How does your garden grow?

This is not a marigold but an orange cosmos. Very small. One of the few plants I grew from seed successfully

One of my morning glories. The color didn't turn out right here. It's a deep purple blue as opposed to the bright blue of conventional morning glories which have bigger blossoms but haven't bloomed yet despite the many vines I have

Pink cosmos with some of the tickweed (coreopsis) in the background

My own cleome

Tuberous begonias. I have many colors. I have been saving the tubers over winter but I didn't plant them until late so only one is now in bloom

So my camera is back. It isn't as fancy as Steve's and it is hard to take good close-ups but it is easy to use and I can find it when I want to.

Each year is good for certain flowers and not good for others. My hits and misses:

Gerber daisies. The flowers are pretty but the leaf/flower ratio is too much. Right now I have lots of healthy leaves but no flowers!

Dahlias aka slug food. I don't know why I buy these but the flowers are so pretty. I have a few blossoms still but the leaves are almost gone.

Lobelias: I love the deep blue ones especially but I mostly have the light blue ones. I had a bag in which the ten plants or so looked good for a week and then started to die. I tried to save a few planting them elsewhere.only 2 still alive. I since formed another bag of impatiens so I have 3 bags along the fence just full of blooms. The lobelias in my baskets still are blooming though.

Petunias: Love them but last year all of them got some strange disease in which they would die from the roots out. Not unique to me as I saw others' baskets full of diseased petunias. I can't put these in the ground as the slugs find them. As it is, in my containers, the slugs find them but they seem safe in hanging baskets.

New flower: Black eyed Susan vine. I don't think this flower is related to black-eyed Susans (of which I have plenty as they spread from the neighbor's bed to mine) but it has the same color.

Morning glories: I grew many plants from seed but Mr. Rabbit found the seedlings especially tasty so I have maybe one plant left from that. I bought a different variety as a plant and I now have a whole network of vines on strings all over the patio. Yesterday I had 8 blooms. Still waiting for the ones I grew from seed to bloom although some of the vines are 6 foot long. Don't even have buds yet.

Tickweed: I got several colors of this from my sister-in-law from mature plants she dug up. It looked like most were going to die after a week but most of the plants have since rallied and I have new blooms.

I love cosmos. One year I could only find the giant form which formed 8 foot trees crowding everything else out. I now have more manageable smaller varieties at 3 feet tops.

Geraniums: I have had the same salmon one for 5 years looking bad in the winter inside but coming to life in the spring. I trim the leggy plants down sticking the cuttings in dirt and have gotten lots of new plants this way in pots at least. Now I am trying to just put the bare cuttings in the ground in front. Not sure if this is going to work but for now I have blooms.

Snapdragons: Big ones and little ones. The little ones are particularly colorful.

Impatiens: I am not going to put these in the ground around the patio any more as they take over the world. They are fine in containers and bags. As long as they are watered, they are easy.

We had a family dinner last night in which Josh got to meet Ms. Maya. He bought her a Koln am Rhein shirt with a picture of the Dom on it. My phrase book was returned unused. He was not a fan of German food going to McDonald's instead which I think is a big shame. He like the corporate cafeteria with its homemade breads and little sandwiches. He did like the food in Paris but somehow found himself on that roundabout from hell going around the arc de triomphe-driving was scary off the freeways.He was surprised at the German work ethic: many breaks, people wearing wild clothes to work, lots of constant chatter. He thought it would be the opposite with Germans as some sort of efficient unsmiling robots. None of their behavior would fly where he works (same company). Everyone was very friendly to him. He had bought a German soccer jersey for a low price but one of his new friends met in a biergarten pointed out it was missing a star in its insignia.

It was a nice evening with lots of discussions and the new baby who still is very sleepy, which worries me somewhat. She sees the nurse today.