This post is part of my twice a month record of bloom and doings in the garden, on the 1st of the month, and then on Bloom Day, the 15th. As we begin September it is clear that in spite of the hot and dry weather Thomas Affleck continues to thrive. One a very few other rose blossoms are to be seen.

What the roses are doing instead of blooming is producing hips. The Rugosas have the biggest fattest hips, that are now red and ripe. A neighbor came over to harvest what she needed to make rose hip jelly.

I bought rosa glauca about 30 years ago because of the description of the rose hips. They are red at the moment but will ripen to nearly black. Very sophisticated.

This is a good year for apples. Liberty apple, planted about 25 years ago is a disease resistant apple. I never noticed before that this apple requires two other types of apple for cross-pollination. There are other apples in our field, and a neighbor less than two miles away has a whole orchard. There are enough other apples to keep this one pollinated and fruitful.  Needless to say, we use no insecticides or herbicides that would hurt honey bees or any other pollinators.

The blueberries and raspberries are  finished. This highbush cranberry (viburnam) is the only berry bush we have at this season. The birds will make quick work of the pretty red berries.

We are not the ones who planted these hops or grapes. We make noble annual efforts but we have not been able to keep them in control.  These tough vines crawl over  a section of roadside saplings and into  the cultivated area and onto the viburnam.  The hop vine produces these papery little lantern-like flowers. Brewers need hops. The only use I might have for hop flowers is to harvest and dry them and stuff a little pillow with them to encourage sleep. Hops are considered soporific.  We eat a few of the Concord grapes, but the birds get most of those too. You have to look close to see them in this tangle of green.

As a last minute planting I used a few leftover seeds to plant acorn squash and zinnias where I had put a more informal than usual compost pile. This little tangle was more complicated than expected because of some Grandpa Ott purple morning  glories that came from I know not where.

There are a few squash in that tangle. The tomatoes are beginning to ripen and we are eating a second or third planting of lettuce and salad turnips.  The broccoli harvest is over, and the green bean harvest has yet to begin because it got off to such a slow start – partly the weather and partly the rabbits. Happily no more trouble  with rabbits after that bean shoot feast.

The tomatoes are beginning to ripen. Nothing like a luscious tomato fresh from the garden.

I almost forgot that I planted acidanthra (summer gladiola) bulbs because it doesn’t begin to bloom until so late in the season.  It is a beautiful, graceful and fragrant plant. It gets lots of attention from visitors to the Bridge of Flowers. Here it is squeezed in between pink phlox, northern sea oats, delicate artemesia lactiflora on the right with Echinacea on the other side of this border peeking through. Pink cosmos are  also in bloom behind the artemesia.

At this time of the year there are tangles everywhere. I like this silvery leaved yarrow with its sulphur yellow blossoms and the blue lobelia with the wine red cotinus. There are a couple of white snapdragons in the mix as well.

I love blue and white and I got it in this tangle of hydrangea and aconite stretching to reach the sun.

We got  a happy bit of rain last night, although only about a half inch, added to the half inch the day before that. Wishing for more.