Always, in September, I can count on the Conoclinium coelestinum (a/k/aEupatorium coelestinum) to bloom throughout my garden.  Wild blue ageratum is hardy here and many other places since it is grown from USDA Zones 5(a) to 9(b).  Like many wild plants it is much beloved by butterflies and bees.  I especially like its other common name blue mistflower, because it does weave through my shadier beds like a mist of sky blue. This afternoon, as I took photos, I found the first Monarch I've seen in the garden feasting upon its nectar.  Monarchs are more patient subjects than the sulphur butterflies.  As long as I don't move too quickly, they will pose in a queenly fashion while I snap portrait after portrait.  The sulphurs, on the other hand, rush to and fro as busy as a mother of toddler triplets.  I never come upon them unawares. The mistflower is also...

Know that no matter what your gardening friend does, you will never be a staker.  If you try it yet again, you will instead have tomatoes which wander all over the ground.  Admit your bad staking habits and, next year, buy more of the pretty green cages so that you can tuck the tomatoes in here and there as though putting them down for a nap. This also goes for green beans.  You are a bush bean person, not a pole bean person, which fits not only your gardening personality, but also your body type. Know that you're going to buy yet another rose bush.  It's apparently an addiction, and you can't help yourself.  So, do some research before the new ones are introduced and try to only buy those which don't need spraying, or much food for that matter.  Although shrub roses won't win any prizes for best blooms...

From the time Bear was a very little girl, we played a game which we call "I love you more than . . . ."  The rules of the game are very fluid, and I don't remember how it started, but it always tickled her into belly laughs and sometimes, oohs and aahs.  It goes like this: "I love you more than sunflowers love the sun." "Well, I love you more than shoes love shoelaces." "Mommy, I love you more than your hands love gardening gloves." "Bear, I love you more than tires love asphalt" (We own a paving company after all.) As you can see, the sillier the better.  A word association game made of the animate and inanimate which need each other.  We played it as I drove her to school, to tae kwon do classes, to buy groceries, or to the plant store.  We still occasionally play...

Love's Philosophy The fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix forever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things by a law divine In another's being mingle-- Why not I with thine? See, the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister flower could be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea;-- What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me? Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, was a contemporary of John Keats and Lord Byron. His second marriage was to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein. He remains famous for the lyrical quality of his poetry, and he was idolized by the generation of poets who came after him. Shelley drowned in a boating accident just before he turned thirty. ...