Just when I was ready to throw in the towel and call it a season, my garden is coming alive! The dahlias that I had given up on are full of buds! My rose bushes are suddenly ready to flower again…even the ones that had lost their leaves and looked half-dead.
One bush produced the sweetest smelling rose that I have ever had the pleasure to sniff last week. 
It was an amazing scent. And a late, but fast growing gourd vine has a couple of babies on it that are getting bigger by the day. After all the rain, the black spots, the bugs and the disappointment this season, I am pleasantly surprised. Go figure.
The dahlias typically bloom until the first hard frost. But, I had such bad results with so many of them this year, I didn’t expect them to ever come around. 
I’ve attached a photo of a beautiful orange dahlia that we picked this week and put in a vase. Better late than never.
I guess that I will try to get them in the ground earlier next year….or maybe start them inside. Like Amy, I am taking notes. I’ve also vowed to plot the plan of my flower garden this fall, so I remember what lives where next spring. ( I vow to do this every year and never seem to get it done.)
It was not a great summer in our garden. In fact, I’d call it one of the worst in recent memory. But there were a few highlights.
In early August, while searching for a pre-school backpack, my husband and I found some very nice healthy hosta plants on clearance at K-mart. There were many varieties, in gallon pots, all reduced to $1.50 each. It was a steal! After a few return trips, we had planted 75 new hosta in our gardens. They blend in so well, that I couldn’t tell you where we put even half of them at this point. I have had success with some hydrangeas for the first time this year. I wish I had planted more of them! And, my morning glory seed experiment worked too. Our fence is wrapped in vines with little purple flowers poking out here and there.
As we move into autumn, the sedum look beautiful. They are full of bees, and are slowing changing color. I am thankful that they have thrived this year. I’ll be busy picking flowers until the frost.
Let’s all hope for more sunny days in 2010!
We finally have some nice dahlias in the garden and I wanted to share some pictures with you! They are beautiful…but overall the season has been a disappointment. Several of our plants have no buds on them….it looks like a bug has been eating them. I have sprayed them with no success. And, I have yet to see an actual bug on the plants. I am stumped. I have included a photo of one of the distressed dahlias at the bottom of this post. 
I estimate that only about a third of the dahlias we planted have bloomed. In past years, I have always had a vase full of flowers on my desk at work in August. Not this year! It has definitely been a difficult summer with all of the rain and the lack of sunshine. I’ve also been dealing with rotting rosebuds and rose bushes that have black spots. 
