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| Probably not 99 balloons here, but still quite a few... |
The balloon flowers (Platycodon grandiflorus) are reblooming!
In my experience, balloon flowers bloom for months (pretty much all of June and July this year, I think) and if you deadhead them consistently, they'll bloom well into autumn.
Now that's a long bloom season!
Deadheading is not my favorite garden activity, but I think I'm willing to make an exception for balloon flowers because they are otherwise such cheery, tough, carefree, long-lived plants.
(Also, it's not such a chore to deadhead balloon flower compared to deadheading some other plants. The flowers bloom on tall spikes, so you can cut off an entire spike rather than trying to snip an individual spent flowerhead.)
And while I rarely saw any pollinators visiting the balloon flowers in prior years, I've seen quite a few pollinators of all shapes and sizes visiting the balloon flowers this year now that the original clumps have gotten larger and the balloon flowers have even self-sowed a bit here and there.
Besides, who doesn't love balloons? :)
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