Every so often my coneflowers have what I call yellow leaf disease.The White Swan coneflower continues to grow - you can see the buds - but the leaves get a sickly yellowish-green. I am baffled by this. I thought the conventional wisdom was that if your leaves were yellow your plants are getting too much water. Not so in my case. If anything - they probably don't get enough.
To further complicate this, weird brown spots appear on the leaves too. My purple coneflower did this two years ago and were so diseased toward the end of the season that I yanked them out and never put them in my garden again. But I love the White Swan and I'm bummed that this is happening to them.Do you know what might be causing this? Bad soil? Not enough fertiziler?
On to fun things ....

Better Homes and Gardens gives their recommendations for plants to try each year. This year they suggested the double wave petunia. I'm not a big petunia fan but I was smitten by their photos of them and decided to give it a whirl. The picture above is the pink. They are in a planter mixed with blue double wave petunias, pink million bells and purple fountain grass. The double blooms are gorgeous and require next to nothing in maintenance. My kind of annual! I'd buy these again in a heartbeat.

Iris quiz: I was given this very tall iris last year. Can anyone tell me what kind it is? Love the colors - perfect for all the Minnesota Viking fans in our house!
