We returned from Colorado and two weeks later flew to France for awhile. Our daughter Ashley and her boyfriend Julien were already waiting there for us to arrive. We spent much of our time with Julien's parents when we weren't traveling around France and Switzerland.
Gretchen came often and weeded until she discovered she is allergic to the follage of zinnias! She broke out in a nasty rash so that ended that. She did maintain the front flowerbed for us. Fortunately the zinnias were densely planed so they survived the lack of weeding.
I have taken a few end of the season photos for you to see.
Here are the seed marigolds Dave planted inside in March. As you can see they choked out the cosmos this year! Personally I like the orange ones better than the yellow so we will probably just gather seeds from them this fall! The yellow marigold's blooms were not as large and didn't last as long.
The front flower bed really went wild! I never dug out the broad leaf weed in the photo before I took the picture - shame on me! There are several Coral Nymph Salvia and Lady in Red Salvia that came up from seed from last year. I just left them there to grow in.
This is what 95 zinnia seeds looked like by mid-October. Even during our absence and being totally unattended during July and August, they thrived. As you can see, one of the plants grew to almost 7 feet tall. I am 5 feet, 5 inches tall so that gives you an idea of the plants' overall height. They still remain my favorite cut flowers to plant each year. This year I am going to save seeds from selected plants to grow next year. We will see how my experiment turns out!
