Plants, Plants, Plants

I found this little mint moth sitting on one of our dahlias yesterday. They are attracted to mint plants, and we have several of those next to this particular dahlia. So I guess it was just taking a breather from eating or laying eggs or doing whatever mint moths do.

We should really put those mint plants in the ground. We have four of them in pots, and I have no idea why they're potted, except that I was too lazy to dig a hole in our heavy clay soil. Maybe next spring.

I was in the garden pretty much all day yesterday, tidying things up.

I filled two yard waste bags with trimmings. Here's what they look like, in case you can't picture exactly what I mean. The trash collectors take yard waste separately and supposedly compost it.

I cut down a rambling rose that we've been talking about removing -- it grew up of its own accord in the middle of another bush, and it just wasn't in a good place. (We have other roses of the same type so it's no great loss.) I cut some more blackberries and cleared some other odds and ends to make it easier to walk around.

This path runs along the far side of our central flowerbed, and in the height of summer we couldn't even get through there. The Hebe and spurge (on the lower right) had overgrown the path. So I cut back the Hebe, pulled up the excess spurge, and mowed the whole area to open it up. Now we have a path again, albeit a narrow one.

Here's the whole garden, post mowing and clearing. We're not getting much rain lately so the grass, in areas that were permitted to grow long or that were overshadowed by other plants, looks quite brown -- but it will bounce back once the rain resumes.

We finally got flowers from one of our holdout dahlias (foreground), which grew well -- once the slugs were vanquished -- but didn't produce buds for the longest time. Now we have only one, the one in the top photo with the mint moth, that hasn't flowered. If it even has buds, they're very tiny. It got a very late start due to the slugs so flowers may not happen this year.

Aside from all the gardening, I read Barbra and did some housework. A quiet Saturday!