Tangled Brush

Transported with joy, that was my feeling upon seeing the French garden, one fine day in August. I had been waiting, impatiently, for poppies for a very long time. In May I planted so many seeds in the French garden. But, nothing. Finally, a few plants started popping up. Three tiny spindly ones, and one that grew bigger, and bigger. Here is the French garden in early July. (The lupin was a plant I bought - it was quickly eaten by some voracious creature):                                             These are the poppy buds on the big plant in August, so full of promise:                   And, finally, they bloomed! Ta da! Aren't they glorious? I had been hoping for big, extravagant scarlet poppies with black centres. But, now I know those are called "Oriental poppies," are perennials, and take a few years to bloom. I bought some of these plants and put them in the sun. They are alive, but refuse to get bigger, and obstinately refuse to bloom. Hop

I have never been overly fond of chrysanthemums. Vast quantities of tight, homogeneous small blooms...boring! I occasionally relent, however, when I see an array of them at the grocery store. They are cheerful and resilient, which is helpful when autumnal gloom descends. But this year, I may have been won over completely because...I have my very own chrysanthemum bush! And I didn't even    put it there! It wasn't there last year, and I don't even remember there being a plant of any kind there last year. But it is so large and well developed that it must have been. Did the birds bring it too? It certainly has brought a lot of happy insects to the yard: bees, wasps and flies have been buzzing around it for days. I do love to see the happy bees snoogling away in the flowers. When I sniff the blossoms, some of them smell like honey!

I legit have sunflowers! Really, truly sunflowers. They are giant and amazing! Whatever else happens in my garden, I can say that I really, truly had sunflowers. They are about 10 feet tall and everything a sunflower should be.  I can even see seeds for harvesting! The butterflies and bees love them too.