August 19- What's in Bloom

August 19, 2007
Greetings. The weather finally broke on Thursday of this week. After about 2 weeks of hot and sticky it got down to the lower sixties by morning. It was a somewhat strange and great feeling to go out at 6 in the morning and be a little chilly. It was even comfortable yesterday afternoon pulling weeds.

In the winter the garden emotions are reflection and anticipation. In the spring there is the celebration of the emerging color. In June and July there is the here and now. Everything is happening so fast at that point. In the fall there is mostly cleaning up and preparation for sleep.
So what is late summer, which I guess is where we are. There is certainly reflection as the last daylily blooms. There is preparation, as beds are prepared for fall planting or just cleaned up. But it is also the time to plan, to imagine what can be put where. I spend, it seems like, a lot of time with the lily catalogues thinking about oriental and Asiatic lilies. I pour over the perennial catalogues thinking about anenomies or more colorful columbine. With the aid of the computer I can make a file of potential plants, with pictures, cross-referenced with locations where I might squeeze something in. And then of course there are a few trips to the garden store. Will I find that new colorful coralbell? How many new hosta should I get? (3 was the answer yesterday.) On the other hand where is the world can anything new be put? In case you missed it I do not have all that much room for new stuff.
What I can tell you is that it is a different kind of excitement from April. It is clearly not July. But it is a pretty neat time nonetheless.

So here are some pictures.


This first picture is a dragonfly that chanced by the camera.










These next two pictures are hosta flowers. The white hosta flower is from Plantagenea, which is known for its flowers.

























Then there are these 3 waterlily pictures, taken one day before the raccoons or some other big critter got into the pond, probably having a good time but wrecking havoc with the waterlilies. On the other hand there was another bloom today, so who ever knows anything. I couldn’t decide which picture to post so I just did all three.











I think I mentioned before that I had some late blooming calla lilies. This picture has grown on me over the last few days. I like how the flower almost fades into the leaves. Then the leaves have those those white markings, even on the underside.