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.......