we have so many ripe tomatoes, the garden smells like tomato soup! But I am not making anything, I still have stuff frozen from two years ago. I did try to make tomato jam...interesting stuff.

I have to make an apology to you all. I originally said that there was no stem but I was mistaken; the large leaves obscured that fact. It's definitely a Tithonia. The original flower is all but dead, but two more came out. I took a picture (haven't even offloaded the images from the Leica yet; lol) of the new flowers yesterday. The plant is nearly 6.5 feet tall; very big. I saw a humingbird fly by one of the flowers as I was watering the plant this evening which reminded me that I need to buy some humingbird food for the feeder (it's all but empty; lol).

my husband got one of those "seeds in paper" from the bank

so, after we soaked it in water and planted it in a small pot one of the flowers burst out. Less than an inch wide.

later another flower came out - a bit larger



I'm going to guess these are "wild flowers" which basically means they are weeds.
quite adorable

I have seen the purple one before but I cannot remember it's name.

OK; offloaded the images and thought I would share them here with you. The new Tithonia flower is much better looking then the original imo (actually two more flowers, but this one looked the best). Also, thought I would take and share with you the Rose of Sharon. I ran over the tree this past Spring with my riding lawn mower and thought it was dead, but, like Lazarus, it rose from the dead and was surprised to see this flower when I got back home. Both needs retouching, but, just sharing the SOOC results.

It is almost impossible to kill a Rose of Sharon, lol

The rose of Sharon was my Mom's favorite flower. We use to have a pretty good size bush many years ago but the drought back in the 80s killed it. Dad planted a few Rose of Sharons 2 years ago, and 2 more, including this one, last year. Again, back in the Spring, I did something stupid but by luck, it grew back (didn't notice until like June; place a flag marker on the plant (didn't show it in this capture) so that wouldn't happen again. lol).

the purple looks like agapanthus

Here's a rose from my garden that I was using to experiment with lighting:



It's photo 260 of my one photo a day for 2012.

Kevin

looking gorgeous too!! thanks Kevin

After losing three quarters of my Morning glory's by bugs, this is what I ended up with, 3 plants and they are just starting to bloom now when we can get frost any day in the near future. Last year that whole fence was covered from July right through to frost time. Anyway, they do make a nice back drop for a border bed.

is that cleome next to the glories? I don't have very good luck with glories unless I baby them.

Yes they are Cleome's 2-ton.
We keep two composters at the back and i compost everything that I can. This year in my front flower bed right beside the front door, I babied a cantelope plant and two tomato plants that came up from the compost we spread. This is the result of some of them.

Man all my tomatoes were so small this year.Even my cucumbers and green peppers were small and dry.
Just not enough rain this year it seemed.
Those are simply gorgeous flowers Molly.

Those are nice flowers, melons and tomatoes, Molly. I never watered my Morning Glories so they never did anything. I'm surprised they are actually still alive.

Next year, lol

Beautiful cantaloupe! We grew them one year and they were soooo delish...than another year they were just ok.

Molly - You mentioned composting. We bought one of those compost tumblers and have loved it ever since. Living in a suburban area does not lend itself to large compost piles so we decided to go with the tumbler. I can make ready to use dirt in 2 weeks! It comes with a little pamphlet about the ratios to use and even comes with some starter bacteria. I highly recommend this to anyone with limited area for composting. Only about $300 and I've been using it for about 6 or 7 years now. My flowerbeds love it!

Sounds very interesting Drac. We have plenty of room behind where our garden shed is and it is out of site out of mind, lol. Nothing like good homemade compost to make a garden grow, now if we could just get rid of the bugs that eat stuff.

Now that's one pretty cantelope. Not a big fan of melons, but do like muskmelons and catelopes; honeydews too.