in the back of the yard-

Tiny pale jumping spider on hydrangea leaf.

Heartleaf brunnera had a rough summer.

Rhodies look great if I stand against the back fence and look up the slope of my yard. They face away from me, getting more sun from the openness of the rear neighbor's space.

My camellia is still here! The leaves are so nice, dark and glossy, I'm not too disappointed to not have flowers, if it just grows to be a nice-sized evergreen shrub that's okay too.

Still very happy, too, how my young euonymus shrubs are growing up. They look pretty happy this year (feed lots of broken sticks haha).

I cleaned up the echinacea patch. Cut to the ground plants that looked entirely sickly or had white mess of mealy bug on their stems. Then made my way through the thicket cutting off and clearing up from the ground all the dried up, dead and sick-looking leaves (from bugs).

It doesn't show in the photo so well, just looks brighter- but in person I can really tell the difference.

I don't mind leaving most of this standing for the winter- something to look at, host for some bugs- as long as I've cleaned out a lot of what looked diseased, to try and have less of that problem next year.