Enjoying the blooms

During the heat of the summer -- the next couple of days are forecast to be 99 F -- many of the blooms in my garden look a little sad. Past their prime. The purple coneflowers, black-eyed Susan, Cleome -- although they're still around, they're fading a bit. The high heat takes just a little more out of them too.

Not these though. This is the Mexican petunia I got for free a month or so ago, and it just keeps going strong.

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I haven't grown this before this year, but I think it will be in my garden from now on. Every morning it has roughly a dozen blooms on it.

During the day they fall off, to be replaced by another dozen or so the next day.

The bumble bees like them, and they are really nice flowers. No fragrance that I can detect, but my nose isn't the most sensitive.

The plant itself seems quite upright, although I've read that when they get too tall they may flop over.

I'm not going to do any pruning on it until I see problems with flopping, because I don't want to remove any of the flower buds, which just seem to keep on coming:

Fresh new blooms every day for the past 5 weeks, and apparently it will continue doing this for the rest of the summer. I'll be looking forward to that!

I'm growing this in a large pot which gives it a bit more height, and I love the way the morning sun highlights the whole plant.

I wonder: Would I have purchased this plant at some time if it hadn't been given to me? Maybe not, and that would have been a shame because it's a beautiful plant.

Does it propagate easily from cuttings? I'll have to test that out, and figure out the best way to overwinter this beauty, because it's definitely going to be growing in my garden again next year.