dang! mine are still babies — in their first year. i hope to have a jungle of them in a year or two 
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I spy that thistle. When I return home from a trip of visiting big Scottish estate Gardens I always want an ornamental thistle.
The ones we have that grow wild here are beautiful, but very nasty with their thorns.
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I couldn’t resist sticking a spear thistle in the middle, even though all the thistles around me are wild and very spikey.
I picked some creeping thistles as they are very pretty and found out they also have some serious spikes, and I drew the line at the marsh thistles as I would have had to go and find my leather gardening gloves to even attempt to pick them.
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what beautiful stuff to look at all day!
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lol i could watch this go round and round all day (xpost from my journal)
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My Lobelia is blooming its little heart out and I am shocked by it. Here it is today after 10 days in a row of hellishly hot humid Missouri weather. I stopped growing Lobelia for decades because it seemed to me once the hot weather hit, it stopped blooming.
I wonder if this is a greatly improved variety? If I had known it was going to bloom like this, I would have purchased vats of it. Next year…
Here it is at the top of the rock wall.
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I cut these tonight. I’m going to drop off the teal vase at my library tomorrow, the baby dahlia bouquet is for a client, and the white vase is for me. 
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@madgeylou heres my 7’ tall Rudbeckia. 
It’s 5 plants tied together because they were falling over. I started the seed spring 2024, they did nothing, and this year they have gone nuts. I read that it’s a short lived perennial, so I’m not sure how long they will last but hopefully a few more years.
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omg! they are amazing!
i read that they are aggressive re-seeders so maybe if the plants don’t survive too many more years, they will at least spawn the next generation.
mine were planted this year and aren’t as big yet, but they are a good 3-4 feet and i’ve had enough to harvest a bit. i love them! they are so cute in arrangements. this youtuber i follow (cranery gardens — AMAZING videos, i have learned so much from him and his personality is delightful) calls small flowers that sit above the rest of the bouquet and have some movement “da dook a deek” or something 
but the rudbeckia triloba definitely do that, along with cosmos, sweet peas — all the ones that float!
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I will have to check him out!
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Can confirm they reseed very easily! These are mine just growing at my house. The tallest ones are at least 7 feet tall!
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Nice! I use rocks to line my beds too. The limestone around here is plentiful.
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I took lilies to my mom today, as well as enough other flowers to make two beautiful bouquets for her. I also gave a neighbor a gorgeous lily stem with I think 6 blooms on it and she literally squealed when she saw it. It was a very cute reaction.
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wow i love the color combo of those blooms with that vase! 
beautiful!
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Gorgeous colors
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Those lilies are great!
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