Purple Power

New England Aster, another of the last things to grace the garden with its bloom, began opening this weekend. Just a few of the hundreds of blooms opened up -- and just the outer-most ring of disc flowers -- so there's still another 3-4 weeks (?) of aster bloom left. Although they are a bit weedy, I quite enjoy them and all their Fibonacci-spiral composite friends. (Perhaps more on that later...)

Gentian will be, at least as far as I remember, the last thing to flower in my yard. Here the blooms are starting to turn just the tiniest bit purple, but there are still a few days or more until these open up. (The brown-eyed susans and goldenrod are still going strong, so the yard is very yellow and purple right now...)

In sad news, I suspect that the large portion of my yard given over to melons will have been wasted land, associated with waster time and water, this year. With the generally cool summer, and especially the cool August-into-September, the melons just won't ripen. There are a lot of them, small, green and hard. So it will be a real shame. Last year's were so delicious.