The garden during the dog days is....

...all a facade! Form a distance, the yard and garden looks beautiful. But it's all an illusion. When you get up close, it doesn't look so great. There's nothing much to cut and bring in the house for color. Luckily we have large flowering trees and bushes---crepe myrtles, magnolias and rose of sharon---none of which make good cut flowers. I just have to enjoy them in the yard and from the windows in the house. 

This view from the side yard looks like it would make a pretty painting. Jordan's the aspiring artist in the family. I should ask her to try her hand at this.

 On the left and in the distant middle are fuscia crepy myrtles. On the left in the rear are white crepe myrtles. On the fence are assorted clematis---already past their bloom time.

 Knock out roses from a distance.

 Looking from the pool into the shade garden. Annabelle hydrangeas under the magnolia tree on the right. Large ostrich ferns at the entrance to the shade garden.

My knot garden has some issues, but it gives me a little sense of English charm. The mirror image is on the other side of the steps. True knot gardens are made with boxwoods and herbs. In the scorching southern summers, we do the best we can with boxwoods and little sticker bushes (you can assume here that I have forgotten what they are called---that really frustrates me).

 Close up of the pond shows the "ugly" bulbous part of the water hyacinths. But if I didn't take a close up shot, you wouldn't be able to see our goldfish. We restocked them after the blue heron ate the big ones. These were tiny feeder goldfish, but they've grown pretty much. They should over-winter just fine. We'll see how many survive to next year.

 The water garden looks much prettier from a distance. And you can catch a glimpse of the window boxes in the background.

The water hyacinths are really pretty, but only bloom for one day. Luckily, we have enough that there are 4 or 5 blooms every day.

 This is what the clematis looks like close up. Not so pretty.

And the knock out roses---not so pretty close up.

 And the beautiful crepe myrtles are very messy.  That's okay by me.

This mess gets in the pool, but it really doesn't bother me that much. It's worth it to have such pretty color in the yard from July through November---when everything else is burned up.