the pink! Maybe I'll have to thin out the pink and move some of it this fall. I like the white.



One of the voodoo bulbs has sent up a second shoot!



We had a full rainbow the other day!

Ah, refreshing

It rained the past two days, and we needed it, so I won't complain. Now there is a beautiful breeze and things in the gardens are perking up as the sun shines. Here's what's going on:

The "real" daylilies are blooming. I think I will dig up some of the "wild" orange ones that bloomed earlier and replace them with some Stella D'Oro ones this fall when they go on sale over at Adams.



Cool rooster in the background, right? Uncle Bruce gave us that for our wedding. It's a bummer the paint is wearing off.

Near the daylilies, the Rose of Sharon is also blooming, and has been for a couple of weeks.



In the back corner, it's more purple phlox!



And, brown eyed susans I brought with us from Cold Spring that came back for a couple of years, then didn't last year, and are now back again, but in a slightly different spot. Hmmm.



The only problem with all the phlox doing so well is it's shading the thistle, which is not nearly as big this year as it was last year.



The sunflowers out front are still flourishing:



And the basket on the fence has filled out nicely. Here is is when we planted it, and then the next shot is now. The black eyed pearl peppers did not do well, they needed more sun, so I added coleus which seems pretty happy!





And I cut a couple of huge bunches of silver dollar plant last weekend. This weekend I'll sit there and peel them and harvest the seeds to sprinkle around in the beds and on the hills.



Speaking of seeds, Steve and I are going to a Hudson Valley Seed Library seed-saving workshop on Saturday, should be fun!