It’s hard to believe that in just a few short weeks all of this will be gone and all I’ll have left are photos of my beautiful flower gardens again. So, so many photos.

Too many, really, but they are like my children or my dogs; I love each and every one of them and want to document every moment of their existence with my camera (so naturally I can then complain later that I’ve got too many pictures filling up my hard drives and lament how it’s impossible to pick my favorites!).

But just like kids and dogs, they grow up and grow old and die. Except with flowers it happens so tragically fast!

Is it weird that I get emotional at the thought of how fleeting growing season is? 😄

I can’t help it, though. We have such a short time to enjoy the flowers here and it seems like it’s over in the blink of an eye. And this year I had so many lovely blooms that I don’t want it to end!

If I’m lucky, many of these will go to seed or go dormant and will come back next year. Here are a few of my favorites that are still going strong this week.

I’m actually looking forward to next spring when they all begin to return because it’s fun to see what survives the arctic winters here and also because we planted hundreds of irises (mostly purple!) that I can’t wait to see pop up and hopefully flower. I’m also looking at all the day lily bulbs I plan to order for spring planting (again, mostly purple!) and planning where I’ll put them all.

The southern facing hill just outside the dog kennels seems like a perfect spot for those.

We shall see….