The golden month of September

September is the month for Bidens aristosa here! Whole swaths of the garden and areas around the garden are covered in yellow and gold for a good 4 weeks. The pollinators, especially the little furry black and yellow bumble bees, love Bidens. Walking outside sounds like walking into a giant hive.

My old 2002 Dell finally died, or more accurately, I finally put it out of my misery. It crashed, and then I couldn't restore it due to the fact that Windows XP is now obsolete and it's no longer possible to download the patches that make it operational. I've been nursing the old computer along for years, supplementing its paltry memory stores with an external hard drive, but its slowness and tics have long been a source of frustration. It would have been fun to send it crashing somewhere, but I had to settle for setting it down carefully in the recycle bin at the dump. At least I got to take a hammer to the hard drive.

What a difference a couple of weeks makes. View from the from front porch Sept. 4th

and September 16th. This year was a good one for Bidens, with all of the rain. I still want to get more going by the woods, but to do that I need to lay down compost, then seed, and then not mow the area, even if it looks like hell in June and July. And still, I may have to wait another year, if the compost isn't broken down sufficiently, or if there's a drought so that the seeds don't germinate.

For all that Bidens is so vigorous, sometimes I have trouble getting it established. Back in '99 the bed pictured below by the fork in the drive had a beautiful stand of Bidens. I even have a picture of it with the flowers reflected in the flood waters from Hurricane Floyd. Then I decided that I wanted to add "variety" and mulched out the Bidens seeds. Major fail. I even had the pine tree cut down that was sucking the life out of the bed but nada. Some places are just the equivalent of the Gardening Bermuda Triangle. One year (and another garden blogger was even a witness to this), all I had was a big ugly stand of overgrown Bermudagrass to show for my efforts and subsequent giving up. Then, FINALLY, last year, the bed was full of Bidens again. Only took 12 years. Here it is this year, in the background, on Sept. 7th:

A week later.

In front of the big bed, Sept. 7th

and a week later.

There's a pretty good crop of Bidens in the wide strip that runs around the back of the house paddock and west of the house, although not as many as 2-3 years ago when the area was paved with them. Almost blinding aren't they? Makes me glad I planted so many beautyberries after all, most of them American, as the rich purple really complements the bright yellow of the Bidens. I planted groupings of them next to the drive and in spring was wondering why I did that as I was chopping off 5 foot lengths that were leaning over into the driveway. Now I remember there actually was a reason.

Lots of Bidens beside the driveway this year, and in the small field at the very top.

I put out this seed two years ago and almost none of it germinated until this year. Better late than never!

At the top looking down. Finally, in September, I have as many flowers as I want. ;)

September always reminds me of one of my favorite songs as
it was sung by Eva Cassidy (a cover of a song written by Sting).

Fields of Gold