Pretty picture: Impatiens 'Fusion Heat'

Like a lot of the pictures here, this doesn't quite do justice to the subject, but oh well, it's as good as I could manage. Last year at work, we had the related variety Impatiens 'Fusion Glow,' which was nice, but never quite did it for me. The flowers were interesting, certainly, but as they aged, they turned lighter in color, and then the ones we didn't sell also developed yellowish foliage for one reason or another late in the summer. The yellowy foliage and the increasingly-lighter yellow flowers left me a little cold, and wound up looking just kind of washed-out. But this -- is awesome. At least so far.

It's a little less orange and more pink than this in real life.


Which, I know for the people who have been gardening a long time, one more Impatiens is nothing to get worked up over. But all the same, every time I go by their table at work, I think to myself, oh my gods those are neat; I want one.

By and large, we've gotten the same stuff this year that we had last year (and the year before that, and the year before that. . . .), but I'm surprising myself by being excited about some of the new varieties of things. There's an Osteospermum I'm looking forward to seeing in particular, and we got a lot of new coleus varieties (somewhat at my urging, which I'm hoping won't turn out to be a mistake) this year too, some of which are going to be pretty stunning when they're full-grown. It's at least something to look forward to.