With one of the lowest birthrates in Europe, Italian government encourages a day of conception.  Not everyone is a fan:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/14/world/europe/italy-births-fertility-europe.html?emc=edit_ee_20160914&nl=todaysheadlines-europe&nlid=53287003&_r=0

 

 

Asters.

 

 

Sedum.

 

Purple thistles backed by Spanish broom.

 

Spicy scented marigolds.  Grown from seeds.  I adore this garden staple.

 

A blue blossomed ground cover whose name I can’t remember.  Perennial.  My favorite.

 

 

Happy happy zinnias.  Who can look at a zinnia and not smile?  If there is a person like that, I don’t want to meet them!

Zinnias!

 

4 o’clocks!  I love the old fashioned name.  I have yellow and fuchsia ones this year!

 

Niagara grapes!  Smell so sweet.  I hope I get to eat them before the rabbits do!

 

 

The vine is grape leaves.  Hollyhocks, and butterfly bush.

 

 

 

 

 

Phlox!  I loved this long bloomers!

 

 

My last standing sunflower.  Long may he bloom!

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/world/europe/italian-grows-forgotten-fruit-what-she-preserves-is-a-culture.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=5&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F09%2F12%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Fitalian-grows-forgotten-fruit-what-she-preserves-is-a-culture.html&eventName=Watching-article-click

 

 

 

 

These lovely creatures are all over my flower gardens at the moment!  I think if I’ve done one good thing this year, it was giving them a place to call home. :-)

This time, he intervened with the pipeline that corporate America plans to cut across sacred Native American lands in North Dakota.  Right move, POTUS. Thank you.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/dakota-access-pipeline-explained-latest-judge-standing-rock-sioux-tribe-a7235106.html

 

 

Please read this paragraph from Mrs. Dalloway and tell me if you’ve ever read a better, more animated, or longer description of the passage of time anywhere! A one sentence paragraph, devoted to telling the time.  What a writer!

“Shredding and slicing, dividing and subdividing, the clocks of Harley Street nibbled at the June day, counseled submission, upheld authority, and pointed out in chorus the supreme advantages of a sense of proportion, until the mound of time was so far diminished that a commercial clock, suspended above a shop in Oxford Street, announced, genially and fraternally, as if it were a pleasure to Messrs. Rigby and Lowndes to give the information gratis, that it was half-past one.”