At last, a partner for rudbeckia

Happy Tuesday everyone! Are you all just soaking up this last bit of summer like I am? Last weekend we did pretty much nothing productive after noon on both Saturday and Sunday. We read books on the beach, ate lots of taco dip, drank Coronas at 2 and I got to go paddleboarding (my new obsession and so much fun) in a very balmy Lake Michigan. It was lovely.

This is always a good time for the garden. Things do tend to get a little overgrown and a bit floppy but everything is so lush now thanks to a good amount of rain we got while I was gone.

I’ve written about plant combinations before and I’ve admitted that it’s something I sometimes struggle with. So when a plant combination comes together I do a little jig. I’ve struggled with the rudbeckia in my garden for years. On one hand, it blooms for an insanely long time and is covered with blooms. But on the other hand, it spreads like wildfire and is a rather bossy yellow color that I’ve found to be difficult to pair with other plants. Last year I pulled out dozens of clumps of it to create a much more manageable patch of rudbeckia, which was definitely a step in the right direction.

This summer I added some hyssop in the areas that I had relieved of some of that rudbeckia. Even though both plants are a little taller than I’d prefer to have so close to the edge of the border, I am thrilled with how these two plants are working with each other. The medium blue of the hyssop is a good match for that bossy orangey-yellow of the rudbeckia and their contrasting textures play well together as well.

It’s a relief to finally be at peace with rudbeckia. It’s a good plant, it just needed the right partner to shine.

On an unrelated note, I’ve joined Instagram. I don’t really understand Instagram and some of those old-timey photos sort of annoy me, but it seems to be a good way to quickly share photos. I’ve been posting them on Twitter and I’ll put some of them up on Facebook (I think I have that figured out), but you can also follow me on Instagram @impatientgardener. Leave me a comment if you’re on Instagram with your user name (or account or whatever you call it) so I can follow you.

Here are the first two pictures I took using Instagram.

The bees are incredibly active at our house and are loving the anenomes and Oso Easy roses right now.  There is the most lovely buzzing audible in the garden at almost any time of day.

I’ve not shown you my purple beans, but I grew some Velour beans this year. They are so beautiful and really look like velvet. They taste the same as a green bean and when you cook them they quickly turn sort of a drab green (not a nice bright green like a regular green bean) so I’m enjoying using them raw in salads. Last night I made green bean soup with both green and purple beans and BLTs for dinner. It might be the most perfect summer supper ever. And the best thing is that I have leftover soup for lunch today and that soup gets even better the second day.