It is rather difficult writing about what has been going on in the garden these days because I have not been in the garden these days, or in fact, for most of the summer. Rather, I have been in a Star Wars storm trooper-like orthopedic boot. Consequently, things have gone on essentially un-manicured, unmanaged, and unmaintained. For gardeners more attentive to their plants, visit the site of The Propagator, the originator and majordomo of Six on Saturday. There are guidelines there to join in and lots of links to sixes from Canada to New Zealand.
1. Here are a few items I have been able to capture, though. First, the liriope, or turflily (Liriope muscari), is blooming and the bumblebees have certainly taken notice. As the featured photo shows, the flower stalks are generally a gentle shade of lavender and have bees hovering somewhere among the leaves and flowers in August and September bloom time.
2. There is another lavender flower blooming–actually a vine, the thicket bean vine, which is the host plant for the Golden Banded Skipper. Below is a photo of the vine blooming and of the butterfly caterpillar taken on the same vine two years ago.
3. As for butterflies, there has been no better attractor in the garden recently than the perennial native whiteleaf mountain mint (Pycnanthemum albescens). A variety of bees and and metalic colored flies usually hover around these flowers, but this day was Eastern tiger swallowtail day.
4. Pollinators abandoned the red buckeye (Aesculus pavia) weeks ago after its flowering, but the plant is putting on a great show of fruit right now. Resembling chestnuts, the fruits of this North American native are not eatable, though. Quite the contrary, they are very toxic to humans, dogs, horses, cows, and deer. Red buckeye does make a nice landscape shrub, though.
5. My favorite fall flowering plant, Japanese anemone, is beginning to bud. There has been just enough rain lately that the stems are long and sturdy, making it easy to see why the common name of windflower originated for the anemone.
6. The final offering for the day shows my memorial to the large pine tree I recently had to remove. This is an area that calls for lots of tidying up, but that will have to wait until the immobilizing boot is off and I am more steady on my feet–especially after the little clean up I did manage to do uncovered the pretty fellow below.
After Eden 
Excellent. Good use of that pine stump by the way. The king may decrease the likelihood of a copperhead moving into your portion of the neighborhood.
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The king snake and I had a respectful eye-to-eye then snaked calmly away.
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Oh, the gorgeous expectancy of those Japanese anemones in bud! (But, I’m so sorry to learn, Susan, of the orthopedic problem hobbling your gardening life recently!)
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Hobbling is precisely the right word!
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I’m glad that you named the snake as I wouldn’t know it. The Swallowtails are lovely. Hope you get out of the boot soon and back into your garden.
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Thank you!
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It all looks still beautiful. Renee told me of your foot problem and it sounds like a hellish experience . Please be careful and don’t do too much until it is healed. The garden will forgive you.
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Thanks, Bill. I’m being especially careful as the SA trip is coming up.
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Wow to the butterflies and that caterpillar was a stunning colour. I hope you’re fully recovered soon. I think that might be the first time I’ve read a Star Wars reference in a gardening blog. Made me chuckle it did.
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That is impressive bloom for Liriope muscari. For us, it is more of a foliar plant, which happens to bloom with only a few sporadic and barely visible floral spikes as a bonus. I sort of wonder about that, since literature describes the bloom as an asset. I suspect that bloom is more colorful farther north, like in Oregon.
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It blooms vigorously here—and propagates just as vigorously by runners.
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I hope the orthopedic boot has been doing its job so you’ll no longer need it soon. The butterflies around the mint fascinated me and I’ve never seen a lilac coloured caterpillar. It seems to be trying to match the flowers.
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Thank you for the good wishes! Things are improving.
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