My July Garden

These funky tiny coneflowers have brought a ton of delight this summer. They've bloomed a long time and still look good. I need to start dead heading so they'll last better until fall. They may have come back from seed, but I think they are the original plant.

I love them in blurry form.

I'll confess the bokeh was added. It's from Pretty Presets, their Luminous Set.

My pink/purple cone flowers seeded out. None of the originals survived.

(iPhone)

Fortunately the red/orange cone flowers seeded out all over and I've transplanted some of them to the front beds.

I guess a lot of things came up volunteer this year. This is a purple verbena variation that gets quite tall. It came up right in the middle of my flagstone path and because it wasn't coming up anywhere else I just left it alone. (Added bokeh, don't you just love it? I think it makes the photo more magical.)

Our butterflies have been few and far between this year. I believe it's because the city has been spraying our mosquitos a lot. We're already well above the average rainfall for the year. 

I love this in monochrome because it makes him look transparent.

Of course I've had a plethora of zinnias.

My sunflowers always volunteer in the veggie garden. A bad storm wiped most of them out last month so the majority are laying on the ground.

You'll see a lot more sunflowers from me this month. The farmer down the road has a field in rare form this year and I've been out twice in the last 3 days. This morning I took my tripod with me and actually dressed nice for some selfies. I'm doing 31 days of Hipstamatic sunflowers on Instagram. Check it out, link in the side bar.