For me, this week is what gardens are all about.
Everywhere the eye falls, beauty and burgeoning life! And reward for one’s effort. Seeds I planted have sprouted. Seedlings I transplanted are blooming in steady succession. Ditto wildflowers. All around, a zillion shades of green, lush as a rainforest. Skies constantly changing, often a heartbreaking blue with dramatic cumulus clouds — which might build up into towers that erupt into showers or thunderstorms. The constantly changing weather usually provides a breeze that keeps the bugs away, but plenty of them to feed the birds and butterflies. Lots of color among those flying critters, too.
All the seasonal creatures are here, busily reproducing. Some birds are already on their second round. The early flowers and shrubs have gone to seed or started setting fruit, while the midsummer flowers are nearing their peak. The late summer flowers (and vegetables) are one to three feet tall and budding.
Right now my yard is abloom with peonies, iris, columbine, some variety of primrose I’ve never identified, a variety of wild sunflower I’ve never identified, blackberries, Deptford pinks, daisy fleabane, yellow and orange hawkweeds, early daylilies, Johnny-jump-ups, creeping phlox (fading), creeping thyme (opening), wild strawberries (fruiting), forget-me-nots, rugosa roses — and, in the pots, Profusion zinnias, Wave petunias, marigolds, celosia, and impatiens.
The week preceding and following the solstice features lupines. I never saw them until in my 30s, when I traveled to the White Mountains of New Hampshire about this time of year. We motored passed a south-facing slope that was solid purple — so dramatic, we turned around and went back, got out, and stared. A field guide informed me they were wild lupines, which I now see on other sunny slopes in the higher elevations of my adopted home, Vermont. In southern New England, they only appear as garden cultivars, in lovely candy colors but none quite the same royal purple as the native variety. Pinks and lavendars and whites came with my yard but all attempts to plant wild lupines have come to naught (and the cultivars are persnickety, too). Happily, the altitude is just right for neighboring sunny slopes to grow lupines profusely. They last 1-2 weeks, and I look forward to them all year.
As Rodgers & Hammerstein say in their musical, Carousel, “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over”!
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardns
Posted by: Opening the heart — Carolyn Haley
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