Petunias! Everything else succumbed to the two freezes. The lettuce in the garden is looking good; had some yesterday.

Do you grow the leaf lettuce?
If I do grow lettuce next year I will have to decide which one will be best.
My petunias always get ratty looking. That is another flower I leave to others to make pretty ones.

These petunias are the ones that self-seeded from the earlier plants so they have just been blooming for a month or so.

I just do leaf lettuce. I did a romaine one year I loved and will do it next year again. It was Cimmaron. I do bibb lettuce, Buttercrunch. That is what I am eating now. I doubt it will make the rosettes as late as it is, but it tastes good as a baby leaf lettuce. Grand Rapids is a good green leaf lettuce and also do one of the dark red leaf lettuces. Head lettuce doesn't do well in the Ozarks.

I don't have much that looks good. Have you noticed how bright the burning bushes are in sunny locations; they are as colorful as any flowering shrub. I love buttercrunch lettuce. My lettuce is a leaf lettuce of some sort, but I am glad to have it. I didn't think I had time for buttercrunch when I planted it.

Mums are blooming here..as well as some of the roses. I have a brug that is setting buds again, so, with the weather reports, I'm leaving it out for a while. Most of the tropicals are in the little greenhouse, though I'm leaving a giant EE and a black runner in the ground to see if they come back (have back-ups for both).

Butttercruch and iceberg are both doing great..squash and maters are history!

I have one Petunia plant, roses and vincas. The potato vines are getting brown around the edges, so I need to pull them up and add them to the compost pile.
Ann

My mums don't look so good. I thought about covering them when we had that freeze but didn't. I had to do some searching to find flowers in my yard. Honeysuckle 'Dropmore Scarlet' has two bloom clusters on it and there's a few scattered blooms on my creeping phlox and that's about it. How many days til spring?

I just noticed I have a few white blooms on the spirea prunifolia. Looks like little cotton balls among all that orange foliage.

How did you get you creeping phlox started? Is it on a hill?
I have tries that plant many times and I will think it's going to make it, then it dies. It either dies in summer, even though I try to keep it watered. Or when spring comes around it is dead.
I would love to have it in a area that is washing slowly away. I think it would help hold the soil.
I think that sound very pretty w/the whit and orange together on your spirea prunifolia.
Bonnie

Creeping phlox is drought tolerant but not the first year. It dies without warning if you let it get to dry. It's very tough after it's established. You might want to give it another try someday. Maybe some temporary afternoon shade would help.

Someone tole me to put a lawn chair set up over them in the hot part of the day?? Did you keep the soil moist the first year? I never did mulch mine when I first started them so that may have had something to do with it too. That was before I started using mulch.
That is a strange thing to say... before using mulch or compost. It seems an everyday practice now.

Bonnie

The lawn chair would work. I usually break a leafy limb off of a tree and stick it in the ground next to whatever I'm planting. I DID have to keep the soil moist with mine. I was transplanting small starts and lost several before I figured out what I was doing wrong. With some plants, you can tell if their leaves are wilted and give them water and they'll perk back up, but creeping phlox doesn't look wilted first. It just dies. Maybe you could try just one or two to see how they do and then layer the stems to make more plants if it seems like it's going to be happy there. Most of mine is planted on the west side of our house down the length of our retaining wall. The ground slopes down but I wouldn't really call it a hill. I also have some in full sun and it does ok too. I thought I had a picture of it on Photobucket but I can't find one. In front of our retaining wall, the ground slopes down enough that it's very showy from the road when it's in bloom. I'll try to remember to post a photo when it blooms in the spring.

This is not my yard; I was

impressed by this display last spring in Joplin. I drove by and around the block again to take the picture. Click to enlarge

Creeping phlox can be started by cuttings. I usually pull some up when I try to weed it. Just stick the pieces in the ground and water. Some will grow. It also grows well in a pot. I would like to have more like this yard but I don't have that good of luck with it.

I think I must not have kept them watered enough the first year. And then shaded in the hot part of the day.
She does have a large display of phlox there.
Helen I like your dics of the variegate 4O'clocks and the datura vine. I have the datura metal white.
I forgot how much you like spiders!

Bonnie