
It's time once again, boys and girls...time for Bloom Day, hard as it is to believe. I stopped the other day and realized that the year is reaching its end fairly soon...just a few more months to go. My recent trip abroad really threw me for a loop and I still find myself feeling unsettled...drifting a bit, not sure what I want to do. Our brutal summer still refuses to relinquish its grip on us, and we are expecting it to reach almost 80 degrees again today and tomorrow...I'm so sick of it. Plus, it's just so dry...even the little bit of rain we got last weekend seems to be a distant memory, and my forays into moving plants around has revealed the soil is still bone dry once you get past the surface.

Oh well...enough of that...let's get on with the show...which is a short show, of course, being October. Luckily, you can always count on the Japanese Anemones to bloom, regardless of the weather...they are always a welcome sight...plus, they tend to spread around a bit, which is a nice benefit, if you ask me.

Verbena bonariensis just never stops blooming, does it...even when I cut it back, it seems to immediately send up new shoots that are blooming within a few weeks.

The Persicarias did surprisingly well (for the most part) this summer, even though it was much drier than they typically like it. True, some of them (like 'Inverleith' shown above) looked like garbage during the worst of the heat/drought, but they spring back into action once temps cool a bit.

Persicaria 'Golden Arrow' blooms non-stop from about June until frost...gotta love it. Of course, this year it has completely collapsed several times from heat...and then torrential rains a few weeks ago. Oh well, gardening is always a crap shoot, right?

Of course, then you have the plants that just never complain and always keep blooming, like sweet little Scabiosa ochroleuca...now if I could just get it to re-seed at all!

Geranium 'Rozanne' is beyond being a stalwart of my garden...she is a superstar. She blooms and blooms forever...she threads her way through the garden, knitting it together, and she asks for so little in return.

I'm not sure if this Eupatorium is now Eutrochium or not...but let's just pretend for a bit that it's still Eupatorium. Even though they blooms tend to weigh down the plants and cause them to collapse during the rain, they are a nice touch in the garden right now, and I rather like how they languidly drape over and through other plants.

Being a biennial, you just never know when or where the Rudbeckia triloba blooms will be from year to year. Some years, I seem to have dozens of plants all blooming their heads off. This year, I have one tiny plant. Luckily, I've spotted quite a few seedlings around the garden...so next year should be a banner year for them again.

Aster 'Prince' has long been a favorite of mine...and this year that is true once again. I just love its compact habit, dark foliage and the wonderful cloud-like effect of its thousands of tiny blooms at this time of year, seen above with the ruddy stems of Andropogon 'Indian Warrior'.

That's about it for actual blooms at the moment, so let's take a look at the big picture...here we have the front border, looking North this morning.

Here, a corner shot from yesterday.

The North border looking east at sunrise.

And the same border looking west a few days ago, when it was blessedly overcast.

You didn't think I'd let you go without saying hello to the cats, did you?

I hope you are enjoying fall wherever you are...it's my favorite time of year...if only the weather would make up its mind, and summer would relinquish its death-grip on us, I'd be much happier, thank you very much! For more gardens in bloom around the world, check out May Dreams Garden...and happy Bloom Day!.