Category: sunday mornings in the garden.

Good morning from the garden!

As you may remember, last year’s gardening season ended on a bit of a low note.

First of all, I discovered that I had jumping worms, and secondly, my neighbor removed a huge, glorious shade tree and now my back garden feels like it’s baking in the sun (#stillnotoverit).

It probably hasn’t helped matters that I just returned from a trip to visit some of the most spectacular gardens in the U.S. (more on those visits in future Sunday posts) only to find that my own gardens are a hot mess.  Apparently we had a freak heat wave while I was gone that encouraged the weeds to completely take over while I wasn’t looking.

In addition to all of that, I seem to have lost quite a few plants over the winter.  It seems that little to no snow cover and sub-zero temps combined to create a winter that was quite hard on gardens.  According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the frost line was deeper in 2025 than any year since 2019.  Here in Minnesota we need that snow to protect our plants from the cold and we just didn’t get enough of it last winter.

All of these factors have contributed to what has been a rather disappointing spring in my garden.

Most of the perennials that I planted last year have bit the dust including a Lemon Meringue baptisia, a hosta Wu-La-La, a couple of azaleas, several Queen of Hearts brunnera, a Rozanne cranesbill, and some Japanese Forest Grass.  Although I have to point out that the azaleas and the forest grass were iffy propositions in our climate in a good year, so it’s not surprising that they didn’t make it.

But I also lost some things that had been in my garden for years.  One of the biggest losses was my lamium.

I had a lot of this ground cover in both my hosta garden and the front garden.  In the past it has been semi-evergreen, meaning it would retain some of it’s leaves through the winter.  As the snow would melt in the spring it would reveal mostly intact plants that were even still a bit green.

This spring there is little sign of it.  The arrow in the photo below is pointing to one tiny sprout that has managed to survive.

I’m not entirely sure if this loss is a result of the winter, or from the jumping worms, or maybe a combination of both.  However, my neighbor nnK belongs to a local Facebook garden group, and apparently many of the members are complaining about having lost ground covers in particular this past winter.  So I’m hoping it’s that.  Otherwise, I have little hope for replacements surviving in the future.

I’ve also lost a good bit of my ajuga, although it’s trying to come back.  Last year it was finally filling in …

And now it’s quite sparse and barely blooming.

I’ve also lost my gorgeous Aralia cordata, or ‘Sun King’ Golden Japanese Spikenard.

This would have been its 3rd year in my garden.  I may also have lost some of those hostas around it.  In fact, I’m quite baffled by this spot …

As you can see, it looks quite decimated.  I’m taking a wait and see approach for now, maybe those hostas are still going to come up?  Fingers crossed.

Either way, I’ve already purchased a replacement for the aralia, and FYI, I found it at Home Depot.  So this plant is definitely more readily available than it was when I first planted it.

Alright, enough of this dismal reporting on garden failures.  Let’s look on the bright side.

My Pagoda Dogwood looks great this spring.

I planted it back in 2022, so this will be its fourth season.  It’s finally tall enough to really see it above the tops of all of those ferns, so I’m very relieved that it came through the winter.

I’m also happy to see that my lilacs are full of blooms right now.

If you’ve followed me for long, you know that I’ve really struggled with this lilac hedge.

I started out planting all hybrids with gorgeous flowers, and they never took off.  I eventually had to replace all of them.  I replaced two of them with the Common Lilac, and those have grown like gangbusters.  They are over 15′ tall, and they are blooming like mad.  They had a bad case of leaf spot fungus at the end of last summer, so I wasn’t sure if that would affect the spring blooms but apparently it didn’t.

Unfortunately, their flowers are just a bit blah.  So I succumbed to temptation and added a few more hybrids on either end of the hedge a couple of years ago.  Just look at how much prettier the flowers are …

But the hybrids continue to look more straggly overall compared to the Common Lilac and I’m just not sure they are going to fill in enough to provide a screen from the unsightly neighbor’s fishing boat storage area behind us.

I’m incredibly relieved to find that all of the new Quick Fire Fab hydrangeas that I planted to create a hedge have survived.  Especially since I didn’t plant them until August of last year, so they didn’t have a lot of time to establish.  I also underplanted them with some muscari and daffodils, and they look great.

That is Muscari Valerie Finnis, isn’t it the loveliest pale blue color?

The daffodils are an all white variety called Trumpet Mount Hood.

I’m hoping that both of these naturalize (ie. multiply) and fill in all of the space under the hedge eventually.

This area is sunny enough now that the bulbs should do well from year to year.

I’m slowly starting to get over my dismay at the number of plants that didn’t make it this year.  On the bright side, this gives me an opportunity to get some new plants, right?

And as for the jumping worms, I’m going to have to learn what works and what doesn’t going forward.  Leaf mulch is definitely out, but I recently read that using cocoa bean mulch might be a good option.  I used to use cocoa bean mulch all the time, but it is difficult to find around here.  Also, FYI, it is highly toxic to dogs, so if you have a dog that likes to munch on stuff in the garden you definitely don’t want to try it.  Another study suggested that slug bait might work to help control the jumping worms.  Some of you might remember that I had to give up using slug bait because our cat liked to eat it, but now that she’s gone (#stillnotoverit) I can go back to using it.

How about you?  How has your spring been so far?  Did you have many plant losses over the winter?  Are you dealing with jumping worms?  Leave a comment and let me know!

Good morning from the garden!

My gardens are slowly but surely starting to wake up for spring, but while I wait for that to happen I thought I’d report back on some of my over-wintering experiments starting with those gorgeous rex begonias.

You may remember that I planted two different varieties of rex begonia in my front window box last year.  I think you can get a feel for how small they were when I purchased them in this next photo from last May.

I really wasn’t sure whether or not they would do well for me in that north facing window box, but as it turned out they loved it there.

Last fall I decided that they were too fabulous to just discard, so I potted them up to see if I could save them indoors over the winter.

I also took some cuttings to root in water.

Both cuttings developed nice roots within a couple of weeks, and ultimately I potted them on for winter.

In the end, one of them dried up once it was in the soil, but the other one continued to live.  I wouldn’t exactly say it thrived over the winter though.  It was basically a single leaf sticking out of a pot of soil for the bulk of the winter and I did not have high hopes for it.  But then, earlier this spring, I noticed that there was some growth sprouting out of the base of that single leaf.

And then a week or so later I noticed that there was also new growth coming from the soil too.

Eureka!  It lives!

Now I kinda wish I’d started more new plants from cuttings.  But that being said, the two original plants also did well over the winter.

I may have lost a little bit of bulk, but I’m sure that as soon as I get them outside they are going to take off again this year.

I think I will give both of these a little hair cut and see if I can root up a few more cutting before planting these out in mid-May.

Since I typically spend around $200 on annuals to fill that front window box, it would be nice to save some of that money by keeping rex begonias going from year to year.

That brings me to my 2nd overwintering experiment, the succulents.

As you may remember, I planted an antique newspaper roller with succulents two years ago.

I overwintered them in the roller the first winter, but it took up quite a bit of space in my window sill, and it leaked all over when I watered it.  That’s OK for an outside planter, but not so great on a window sill.

So last fall I decided to pull the succulents out of the newspaper roller and put them all in a pot together.

I placed the pot in a south facing window for the winter, and here is how it looks now.

As you can see, not everything made it.  Particularly that lime green sedum in the front, and that one succulent on the right.  But other things really thrived, like that rather spindly sort of succulent in the back right.

I don’t plan to put these back in the newspaper roller this year.  I never really did have a good spot for displaying it.  We’ll see what I can come up with for a unique succulent planter this year.

Finally, that brings me to my massive over-winter gardening failure, the bulb lasagna.

If you’ll remember, I found some half price bulbs at Home Depot quite late in the season last year.  Too late to plant them outside really, so I decided to try planting a bulb lasagna.

I filled two pots with a couple of layers of different spring blooming bulbs.

After watering them in, I placed the pots on my front three-season porch and I wrapped them in blankets.  I set a reminder on my calendar to give them just a little water once a month so they didn’t dry out completely.  Then as the weather started warming up this spring I uncovered them and set them in a sunny spot indoors.

And …

Nothing.

So I waited.  One week.  Two weeks.  Three weeks.  Still, nothing.

So I thought maybe they had to be outside at this point and I put them on the deck.

Still nothing.

So I decided to dig into the soil to see if I could find the bulbs and sure enough I found a bunch of rotted bulbs.

In hindsight, the porch must not have been a suitable location for them.  It probably got far too cold even though I’d protected them with blankets.  Or maybe I gave them too much water (although I really did only give them a very small amount).

Regardless, it was rather disappointing to get zero results.  Maybe a bulb lasagna just isn’t for me.

How about you?  Have you tried growing bulbs in pots?  Did you have success?  Have you got any tips to share?  If so, be sure to leave a comment.

Good morning from the garden!

OK, if you’ve been paying attention you know that I’m not in my own garden this morning.  I’m in Mexico!

This will be my 3rd visit to this resort with my neighbor nnK and her parents (and this year my sister is joining us as well).  I’m sure that I will be enjoying the gorgeous landscaping around the resort this week.

But before I left I whipped up a quick bulb lasagna to share here today.

Many of you are probably already familiar with a bulb lasagna, its seems like just about every garden YouTuber out there has shared the concept recently.  But just in case you don’t know what it is, it’s basically spring bulbs planted in layers in a pot, sort of like the layers of lasagna.

If you plan it right, the layers come up and bloom in succession.

I wasn’t initially planning on creating my own bulb lasagna, but my sister and I were in Home Depot last week and their remaining stock of spring bulbs were 50% off so I couldn’t resist buying some.

I grabbed some Persian Blue allium because I’d never seen this color before, and it sure looks pretty.

I hope it really does look like that!

I also purchased the new Proven Winners Golden Meadow blend of daffodils.

I quickly got the allium in the ground last Monday before our weather turned really cold, but I didn’t get the daffodils in.  Within a few days, with lows in the teens, our ground was getting pretty frozen so I decided it would be far easier to plant the daffodils in a pot.

And while I was at it, I could go back to Home Depot and get some of the spring blooming iris I saw there to add to it to create a bulb lasagna.

OK, so … simple concept … plant your bulbs in layers choosing bulbs that get planted at different depths and with different bloom times.

Since this is my first attempt at a bulb lasagna, I decided to keep it very basic.  The daffodils get planted at 6″, and they bloom in mid-spring, so they went in first.  I filled the pot with soil until it was about 8″ from the top, and then added my daffodil bulbs.

As you can see, I really packed ’em in there.  Since I’m only doing two layers, that should be OK.  However, if you do three or more layers you need to leave about 2 fingers of space between your bulbs so that they all have room to grow up through the layers.

My Iris reticulata are supposed to be planted at a depth of just 3″, so I added 3 more inches of soil over the daffs and then planted the iris.

I left a bit more space between the bulbs in that layer so the daffodils can come up through them.  The irises should bloom first in early spring, and then the daffodils will come up and bloom in mid-spring.  Theoretically.

I added a final 3″ of soil over the iris bulbs, and then watered my pot thoroughly.

I ended up with one spare packet of 10 iris bulbs and I was going to just pop them into a planter outside, but the soil was frozen solid.  I swear it happens overnight!

So I pulled out another pot and just planted them up by themselves.

But now comes the tricky part, where to put them for the winter?

These bulbs have to go through a cold period of somewhere between 10 to 16 weeks, and my online research tells me that the cold period should be at temps between 35–40°F.  Hmmmm.  I was planning to put these pots outside, but our winters are definitely much colder than that.  We’ve already had overnight temps in the teens, and this coming week they’ll be in the single digits.

Further online research tells me that the bulbs can freeze and rot in a unprotected pot left outdoors in our climate.  So that option is out.

Some suggestions given online include putting them in an unheated garage or shed.  I could do that, but in Minnesota even those spaces get much colder than 35–40°F.  I’ve also seen the suggestion to put them in the basement, but my basement is quite a bit warmer than that.

So I’ve decided to opt for my front ‘three-season’ porch, or as I like to call it in winter, my walk-in fridge.  It is unheated, but since it’s attached to the house it stays a little bit warmer than the shed or carriage house.  It can also be quite sunny though, so I’m going to put the pots under a table and cover them with some old sheets to keep them in the dark.

You also have to keep the container from drying out, but also don’t let it get too wet.  So I’ll be putting a reminder on my calendar to check it about once a month and add water if necessary.

It seems like there are a lot of things that could go wrong with this little project.  Too little cold, too much cold.  To little water, too much water.  Too much light.  I’m beginning to wonder if this was such a great idea after all.  But everybody seems to be doing it, so hopefully it’s as easy as they say it is and next spring I’ll have a lovely pot of daffodils and iris.

Have you had luck with a bulb lasagna?  Leave a comment and let me know, and be sure to share any tips you might have!

Good morning from the garden.

This year the Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a first frost date of October 10 for us in the Twin Cities.  It seems a bit hard to believe since it has been in the mid-80’s and humid for the last two weeks.  But I’m heading out to California, and then Vegas, next week and I won’t be back until after the 10th.  So, I decided I’d better pot up my rex begonias and bring them in the house just to be on the safe side.

In case you don’t remember, I planted two really gorgeous rex begonias in my front window box this year.

They did amazingly well in there.

In fact, this has been one of my favorite combination of plants (here’s my post about what all I planted out there this year).

Here’s how everything looked when first planted it in May.

Not terribly exciting, I know.

But here’s the look when it filled out.

As expected, the Blackie sweet potato vine grew like mad.

The white caladium took a while to take off, but once we got some hot and humid weather it filled out nicely.

The Charmed Wine oxalis ended up being overtaken a bit, and the white New Guinea impatiens were almost totally crowded out in the end.

But overall I was very happy with the 2024 window box.

That brings me back to saving those begonias.

There are several different options for overwintering a rex begonia.  First, you can let them die back after the first frost, clean the soil off the tuber, and then store it in a warm dry location over the winter.  I have tried this method twice with caladium and failed miserably both times.

Another option would be to propagate new plants from leaf cuttings, and then nurture those over the winter in pots.  They would be a more manageable size if space is limited in your windowsill.

An even simpler method is to cut a stem off the plant, pop it into a jar of water, keep the water topped up and wait for it to grow some healthy roots.  Then pot that up for the windowsill.

My original plan was to just pot them up and try to keep them alive as houseplants over the winter, but as I was re-potting them I did a little pruning and then decided to put some of those stems in water too.

I admit I’m a little nervous about the houseplant thing after reading this advice from Proven Winners:

“Rex Begonias are a bit more of a challenge for indoor growing, but with a high humidity level can be gorgeous with bright filtered light. These plants like constant moderate moisture, high humidity, and regular fertilization. They do not go dormant, so never allow them to dry out. They are very sensitive to dry roots and quickly decline if not cared for.”

My house is definitely not humid in winter, so I’m going to have to work on that.  My plan is to place them in low tray filled with pebbles and water, sometimes called a humidity tray.

But first I had to pull them out of the window box and pot them up.

And let me tell you, I really had a tough time convincing myself to pull them out.  They looked so good, I hated to mess that up.

I was surprised to find that neither of them had established very deep roots, so I googled it and sure enough rex begonias have shallow roots that prefer to spread outward rather than down.  Which means I have provided the wrong kind of pot for them.  I should have put them in large shallow pots, rather than deep pots.

Well, strike one.

But I got them potted up and for now they look pretty good.

The one on the left is a tad droopy so far, but the one on the right is standing up perfectly.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

While I was at it, I also decided to re-pot the succulents that were in my newspaper roller for winter.

I overwintered succulents in this container last year and it was a bit of a hassle because I couldn’t water it without making a mess.  Plus it took up a lot of valuable real estate on my window sill.  I have to fit those rex begonias in that spot this year too.

I have to admit that I don’t usually get great results overwintering plants.  I usually do really well until around January, and then I get tired of taking care of them.  I’ve tried overwintering pelargonium (a.k.a. annual geraniums), scented geraniums, oxalis and those succulents last year, all with very limited (or no) success.

I did do well with the streptocarpus last year …

only to kill off all but two of them this summer when we had so much rain.

To be honest, I’m not really sure it’s worth the effort.  It’s far easier to just buy new plants in the spring.  But I’ll give it a shot with these rex begonias and see what happens.

Now, how about you?  Are you planning to try and overwinter any plants this year?  Or do you have experience with overwintering things in years past?  Leave a comment and let me know.

Good morning from the garden!

You probably don’t remember this, but back in September 2022 I harvested and dried big bunches of my panicle hydrangeas.

After using some of them to make wreaths …

 I hung onto the rest to use in winter arrangements.

But I got busy and in the end I never used them in my fall/winter window boxes that year.  I stored them until the following spring, but then as I was cleaning out the carriage house one day I decided that they were just taking up space and I’d never be able to use them all, so I tossed them.

It wasn’t until I was working on my fall/winter window box arrangements last year that I really wished I’d kept them.  What was I thinking?  They were gorgeous and I just threw them away.

Actually, I know what I was thinking.  I was thinking I’d have plenty more come fall again.  And I would have, except I forgot to harvest them at the right time last year.  Instead I left them all on the bushes thinking I could just cut them off when I was ready for them.

That was a mistake.  Over time the hydrangea blossoms that are left on the plant turn brown.

I like to leave some in place for winter interest …

but the brown ones just aren’t as pretty in arrangements as those with some color, so I should have harvested some earlier.

Well, I won’t be making that same mistake this year.

The best time to harvest hydrangeas for drying is when the blooms are just past their prime and starting to dry and/or change color on the bush, and that is about now for the Vanilla Strawberry, Limelight and Little Lime varieties here in my Minnesota garden (FYI, I’ve read that my new Quick Fire Fab hydrangeas will start blooming about a month earlier than the others, so we’ll see about that next year).

After experimenting with a couple of different ways to dry hydrangeas, I’ve found that you don’t need to do anything special.  Just cut them, place them upright in a vase/bucket/basket/crate, and then put that in a dark, dry room.  I put mine upstairs in the carriage house.  There is only one tiny window up there, so it stays relatively dark.

In addition to the hydrangeas, I also decided to cut and dry my astilbe flowers this year.  I had a beautiful crop of them this summer.

I left them on the plant until mid-August when they had turned brown, and then I cut them all and put them in a bucket to fully dry.

I also had a bumper crop of allium this summer.

So I made sure to save those as well.  I also just leave these in the garden until they are dry, and then they just pull right out of the ground with no pruners needed.

I love the way they look like little fireworks.

I plan to use all of these dried flowers in my window boxes for both fall …

and winter …

Let’s hope that I can time those right this year.  I often end up leaving the winter arrangement too late and the dirt freezes solid making it difficult to arrange the dried stems.

And for now I can’t bear to dismantle that gorgeous front window box for fall.

So I may be getting a late start on that one.

How about you?  Do you dry any plants from your garden for winter arranging?

Leave a comment and let me know.

Good morning from the garden.

Well … I have to say, this gardening season is coming to a close on a less than stellar note.

It started out great.  Although the deer once again ate most of my tulips, I had some lovely daffodils and grape hyacinths in the spring.

My peonies were gorgeous, although short-lived as usual.

The alliums were lovely this year too.

I had great success with my clematis after fertilizing it in the spring for the first time.

We did end up getting a hail storm at the end of May which damaged a few of my hostas.

Then, things kind of started going downhill from there.  As I’ve mentioned way too many times, we had a really wet summer.  Lots of rain, and lots of wind.  We lost a good sized branch from our pear tree in one storm giving it a lopsided look.

So much scary wind led to my neighbor/handyman Ken having the beautiful maple tree in his backyard removed … leaving a rather sun scorched landscape where once there was a shady oasis.

Everything I have growing in that back perennial bed is looking really stressed now after going from partial shade to full sun.  I’m trying to look at the bright side though, no pun intended.  I was able to put in a row of Quick Fire Fab hydrangeas …

And I plan to re-work that entire “L” shaped perennial bed in the spring, pulling out the shade plants and replacing them with some sun loving things.

Because we’ve had so much wet weather this year, my lilacs have a bad case of leaf spot fungus which causes their leaves to turn brown and fall off.  This is happening all over our area, and many lilacs look far worse than mine.

The wet weather has also given us a massive crop of earwigs and slugs, and they’ve made mincemeat of my hostas.

A week or two ago I mentioned that at this point the panicle hydrangeas were the only thing still looking good in my garden.

I think it was the very next day that we had a torrential rainfall that practically flattened them.

The giant flowers were so heavy after being saturated with rain.  There was one large section that broke off completely, but I was hoping the rest would bounce back as they dried out.  Unfortunately, they weren’t able to stand back up again.

That being said, they are still gorgeous.  Just a little droopy.

And that brings me to my most recent discovery.  It appears that I have jumping worms.

If you remember, I posted about jumping worms back in May.  They are a non-native earthworm that strips the nutrients from top soil.  And according to Ramsey County they are an emerging problem in our area.  They can be introduced to your garden in mulch, compost and potted plants.

Little did I realize at the time that I would end up having a problem with them myself.

It was the beginning of August when I started to notice that I seemed to have far more worms in my garden than usual.  I thought it was just due to the wet weather.  But then I noticed that my soil was looking funny.  Sort of crumbly.

Then I realized that a patch of creeping sedum that I had was dying off.  I could pull it right out of the ground, it didn’t seem to have any roots left at all.  As I was pulling it, I noticed that the worms were in abundance in that area, and the soil that held the sedum just crumbled away.

Now, creeping sedum is shallow rooted by nature, and this particular patch was growing over flagstone.  So, it was extremely shallow rooted.

That being said, I’d had that patch of sedum for a couple of decades or more.  Here it is in happier days.

It grew right over that flagstone.  And now it’s completely dead.

I’ll also point out, as you can see, that the English ivy is still doing just fine.  It can literally grow without any soil at all, so apparently it’s a good choice if you have jumping worms.

So far the creeping sedum is the only obvious victim of the worms in my garden, but I don’t know what the future will hold for the rest of the plants.  Fortunately many of my hostas have been there for a long time and are really well rooted in.  Hopefully that will save them.

Also, I’ve read that the jumping worm population grows exponentially in a wet year v. a dry one.  So it’s possible that this isn’t the first year I’ve had them, but just the first year that they have been this bad.  This summer’s wet weather strikes again.

The problem is, so far there are no definitive solutions for eradicating jumping worms.  I’m not going to go into all of the details here, but if you are looking for more info on jumping worms and possible ways to deal with them you can check out this link.

I’m going to have to do some experimenting to try and mitigate their damage.  Also, I will no longer be sharing plants from my garden with others which is a bit of a bummer.  But better safe than sorry, right?

As as sidebar, if you grabbed one of my sedum cuttings at the Carriage House sale, don’t worry.

The cuttings were taken from the tops of a taller sedum (not a creeping variety), and potted up in new potting soil.  They would not have contained jumping worms or their eggs.

So at this point, I’m ready to throw in the towel on gardening.  I’ve always struggled with garden burnout around now, but this has been a rough one for sure.  I think I’ll be happy to button things up for a long winter’s nap.  I’m sure next spring I’ll be ready to face it all again.

How about you?  Are you ready to call it good for gardening season this year?  Leave a comment and let me know.

Good morning from the garden!

I have to admit, not much is looking great in my garden right now.  The hostas are full of holes from earwigs and/or slugs, the bee balm is dried up and sad looking, the ferns are on their last legs, the tips on all of the irises are brown, and I don’t even want to talk about the pseudocercospora leaf spot fungus on my lilacs (if you haven’t heard about this, it’s rampant in Minnesota this year due to the amount of wet weather we’ve had, for more info, check out this video from Kare11).

That being said, my Japanese Spikenard is still looking gorgeous.

And the panicle hydrangeas are looking absolutely stunning this week, they love all of the rain we’ve had!  This one is my Vanilla Strawberry …

And this one is Limelight …

Here’s a better photo to put the size of that Limelight in perspective.

It’s easily 11′ to 12′ tall.  I sure do hope my new Quick Fire Fab hydrangeas perform as well for me.  FYI, I did fertilize my hydrangeas in early spring with Espoma Rose-tone.  You don’t really need to fertilize panicle hydrangeas, but I’ve read that they will grow faster if you do.  So you can bet I’ll be out there with the Rose-tone again next spring to fire up those Quick Fire Fabs (pardon the very lame pun).

Since my own garden isn’t looking especially inspiring right now, I’m bringing this Sunday morning in the garden post to you from Green Barn Garden Center’s sunflower field in Isanti, MN.

My niece and I headed up there earlier this week to check it out.

Although it was a bit of a gloomy day (and yes, there was more rain!), the flowers were sunny enough to make up for it.

Being there on a cloudy weekday meant we nearly had the entire place to ourselves.

Sunflowers take about 60 days to bloom, and they bloom for about 7 to 10 days.  So Green Barn plants five crops in succession so that they have at least one section in full bloom throughout the month of August.

They provide a bunch of fun photo spots, like this one with a piano …

or this one with an old fire truck.

There were numerous tractors that one could pose on too.

But my niece and I are of the same mind when it comes to photos of ourselves.  We don’t like them.  I did convince her to pose for just one though.

It started to drizzle about halfway through our wander around the field, so we wrapped things up after checking out a few more of the photo props like these fun bikes.

We paused at the end for one quick selfie, which both of us hated …

but we did it anyway.

If any of you locals are looking for some fun photo ops, Green Barn Garden Center should have sunflowers in bloom through Labor Day weekend.  They charge $7 admission, but you can pose for as many photos as you like (or not, in our case).  Here’s a link so you can check out all of the details.