What's been growing around here ...

I love the month of August, don't you? It's so green and lush and wonderfully SUMMER, isn't it? Except that it is the last month of summer, and I don't want it to end! We neglected our yard pitifully while the grandchildren were in town, so I've started weeding one flower bed per day to try to bring order back into chaos around here.

These are the firstfruits of Grandpa Jones's tomato plants. He picked and ate a couple of these ripe ones two days ago. We have six tomato plants, but not all are doing this well. It's been a really dry summer in West Michigan and we've been a bit stingy with our watering!
These are some of the wildflowers that are finally blooming in the backyard by the south fence. I planted these from seed about 10 weeks ago, hoping they would be as beautiful as the ones from the Tetons that I planted all those summers ago ... I've been a bit let down by these. And the black-eyed Susans I planted are barely blooming yet! Cookie says I can transplant some of his in my yard next year. He has a wonderful green thumb and there are wildflowers like crazy growing all throughout their back yard.
These are Mr. Jones's zinnias that he planted from seed at the same time I planted my wildflowers. Aren't they beautiful?
I just love to walk to the side of our garage and admire God's handiwork ... such an array of color!
And these are the cone flowers that our friend, Judy, gave us to transplant in our front flowerbed. She said they were a nice sturdy flower that a person could not possibly kill, so I knew they would be safe from me! And they have really thrived ~ there is a ton of them in between our tall beach grasses ... and they are huge! I get so much joy from just messing around outside in our yard and wanted to share some of this beauty with you today.