Monstrous sunflower and more from my gardens by the Sound today

Whoops, this is the photo that should have accompanied my post below titled "Today in my gardens by the Sound"...not sure what happened to it as I was posting here on my iPhone while I wait for my sons and our neighbor to finish playing laser tag.  This is such a needed respite from all the summer fun at home :). Air conditioned blogging and all alone....aaaahhhhhh.

My hydrangeas and phlox still bring happy smiles even in this August heat

My front gardens today - they fared much better during "vacation neglect".  

More of my gardens by the Sound today

More of my gardens by the Sound today after my crazy hacking and chopping of yesterday.  I should have taken some before shots!

Late summer views of my gardens by the Sound

Today in my gardens by the sound. I sort of hate August in my gardens - especially when we come back from vacation like we did Sunday night. After ten days of only water and none of my usual weeding and deadheading, plus hot sun and lots of rain, my gardens are completely overgrown and out of control. And I finally made it out yesterday to do some not so judicious pruning, cutting back and deadheading. Somehow the kids, laundry, grocery shopping and pets all came before my sad state of affairs that is my garden. It looked like a tornado had blown through, so I literally hacked away at the gigantic sunflowers that fell away from their staking and the gargantuan coneflowers, black eyed susans, Russian sage, agastache, and goldenrod. I was so fed up with the whole mess that I ripped - barehanded amidst swarms of fat bees - the old mound of raggedy catmint right out of the ground. It was time to bid adios to this greedy, creeping, ratty last bastion of catmint in my garden anyway. I ripped out another mound last year. I've had enough. I love the little dwarf 'Kit Kat' and 'Little Titch' varieties that stay where they're planted and don't hungrily take over precious garden space, and I use them on client's gardens quite a bit. But they are not what I had. Now I can spend delicious hours trying to decide what I'll plant in that beautiful empty patch of dirt. Hmmmmm.......

By the beach in Fairfield last Sunday morning

Scenes from my walk last Sunday morning.  This is the end of Fairfield Beach Road which snakes along the Sound.  I love this walk, and this was a perfect summer morning...not too hot and no humidity.

Summer bouquets from my gardens

Summer bouquets from my gardens.  One of my favorite parts of summer flowers is bringing them inside and putting vases of them all through the house.  These sunflowers are my son Mark's that he brought as tiny seedlings from his aunt's gardens in NC in April.  We weren't sure if they'd survive our very cold spring, but we babied them and they rewarded us with these huge luscious blooms.