My plan today was to entertain you with a litany of disappointments. Ways my garden—I—failed this year. And I will. But after taking a long overdue walk around (whenever the sun becomes a death ray, you’ll find me stretched out like a cat in front of a fan, not out in the garden) in anticipation of extolling its woes, I felt compelled to share its successes. I noticed all kinds of things I couldn’t picture from the distance of the couch.

It probably won’t come as a surprise to you that most of the plants in my garden haven’t seen a drop of water from the hose since spring. It hasn’t been weeded for weeks and nothing has been deadheaded. Nevertheless, it hasn’t been entirely overrun by weeds and there are flowers blooming (alas, more rudbeckia once again than any garden should boast). And thanks to those flowers, there are all kinds of pollinators being as industrious as I have been lazy.

I watched a monarch butterfly and black swallowtail bob and weave around the stands of swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), Verbena bonariensis, and the lone buddleia growing out of a driveway crack. Honeybees are working the sourwood tree (Oxydendrum arboreum) like it’s their job—that honey is supposed to be ambrosial. Others have been going to town on the Japanese clethra (Clethra barbinervis), Agastache ‘Black Adder’, and mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum). Hummingbirds are visiting nicotiana, lantana, and trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens ‘Major Wheeler’). And there I was on the couching thinking “nothing” was blooming.

Native bees and wasps are working right alongside everybody else. I recently learned (on NPR) that certain flowers will only release their goods to “buzz pollinators”. If you love tomatoes and blueberries you’ve gotta love bumblebees. I’ve already mentioned how great syrphid flies are at consuming aphid colonies. Wasps of all stripes (and no stripes) have their uses too.

Back when I thought “nothing” was blooming, it was because my garden lacks zinnias. I never planted bachelor buttons or cosmos either. I am learning a lot (all over again) from the cutting garden I installed this spring at Mount Hope Farm, and intend now to put those lessons into practice at home.

How could I forget how gratifying zinnias are? They took a mere six weeks and two days from direct-sowing to flower, which means seeds sown in the ground today could be a crazy-quilt array of butterfly attracting color, by mid September. It’s not too late! The challenge (aside from clearing room) will be to keep the ground moist until seeds germinate (about 3 days) and a week or two beyond the emergence of a second set of leaves. After that, let it rain.

Overenthusiastic fertilization (with an organic and very dilute seaweed and fish emulsion every couple of weeks) has taught me that cosmos might not benefit. Their germination was as (nearly) instantaneous as the zinnias but the foliage has grown lush enough to be blown sideways by every microburst with nary a flower yet. I expect they’d bloom a lot sooner, and stand straighter, in my lean-and-mean home garden.

It’s probably OK that I don’t have bachelor buttons (Centaura cyanea) because, unlike at the farm, no one is volunteering their valuable time to keep up with the deadheading. There, back in April and May I sowed a succession, all of which began blooming on the same late-June day. My fear is they’ll die in concert too, as soon as they’ve set seed and long before I become bored of using their cobalt-blue knobs in bouquets.

My own dahlias are lagging behind Mount Hope Farm’s. I planted them within a week of each other but in scant sun and terrible soil here with nary a drop of water. No flowers yet, go figure. Whenever they do decide to bloom—and they will—I’ll have even more reason to applaud. And with any luck, by then, the heat wave will be over and it will be safe for all of us to be outside enjoying our gardens again.

Kristin Green is the horticulturist at Mount Hope Farm and author of 'Plantiful: Start Small, Grow Big with 150 Plants that Spread, Self-Sow, and Overwinter'. Follow her blog at trenchmanicure.com.