Grumble! The two big urns flanking my front door were just starting to look the way I'd imagined them when I planted them. The sweet potato vine was trailing and curling just so, the coleus and spikes were tall and stately, and the mocha-leaved begonias were blooming brightly.

 

But their zenith was short-lived. Last week the begonia in one pot started to look shriveled and sickly. I don't know if it was the withering heat wave a couple weeks back -- or all the water I dumped on my pots trying to compensate. Either way, the begonia up and died over the weekend, leaving a big, blank hole in my showcase container.

What to do? Normally, I'm too cheap to invest in any new annuals this late in the growing season. But this is such a prominent spot that I know it's going to bug me to look at that blank, blah hole every day, especially when the begonia in the pot next to it is still blooming.

I perused a couple of garden centers over the weekend to see if I could pick up a mocha-leaved begonia with pink flowers, to match the one I had, but the pickings were slim indeed. And rightly so. It's mid-August, after all.

Do you fill plant holes this late in the summer? Have you come across any mocha-leaved begonias still languishing on garden-center shelves? What would YOU plant in this empty space?

 

Â