I worked in the garden for a few hours this afternoon, mostly putting together my new tumble composter, which I didn’t remember to photograph before the sun went down. It’s pretty nifty.

I did snap a few pics of things that are weird and wonderful…

The purple coneflowers are just about spent. I should probably cut these back so they’ll flower again, but they’re so pretty, I just can’t make myself do it. Soon.

My overplanted purple beds are going crazy. I should have done one lantana in each instead of two. With a week of long, soaking rains, the sage looks like it’s going to flower again.

This is some variety of Texas sage. Green cloud, maybe? It’s whichever one stays the smallest. Anyway, I have two in the ground, and one bald-headed stepchild sitting on the porch that didn’t get planted before it got hot, and they’re all turning purple with blooms. I passed some of these on the highway yesterday that were completely purple. It’s kind of a bright, neon color that’s startling. I love it.

My initial reaction to the blue yucca was sort of—meh. I don’t love it yet. However, as I was hacking back the overenthusiastic sweet potato vine, I noticed that it’s making babies. Lots of them. Perhaps I’ll like this plant better when it’s a clump, instead of a low, boring starburst of spiny things? I don’t know. The babies are pretty cool, though. You’ve gotta love a plant that starts multiplying all by itself the moment its established.

My wild, scraggly tomatoes got a trim yesterday. It’s so hot here that the blossoms aren’t turning into fruit any more, so it’s a good time to tidy up wayward plants. These were cut back pretty hard, but the vines that remain are pretty strong, look relatively disease free, and are still flowering. They may or may not make it through to September, when the temps will cool enough for them to make tomatoes again. Meanwhile, I’ve planted a new group of vines in another bed, which will be ready to bear fruit as soon as it cools off.

Have you ever seen a more lovely, more lush group of eggplant vines in your life? They’re huge! Number of eggplants harvested: ZERO. They’ve been flowering like crazy for months, but not a single bloom has turned into an eggplant. I’m bummed out.

Fall acorn squash vines have been producing oodles of male flowers, but until today, I haven’t seen any females. Here they are, in all their round, acorn squash goodness. These vines got hammered by squash vine borers early on, and I’ve been cutting and removing grubs, and trying the multiple rooting sites method, where you encourage the vines to put down roots just above where the grub has hit it, hopefully strengthening the plant and minimizing the damage. We’ll see what happens.

Pics of compost central shortly…