"10, 9,..." and Counting: Days to Garden Walk

Not hardy here for the rebloom, but I have been wanting to see if I can grow it as
a hot house type plant and winter it over.  It is in a pot in this box planter. 
I adore the deep red hydrangeas.

Forgive me the urge to want to walk through my garden yelling, "Places, places, everyone!"  

My garden is very much a working garden with lots of fruit, salad vegetables, some few hills of potatoes to satisfy that new potato urge and a strawberry patch.  For vegetable canning, I rely on the family garden which I work on at my brother's with his children, the four-year-old Gardening Twins and Baby Gardener.

Nevertheless, I want to remind the lilies, daylilies, liatris, and the rest their big moment in the sun (hopefully partial sun-- the light is nicer, although we have had a LOT of rain this year) is coming.

Hazelnut, for the squirrels versus gardener face-off this fall

Will garden walkers realize how special these blemish-free apples truly are?

Or how ornamental Seckl pears can be?

Do you think people will see the joke in these chairs?  I NEVER sit in them.  They are actually just art.

"Clean, crisp bed lines..." even with a rock border "pull a garden together," says my neighbor Dr. Darrel Apps.  This was one of the best ideas I had to cut the grass out that tiny six inches.  I'm not sure why I never thought of that before.  The quack grass growing into my garden beds from the A.K.A. "lawn"  which is just a pseudonym for quack grass in central Wisconsin has been a pain!

My small attempt at under-ornamentation

That lavender doesn't grow well in zone 4?

Yup, they're yellow.... or will be!

That this mystery rose (maybe it's 'Eden'/Pierre du Ronsard') is a rarity here?

Clematis texensis 'Princess Diana'

Clematis buddy for my front porch climbing pink rose, overshadowed now, but the star on July 13, I'm thinking...

"Go liatris!'

Highly ornamental allium 'Summer Beauty' forming heads which will burst into loveliness...in nine days?

A zone 6 Japanese cypress and its buddy, "The Rock Cairn" hanging out.  The rocks just balance there, defying the odds and are not fastened... there is almost something magical in that I have never had to restack them.

It really has been a nice year for my clematis, some of which were early fall additions, buried very deep-- two nodules below what they were in their pots.

'The Fairy' rose in the border along the alley, forming an underplanted hedge to hydrangea 'Annabelle'.

And then it will be on to the the neighbor's across the way for garden walkers.  Dr. Apps' yard was born ready.