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Category: flowers

Accidental Bouquet

Accidental Bouquet

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Yesterday on a walk I spotted chicory, daisy and buttercup growing in a clump beside the road. If I had planned a garden in that spot, those would not be the plants I’d choose. I notice this especially in spring: purples and yellows, pinks and blues. Colors I wouldn’t pair in my wardrobe or on my walls.

The most stunning bouquets are the accidental ones, the ones nature throws together randomly, the seeds floating to earth, bedding down together on a whim, finding beauty in their togetherness.

Grow Up

Grow Up

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Trees do it. Flowers do it. Even exasperating toddlers do it. But at this time of year it’s hard not to be thrilled by the sheer verticality of the green and growing world.

The climbing rose is a case in point. It grows up and out. Or over and out, depending upon how you look at it. And you’ll have to take my word for it, because this picture doesn’t capture it.

The point is, the branches grow out so the roses can grow up. Such is the power of the sun, of the life force.

Yes, They Can!

Yes, They Can!

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I think the daffodils heard me. I wasn’t at home in the light to photograph
them. But here’s what their brethren downtown are doing.

And elsewhere in the District, things are popping out all over:

Let’s just see winter try to make a comeback now!

Come On! You Can Do It!

Come On! You Can Do It!

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Is it any wonder that shy spring flowers are timid after this winter? Even as late as Sunday they were being pelted with snow, sleet and freezing rain.

Somehow — the angle of the light, the lengthening days — the world is still preparing itself for the new season. There’s that promising pink haze at the top of the tall trees, the way buds look 80 feet away. And there are green shoots and flowers pushing up all over town. Rumor even has it that the cherry blossoms are primping for their big show.

But here on the shady side of morning, the daffodils are looking less than sure of themselves. Yesterday I bent low, snapped a few shots, and gave them a pep talk. “Come on, guys. You can do it!”

They had nothing to say for themselves; only hung their heads a little lower. But I have confidence in them. Sixty-degree temperatures are forecast again for today. It’s only a matter of time …

Hidden Garden

Hidden Garden

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This is a corner of the yard you can’t see from inside, the outer edge of a small grove of trees that softens and shelters half the house.

Ferns, hollies, a crepe myrtle and a knockout rose are gathered here with little thought to their placement except hope that the rose and crepe myrtle would have enough light to bloom.

There is no gate, no wall or key, and it holds no fairy magic. But I like to think of this place as a hidden garden, because though it’s visible to neighbors, it is, for the most part, invisible to me.

Late Summer Color

Late Summer Color

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Purples and yellows splash color into the late-summer garden. Chicory blooms blue along the roadside. And for contrast, the bridal-veil white of clematis paniculata.

Summer may not have been hot this year, but it has been colorful. Plentiful rain has kept the grass green, has meant no watering, no parched soil.

Wildflowers scarce in other seasons are emboldened this year.  The soil has a memory, especially when it rains.

Late summer color softens the blow, warms these days of waning light.

The Volunteer

The Volunteer

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I didn’t plant this flower, didn’t even notice it until last week. A volunteer, I suppose, a morning glory that decided to glorify us on its own, not sought out, not planted (its seed nicked and soaked as the instructions on the morning glory seed packet suggest).

Instead, it grew from escaped seeds, from flowers settled two, three summers ago, blown to the other side of the deck stairs, cosseted by leaf mold and azalea shade. Its green tendrils twined around the evergreen branches, spiraling up and around, through sunlight and darkness. Invisible for one season at least, maybe two.

And now, finally, it finds itself here, at the rag-tag end of summer, glinting in the sunlight of an August morning.

The volunteer proves that nature has its own designs and humans are often not a part of them. Beauty, however, often is.

Moon Garden

Moon Garden

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A colleague asked if I’d heard of moon gardens — and now I can’t stop thinking about them.

I imagine a balmy night, slight breeze, whiff of honeysuckle. A full moon rising. White plants overlooked in the daytime shine out in the darkness: dusty miller, sweet alyssum, night phlox.

And then there are flowers that only bloom at night: moon flower,  four o’clocks, evening primrose.

Some plants are more fragrant in the evening:  flowering tobacco, pinks, night gladiolus.

Or maybe it is that we, the tired gardeners, are more open to their scent.

Flowery Bower

Flowery Bower

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So far so good in this hard-fought battle between deer and day lily. A battle in which the day lily does nothing except bloom and be beautiful. A battle waged by the human on the day lily’s behalf. A human with a spray can of Invisible Fence.

Let us now praise the human and the spray can. Let us now praise the beauty that is the result.

It’s midsummer. The rain has stopped. The lilles are blooming. It’s a flowery bower.