Garden Remembered

This weekend has been all about hanging out with the dude and seeing movies--we've seen Skyfall, Silver Linings Playbook, and Lincoln. I liked them all in their ways, although I may have cut about 10 minutes off the end of Lincoln.

I did start stitching a little bat for my niece who is crazy about Stellaluna. Not much to show yet.

Anyway, I was casting about for something to blog about and I found these photos of the garden from August that I haven't shown. The first photos is the calycarpa (beautyberry bush). The berries are supposed to last through winter but I think that is more theoretical than practical since it looks pretty sad right now, and we've still got three weeks until winter arrives. They certainly brought the birds to the yard.

 In the foreground, we can see the caryopteris--with the sagey green leaves. It bloomed much later. My version is "Longwood blue" because, well, you know how I like to hang out there. Those purple bottle brush looking things are agastache, which really flourished. They got much bigger than I expected.

In fact, they really crowded out the poor ironweed (vernonia) which was supposed to grow seven feet tall. Those little pink bursts have bleached out, but stayed on the stems. They look good in the garden...which is a sad mess right now. If I were lucky, the snow we're supposed to get on Tuesday would cover it all until spring. But the reality is I'm going to have to get out there in the cold and clean things up. (And mark the ironweed so I can move it in the spring.)