My garden plot was all cherry tomatoes and bunching onion flowers and budding milkweed, which was fine, but I wanted something more, so I headed out yesterday with the intention of bringing home new plants.

The only problem with buying new plants is that then you have to plant them!

I added beets, cilantro, thyme, and sage to the potato bed.

I tucked tarragon and this mystery flowering plant between tomato plants and some strawberries.

I am great at growing squash blossoms and less great at growing squash. (You can see my pink cone flowers are nearly done for the season.)

So I added some a new yellow cone flower (to the left of the squash) and a yellow osteospermum.

I had a tomato plant die on me, so I had some space at the front of my strawberry patch. I tucked in a pink, a johnny jump up, and some purple pansies, as well as some Thai dragon peppers.

Between my front row of tomatoes and the back row, I planted beans and amaranthus a few weeks back, both of which are flowering (to my disappointment, the amaranthus seems to be a green variety). And today I tucked scarlet Swiss chard in there, too.

Finally, I tucked mint, lemon verbena, and dill into the back section of the garden, which is supposed to be where the herbs live. A delivery of mulch overflowed into my plot last winter, which means I have a lot more wood in that back section than I should, but I thought the mint might be tough enough to be able to root down through it.

In the end, I single-handedly found a spot for 26 plants, a feat which Rudi agreed merited a bowl of ice cream after supper. I tossed many harlequin beetles out of my plot (I’m just not heartless enough to squash them, even after seeing what they did to my kale), but I let the dozens of bees stay (and they rewarded this behavior by not stinging me). I wonder if honey harvested at this time of year would have an oniony taste to it… Probably best that the beekeepers are encouraging them to stock up for the winter instead.