Garden Tuesday -- Not A Bloomin' Thing

Fall is definitely here!  I've been enjoying some time making lists of what to do soon:  trim shrubs, transplant herbs to an indoor pot, mulch.  And I've been taking stock of what the heck might have happened out there this year.

My blackberry lilies did not bloom this year.  Not one flower.  The pods did eventually open, revealing scant, small berries which seem to have dried up already.  Hrmph!

Usually, I get a handful of coral blooms on each stem, followed by clusters of large berries, which the birds love to eat (and digest fully).

But for some reason, the plants on north and south sides of the backyard got leggy and didn't produce flowers.  Good thing the crabapple tree has abundant fruit, because the lilies won't even provide an appetizer for the birds this year.

One possible reason for the poor lilies is that they were surrounded by daisies that lasted and lasted, and when #2 was recruited to trim them, he didn't do the best job in the world.  By the time I got out there a week or so later, the lily stems had shot up already, reaching for sunlight.

Those daisies are so hard to predict, too.  Some years they've been in full bloom by mid-May, and this year they bloomed late June.  I try to pull by the roots within 3" of the landscape edging, because they hang over and drop seed onto the grass, which proves difficult to control.  The daisies used to grow in "groves" in two plant beds in the backyard.  Now they're everywhere, and I know how that happened.  But trying to get it back to the way it was is a challenge.

Nice weather for gardening lately, though!  Lots of debris to clear, grass mowing galore, and beginnings of falling leaves.  Yup.  Fall is definitely here!

Share your garden pics and enjoy the others at  Garden Tuesday, and Garden Party and Bloomin' Tuesday.