Mum Failure

I'm a Mum Failure. 

Love them, buy them, but they aren't perennial for me. Pansies don't do it for me as a fall flower --- that seems like an Easter bloom. I used to plant a few every winter, 'Polar Pansies', and hopehopehope that they'd make it out of the snow first in the spring, but I haven't done that in a few years. Used to plant lots of bulbs in the fall, too, but quit that as the bulbs, tulips, seemed to stay on vacation instead of coming back to do their work in May. 

(Except for my one tulip success - a 'naturalizing' variety that just keeps coming back and bringing friends, too!)

Instead, my garden shows beauty in the elderly stages of its summer members. There is beauty in age, sometimes -

Pink Diamond Hydrangea, living up to its name.

Hardy Begonia - not sure of its real name. It was shared by a dear friend, traveling home in a grocery bag. Great fall blooms, though! 

Thanks, Jayne!

Japanese Anemone, Honorine Jorbet - great name! 

(Good description of it here. Got this on the clearance rack at a home store for a buck.)

This is the first year that Black Hateful Beetles have not chewed them to bits in the late summer. 

More Anemone, 'Alice' here, a little shorter semi-double. Finding these links, I learned that this plant is can also be called thimble flower or wind flower - much nicer names!