My garden has exploded in flowers. I sowed sunflower seeds for the first time in several years, and I feel joy every time I look out the window to see their lemony yellow petals and their happy faces turning toward the sun. As the sunflowers bloom, so do all of the coneflowers — black eyed Susans, echinacea, white coneflowers, and all the other colors we have in the garden.
I’ve been trying all week to get photos, but every time I’ve gone out, the sun was too harsh and all my photographs were too contrasty and glarey. I got one photo of the sunflowers and a blue sky, but most of the other photos weren’t great. Yesterday I took advantage of overcast skies to try to get some shots that show off the colors and profusion of blooms. July is hot, but the flowers are pretty.
Lemon queen sunflowersRudbeckia with calamint, white coneflowers, allium, and Russian sageMagenta coneflowersBack gardenFirst orange cosmo from seeds I sowed a while back. I’ve been waiting ages for them to finally bloom.White coneflowersGoldenrod beginning to bloomLemon petalsRudbeckiaCommon milkweedSunflowers and prairie flowersHydrangea and prairie flowersFrom the prairie gardenEchinaceaLemon queens and blue sky
Sadly, my gardening vacation is at its end. It’s Sunday morning. My body is wrenched to the side to type this, my lap board and laptop tilted at 45 degrees due to one side being propped on the chair’s arm, all because a cat is sleeping in my lap and I don’t want to disturb her. I listen to birds chirp, and I watch the feeder swing in the wind. I’m soaking it all in before I head back to work tomorrow.
I planted bulbs in October: tulips and daffodils. I’ve never planted bulbs before. I usually don’t have any gardening energy left in the fall, but for years I’ve been saying I wanted to plant bulbs, and last year I finally followed through. And the flowers are emerging! I’m so excited to see that they actually worked. Plants are amazing. It was totally worth what probably amounted to ten minutes of planting time once I bought the bulbs. I can’t believe it took me so long.
Everything is cut back and pruned. The flower beds are all mulched. I’ve set a daily reminder to water the flower baskets. It looks like we’ve got some warm days coming up this week. I can’t wait to sit on the back porch on my lunch break and watch the garden grow.
Back hill, mulchedBundled brush to dispose ofEnd of the mulch pile and cut back grass patchMy front reading bedNew tulips under the dogwoodRose bed and new daffodilsFront beds, mulchedMy front reading bed
The trees are starting to change, leaves are starting to drop, and the colors in the garden are beautiful.
Bronzes and golds and garnet redsGuess it’s time to put the hammock away View from the back deckI cannot get enough of these grasses. I love the gold and copper tassels.Autumn joy sedum. It’s color just keeps getting deeper.
Sometimes decay can be beautiful. I walked the garden one day looking for dried and cracked textures, for discarded parts, for nature in a state of decomposition. For something different than I usually look for. There is so much to see when when you look beyond the fresh bloom at the beginning of life. This was a a wonderful reminder to observe more than the obvious: flowers and butterflies are beautiful in all their colorful glory, and so are brown branches and brittle dry flower petals.
Remains of cut flowers in the compost pileHydrangea in the compostA rose bloom in its death throesHydrangea in the leaf litter
Of course, all of these dead and dying things are fodder for other life: ants, fruit flies, centipedes, and worms all feed on them. Rain and wind, friction and feet, biting mouths and digestive tracts break them down until they are dirt again.
And sometimes, before that happens, a creature will gather these shed strands, forgotten fragments, and castoff clumps into soft shelters for new life to be born.
I don’t branch out much with photography. I think I take the same photo of dogwood flowers, the same photo of lilac flowers, and the same photo of salvia every year. I use the same lens on the same subjects. I did shoot in the soft evening light the other day and was really pleased with how it illuminated my tulips and columbine.
I want to branch out with photography. When I was young and less self-conscious about portraiture, I took some photographs I was proud of. It helped that I had willing friends to go out shooting with me. Now I’m shy of getting my camera out and photographing people. I’d like to get better at it, but I’m not ready for that yet.
I’ve got a couple of other places to start. First, I can work on being patient for good light. This is really the secret to photography. Also, it is hard. I am not patient.
Second, I’m eager to try a different perspective. We’re going to Iceland at the end of the month, land of landscapes, so I want to try a wide angle lens. I bought one, and it arrived while I was away last week. I finally took it today for a test run in our back yard. I still took standard shots with my 35mm lens, but I was excited to play with my new 16mm. I could capture the whole garden while standing nearly in the garden, and I particularly like trying to focus on something in the foreground while still being able to capture a wide angle background. I need a lot more practice, but I’m having fun.
The entire hill garden, with new plantings in the raised bed and the adjacent new bedThe rue is about to bloomBack bed before it fills inNew plantings: cuphea, straw flowers, red salvia
And of course I took tried and true shots with the 35mm lens.
Late April is a time of year where things start happening in the garden, but slowly. I walk the garden every day and can see small changes – a new leaf, or one bud in scores opening up. I was eager to leave town for a week because I knew the garden would make noticeable progress by the time I came home. When I returned, the night was dark and I couldn’t see. But when the sun rose the next morning, I was not disappointed: the grass is lush and green, the yarrow is filling in, the salvia is blooming, tulips have opened by the mailbox, and the columbine I planted last year finally bloomed. I’m happy to be home again.
Pink columbineTulip and salviaBurgundy columbinePurple columbineSalvia and tulip
Butterfly Mind 