ONG is back for one day that is.

I may have changed focus on this blog (for better or worse, discuss) but the ONG will always be chilling in my DNA. The love of gardening and even the love of garden writing never waned, I just wanted to open myself up to other writing possibilities … blah blah blah … I’ll stop there. You are all very busy and most likely skipped over this paragraph any way because the photos to follow are so damn enticing and invigorating when there is very little color out there in our El Nino inspired abnormally warm landscape that my kids tell me is ruining the Christmas feel but I’m all like, this rules, especially when you have to take a new puppy out in the middle of the night to do her business when it’s difficult to focus, let alone carry a dog and put on warm clothes before heading out into the wildlife filled night which threatens to devour your now 4.6 lb mutt.

So here’s a chance to escape for a few minutes as I compiled all of my favorite photos of my garden (narcissistic much?) from this past year with a quick blurb as to why I enjoy each pic so much.

Time for you to now enjoy:

It took me a while to jump on the Baptisia bandwagon but the deer have ignored them, they’ve bloomed like mad for two years running and that color is potent as all hell, in a great way.

 

A little yellow Baptisia as well and love the way they peek above the slowly emerging grass in the foreground.

 

My first white peony bloom on this plant. Hopefully many more to come in the years that follow.

 

An early season view of my favorite part of the garden when the sun sets each afternoon and provides incredible back lighting of the plants. More of these same views to follow.

 

I picked up a Clematis at a trade show (Mr. Important that I am) and planted it just to keep it alive before I figured out what to do with it. Month later it bloomed hammering home the point that it is better to be lucky than good.

 

A spring bulb combo, I’m like a garden designer or something. Normally I’m just happy to see one Daffodil on a plant. Go me!

 

I’m easily excited, so seeing an actual hummingbird was a big deal to me.

 

Allium ‘Drumsticks’ are seriously the cats’s meow. This was my first experience with them and pray they come back even stronger next spring.

 

The beauty of rainy and foggy weather and the power and beauty of the ornamental grass.

 

Repetition is pleasing to the eye.

 

And the winner of the foliage color of the year goes to Ninebark ‘Amber Jubilee’, which is also the name of an exotic dancer and a My Little Pony character.

 

The colors clash a bit, but all of these blooms create quite the buzz when the bees flock to them in summer.

 

This represents the peak of the garden, when all of the Joe Pye Weed are in bloom. Oh how I miss it.

 

I love how the coneflower blooms are reaching towards the sun and how the Astilbe in the background have granted them the OK to take center stage.

 

Remember that favorite view I mentioned a few photos back? Here it is again in the sweetheart of summer.

 

A color combo I love and only got to enjoy this summer since the deer left the daylillies alone for the first time in years. Thank you deer.

 

My garden will be completely taken over by Bee Balm in 2021 and I’ll love it. The humming moth agrees with me as well.

 

Yes, purple coneflowers are everywhere, but how can we complain when something like this happens?

 

Remember that view? Yes, here it is again.

 

Fly milkweed seed, fly.

 

Yes, again.

 

The frost in fall is beyond magical.

 

Brown, as a color, is way underrated.