Got a late start to the season yet again, mitigated in part by lots of stuff coming back. Since this is a rental with severe HOA restrictions on what's visible from the street, we're limited to what can be grown in the itty-bitty backyard that's 75% deck and 25% deer, with a couple of small terrace-retaining-wall spots, one of which is in afternoon scorcher full sun and the other in "gets a little slice of morning" sun.
The morning-sun plot is right up against the deck and the drippage aka "water puddles here forever" spot near the faucet. It is home to the happiest clustered mountain mint the world has ever seen. Last year I put in a 4" stem cutting that had just started to root, and ended up the season with a 3x4 shrub that was THE party place for every pollinator around. It died back, I pruned it hard, and it's come back across a 2'x2' patch, is already a foot tall and ready to rumble. Thankfully it's a Georgia native so I'm not too stressed if it gets out of the terrace area.
Pineapple sage overwintered despite zero protection from the cold. I didn't even try to overwinter it, but the house/microclime-bubble/genetics/SOMETHING protected it enough during the hard freezes. Fingers crossed that this year it will bloom BEFORE the hummingbirds head south for winter. It's a beautiful shrub with huge gorgeous sprays of flowers, with blooming triggered by day shortening. Maybe starting out with a large established root system will prompt it to bloom earlier rather than work that leaf growth? Please?
This year the container obstacle course outside the door and along the walk is already established ... sedums, hyacinths, Stokesia, catmint, fuschia, Sciabosa, black-and-blue sage & another pineapple sage (this one overwintered indoors and it never went dormant), all came back and are joined by echinacea, dragon's tail radish, daffodils, dwarf & full-size sweet peas, nasturtiums, native hibiscus, red hot poker, canary creeper, black-eyed susan vine, catnip, indian pinks, and half a dozen others. The passionflowers looks like they'll come back again, despite a couple still being in their original little 1-gallon pot and only one of them being Z7 hardy. The sweet peas have been a nightmare of dampoff and slow-to-grow, and the nasturtiums are leggy as all get-out. My plan had been to have both of these in bloom for when the hummingbirds returned from migration, but they're weeks away.
Inside the seed start mat is packed full and the block tray has literally A-to-Z: alyssum, bachelor buttons, basil ... zinnia. This weekend is starting a few dozen more of other flowers,and uppotting the coral honeysuckle I picked up at the Chattahootchie Nature Center's native plant sale yesterday.
Plan is for some friends to take extras off my hands, and whatever they don't want gets hauled over to the community gardens and donated. I ended up 2020 with gobs of excess seed. This year's goal is getting rid of it.