August is a hard time to have flowers around here: heat, sun, and humidity, combined with a short growing season knock out a lot of things. Most plants that like it in New England are designed to be done by late July, then there is a lull until September when the asters and goldenrods really explode.

That being said the list is amazing: Garden Phlox, goldenrod (of at least four varieties), Black Eyed Susans, Turtle’s Head (pink), Obedient Plant, early wood asters, honeysuckle (still), Garden Sunflowers, native sunflowers, monarda (bee balm), Rose of Sharon, Ligularia (large, mustard yellow, daisy shaped flowers), Shasta daisies, species lilies, cardinal flower (both the blue biennial and the red perennial), plume poppy, hyssop, and probably some things I am missing.

The rewards? Well, an innumerable number of pollinators, a determined song by the crickets, a wood frog merrily hopping through the garden, many Black Swallowtail butterflies, dragonflies, other smaller butterflies, and the list goes on.  It may be late in August after a hard summer, but the life of the world rises in the dusk light on a hundred thousand wings from out of the flowers.