It Will Be A Cold Day!

With all this talk about our frosts and freezes you might think that the garden was history.  It's true some of the plants like this butterfly  weed have gone to seed.  Other more tender plants have blackened and died.  But a walk through the garden shows that plants do not give up so easily.

These Debutante Mums have been frosted and even frozen several times and they still look fantastic.  How wonderful it would be if all the hardy mums you read about were as tough as this beauty!

Catchfly is a plant that self seeds abundantly and has to be weeded out in the spring.  It must be the warm days that have it blooming again now.  Of course the hummingbirds that love it so much early in the summer have headed South weeks ago.

This is the first pink bud on the Emperor of China chrysanthemums. This plant gives late blooming a whole new meaning.  Frequently the flowers appear after the cold has changed the leaves to a dark burgundy.  So far the leaves are still green.  It's nice to have these flowers to look for after most of the others have given in to the weather.

 

Perhaps this pink gladiola flower is not a perfect specimen, but it was the most  surprising and exciting flower I found in the garden. It may not be hardy, but it is stubborn. These are not expected to withstand cold weather. Others in the same bed have gone limp and mushy.  A few days have passed since I took these pictures.   Perhaps a day or two later, some of the fragrant gladioli plants sent up flower stalks.  They looked kind of sickly and were kind of pale grey-green.  I cut them and brought them into the warm house.

Here they are today.  I don't know if these flowers will bloom , but their attempt is beautiful.  We are having a few days of warm windy and rainy weather.  Ed is stubborn too.  He stayed out there this morning doing his garden thing in the light rain.  When it seemed like the rain was serious, he put away his tools and came inside.  Later if the rain stops he will likely return  outside.  It will be a cold day when he gives up on the garden!  When the plants have gone dormant, he still has his stones.