In all the excitement about the true harvest beginning, and produce trickling in every day, I often forget to look around at the flowers in the garden and appreciate them fully. Each one is planted for a reason; the most vital function is to provide something useful for wildlife. I notice all kinds of pollinators visiting our flowers, from hummingbirds to tiny native bees, and that definitely gives me pleasure, to be feeding so many creatures. But beauty is another very important function, and I have to remind myself to stop and enjoy it. My goal is to have a plethora of blooms at all times of the year; right now, it's easy to achieve that. Long, sunny days and very warm temperatures lend themselves to some beautiful shows in the garden. So let's take a look, shall we?

Dill, about to bloom. Certain insects prefer these large umbel shapes.

cornflower

chamomile, with a beetle

Borage. Bees just love it. I plant a lot of herbs just for their flowers.

Tidy Tips, closing up for the night. This is a CA native, usually seen in Spring.

Cosmos, just about to bloom

Gaillardia or blanket flower

Echinacea or coneflower

Scabiosa or pincushion flower

Asters (Corethrogyne filaginifolia), going to seed.
I let a lot of my flowers go to seed rather than dead-heading them.
Birds eat the seeds, and also I get volunteer plants.
Not to mention, they're pretty.

Dahlia

Nasturtiums, aloha mix

Clarkia, farewell-to-spring

Coreopsis in the foreground, cosmos in the background

Rudbeckia, or Black-Eyed Susan

Nicotiana jasmin alata -this flower just keeps going in my garden.
It started blooming in Spring and hasn't stopped. It's taller than Tom
and covered with blooms that droop in the day, but perk up in the
cool mornings and evenings. It has a heavenly smell, and the
native bumblebees have been all over it.

Flowering pomegranate

Yarrow Achillea millefolium rosea

CA goldenrod Solidago californica

CA fuchsia or Zauschneria californica- soon this will be blooming everywhere
as I have a lot of it in the garden. All the bees love it and it provides color
when not a lot of other stuff is blooming.

I just want to assure you that I don't know the Latin names off the top of my head. I always have to look them up. I feel like an idiot when horticultural types throw the Latin names around, though I understand that it keeps everything very clear. But I figure the common name works just fine most of the time, right?

I don't want to leave out you vegetable fans. Tomatoes are starting to come in, in earnest, now. This was this morning's harvest; four more ripened just in time for dinner tonight.