Of course
it's not, but we can still pretend it is. No big disasters, dying specimen
plants, that sort of thing. Any spring disappointments, or failures of return
after a dry summer and a cold winter, have all been all grown over.
Sunny June
weather and enough water in the earth solves all problems. At least
temporarily. And 'temporary' is where we live.
Day lilies
are opening up on the early side this year. The first stella d'oro blossoms
preceded the summer solstice. The front
garden is showing dark pink roses, a strongly lavendar crop of lavendar-- a
color by far the best when it first comes out (second photo). A fresh second round of
our explosion-purple clematis is also climbing the porch in the front garden (last photo).
The yellow
rose-shaped blossoms of the primrose (third photo down, taken of a colony of these flowers in the back garden) are
everywhere. They spread themselves and I let them cover spots where other
perennials find it hard to get a footing. The latest colony is glowing in the
raised square of earth beside the front yard maple I keep trying to make bloom
in the desert of tree roots and thin soil. This is unforgiving weed country.
Even pachysandra struggles there. This year I'm enjoying the place's yellow
period in early summer. 
White
Shasta daisies (fourth photo) are having a strong year too. The blossoms look
healthier. At times I think the entire local 'garden world' is a little
healthier after a cleansing, snow-heavy winter. It's a theory. A few weaker
plants, in some cases specimens that have barely managed to hang in there for
years, were just put clean out of their misery. Possibly some plant diseases
that take a bite out of certain perennials every year died back enough to make
a difference. For whatever reason, the daisies are shining.
Some seriously
dark-red roses (sixth photo, taken by Anne with water drops on the petals), the mini-plants
transplanted from a lingering decrepitude in a crowded situation elsewhere, are a shiny
red this year. They managed to bloom this year even before the rose-eaters have
taken an single bite out of their leaves.
Other
plants, even those not yet in flower, or already passed, are shooting their
leaves up with chlorophyll. The scores of tints of green, and the variety of
blossoms behind them (seen in the panorama photos).
Caught in a
sea of others, spiky red astilbe blossoms rise up from the crowd (group shot, top photo). The
bi-colored leaves of the dogwood (healthier after a rescue intervention last
year) hang over colonies of smaller folk (ninth photo).
A thick crowd
of low yellow blossoms of coreopsis moonbeam opened last week (fifth photo).
The spirea
shrub (seventh photo) grows behind the weeping cherry, its dense dark pink composite flowers
leaning out over the brick path. We usually have to cut it back and then tie up
to the tree to keep the circular path clear enough to have a prayer of walking
around it.
Meanwhile white
flat-topped blossoms of achillea (yarrow) flower in the semi-shade border of the
flower island (eight photo).
Two potted
varieties of a favorite annual, hibiscus (saving pics of these for next time), are also feeling their oats.
After a
rainy period last week, we got a new supply of bright, clear, dry air one
morning and I ran outside to see what the light would tell us. The result was
-- I took a lot of pictures. What a surprise.
I can't
help wondering if there's some synergy between the sky above and the plant
energy below. Last Thursday's Boston Globe had a front page photo of northern
lights glimpsed in Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. Dark skies north of Boston
apparently had a good chance of glimpsing this stunningly bizarre phenomena. The
sports section front also had a picture of the deep pink cloud bank over Fenway
Park.
That cloud
bank was everywhere. You could see it in the parking lot coming out of the Quincy YMCA. You could see it on the Hingham shore, on the shores of Kingston,
in Hull.
The skies, I think, are celebrating the long days of what an earlier agrarian society called "midsummer."
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