Here’s a beautiful cicada. I can’t quite tell what species, from the available information online. (Not to brag, but my photo is better than any of the others I’ve found, so I can’t easily judge if the Green-winged cicada, or the Swamp cicada, etc., has the same characteristics as this newly hatched celadon-winged creature.) He or she popped out on my bean pole, which accounts for the purple in the upper left corner–it’s paint. 

 

A terrific black-eyed susan, that seeded itself in my yard from the neighbor’s, so I don’t know what variety. I collect these out of the grass, and plant them in the beds, and they produce dozens of two-inch flowers, instead of the fewer larger flowers of Goldsturm Rudbeckia, probably the commonest one you can find at garden centers.

 

Some of my best container displays at this time of year. The black-leaved colocasia has come into its own in the pitcher plant tub, after I wintered it over indoors. The other standouts are orange zinnias and red lantana.

The path going up to the patio. I have lots of insulators, so I decided to just start sticking them outdoors for decoration.

This orange portulaca has done well, cheerful and thriving, in a pair of hanging baskets I have near my apple trees. I bought the baskets on clearance, not wanting the plants, just the container (something for deer to bump their heads on). The baskets had petunias to begin with, that I didn’t expect to keep going, so I picked up the portulaca–and I’m impressed.

Here’s a plant I love in my garden, and don’t see much of in catalogs. It looks like ageratum, but it’s a perennial eupatorium. It gives your garden blue hues in the late summer, and comes back every year. It’s a colonizing plant, but well-behaved. I’ve dug up sections of the original group many times, and added them to other beds. It does not appear to spread by seed, but by roots. Very popular with pollinators. 

Finally, free additions to the beds I’m expanding. I have tons of foxgloves to harvest, and always lots of coneflower. Some white coneflowers have turned up in my front border, so I may get some variety from the seedlings. I’ve found three good columbines, and a few daylilies where they weren’t needed. The hollyhocks, I started from this year’s seed about six weeks ago, and now I have five good-sized plants and one straggler, that can carry on maturing.