Whew, life has been a roller coaster of emotions over the past couple of weeks for many Americans. Let’s just take a breather from the drama and enjoy some recent photos from my garden, shall we?

I’m quite pleased now that more plants are in full and exuberant bloom. Insects still seem much more scarce than last year, but I don’t want to focus on that now. The garden is lush with natives and non-natives, coexisting in harmony. Breathe in joy, breathe out worry. Yep, that’s the ticket. I hope you enjoy this quick photo tour!

I planted a bed of zinnias for the first time — they look nice beside the native purple coneflower, don’t they? I’d been told that zinnias are easy and fast to grow from seed, and it turned out to be true, even for me! The coneflowers are having a banner year, so much so that you have to work hard to find the lovely buttonbush behind them.

Below is the first bed I created when I started the native garden transformation. The black-eyed susans are supporting the gone-to-seed monarda, with rattlesnake master on the right. After I took this photo I added another section of support fencing to hold the rattlesnake master more upright. This is the time of year that these tall natives begin to fall over without some support. There’s a large amount of New England aster behind the monarda, and as it prepares for its fall bloom season, it begins to smash all the plants in front of it. I’ll go in there and try to tame it a little bit soon. I like to keep the monarda accessible to the goldfinches, who love to pull seeds from those spent flower heads.

This corner of the garden is behind my swing, and I don’t spend enough time enjoying it. The hollow joe-pye weed is more than six feet tall now, and the wild senna is about the same.

This big patch of oxeye sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides) is almost hidden by the joe-pye weed, but it’s gorgeous. I might dig some of that this fall and distribute it in another bed where it can show off better.

Oops, how did she get in my garden photo tour? This doe has been walking down the street daily for the past three days. Yesterday I caught her in my back garden in mid-afternoon, and today there was a fawn trailing behind her.

Below is another part of the original native bed, showing some of the delicately beautiful bottlebrush grass that took several years to stake its claim to some space among the more robust species. I’ve added some more of this striking grass to another bed and plan to keep adding more as I collect its seeds each fall. Spikes of dense blazing star (Liatris spicata) add a much-needed pop of color to this bed as it awaits the magnificent explosion of the asters and goldenrods lurking in there unnoticed…for now.

And before you go, take a minute to soak up the visual feast that is a water lily flower…but only a minute because that’s how long it lasted before the raccoons ate it.

Thanks for taking the garden tour!