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Two of my all time favorite annual flowers are nasturtiums and mock roses. These guys never fail to please in form or staying power. The nasturtiums get planted alongside the garage and they always come out and spread themselves around the mulched area. They usually flower in shades of orange, yellow, and red, with roundish dark green leaves (which are edible, by the way). This year Henry and I started a bunch of them indoors in April so they are bigger now then they usually are at this time of the summer. As I had plenty of starter plants, I also put some of them up front to see how they'd do up there. The mock roses have been planted in the direct sunlight part of the brick patio out back for many years now. They always "take"" and they always have a way of surprising me with their blooms. I try to keep to one color (usually pink), but they often have a mind of their own and surprise me with another color (usually yellow). Anytime I want some color in a very sunlight spot, I turn to mock roses.

It's decidedly hard to find flowers that like the shade, outside of impatiens. Shade seems to be the spot for shades of green rather than displays of intense color. If it weren't for hostas and ferns, I don't know what I'd do with shaded areas. And I seem to have more shaded area than sunlit area in my yards. I looked at a satellite picture of my house on Google, and I couldn't actually see my house because of the trees overhead. I could see the houses on either side of my house, but not mine. That tells you something about the kind of plants I have right there. Out front, there is an enormous maple, a sizable magnolia, a yew directly next to the house, and a young maple of some sort. In the back, the yard is lined with a variety of nameless neighbor trees (some buckthorns in there in various places), shadow from a neighboring willow (aged and enormous), a walnut tree actually in the yard, and an evergreen directly opposite the sliding glass windows and to the side of the garage. Shade everywhere!