Butterfly and flowers

I was so excited to see a butterfly by the window the other day! Although, the "other day" really means like back in June.  Ha!  Oh, before that - look how tall our corn plants are!

And here's the butterfly - so pretty! And I didn't even realize that we had a butterfly bush:

But supposedly butterfly bush are an invasive plant?!  Ok, just looked this up - it's basically not a native plant and could compete with other native plants.  So I guess until it gets out of hand, it's staying :-)

First cucumber of the season!

Wish my tomatoes were doing better. They are tiny!!

I also planted sunflowers this year.  This one is bigger than my hand!

I love these coneflowers:

Another different sunflower in the garden.  Love them!

The baby bee-balm plant that I purchased is really struggling. But hopefully it will come back stronger next year?!

This hydrangea that I put in a pot is pink! So weird because most of the time, the flower petals are actually white. I read somewhere that it's the soil that makes the different colors. Interesting!

We have pears!!

And apples by the front yard but those aren't looking so great. Although I have eaten a few and they are not too bad.

It's so amazing how these flowers are shaped:

It's getting pretty crowded in here!!

Hope to get this front part of the house more organized. I'll have to dig up some of those hydrangeas. I'd have to say, they start to take up a lot of the room in the flower bed! But love the splash of colors everywhere. There's definitely a lot more variety of flowers here in the Midwest.  Still learning as we continue to live here :-)