Summer

Fireflies rise from the lawn at dusk. This evening two were coupled end to end on a leaf of the potted mint by the back step, as in this New York Times article, according to which the female is receiving the male's "nuptial gift".

The orange daylilies ("road side" type) are blooming but my favorites are the tall but delicate pale yellow ones (Hemerocallis citrina) that open in the evening. Now that I see where they are, I will dig out some of the orange ones later on to make room.

The State Farm zinnias planted as spindly seedlings are doing nicely and turn out to be exactly the sort of mix of hot orange reds and strong violet pinks that I like on a hot day.

And the bind weed is having a great June, because it's been too hot and buggy to weed much.

Mixed

I have 3 kinds of zinnias this year: Dreamland, labeled pink but mixed, including 3 shades of orange and hardly any pink; Magellan, mixed, mostly red and yellow; and State Farm, labeled mixed but proving to be (so far) hotter or paler shades of pink.

Dragon wings?

I bought this planter a couple of weeks ago and have been trying to identify the red begonias ever since. Not so simple, it turns out. In order to look up a begonia you have to already know more about begonias than I do. However, I'm starting to think it's a hybrid called Dragon Wing. WFF has a pink one that looks similar.

Unidentified

This delicate visitor sprouted in one of my vegetable pots, completely unexpected and unknown. The little blossom is pinker than it looks here--not really blue as it appears in this shot. It's one of those coolly violet shades that are so hard for an amateur photographer to catch. This is a small plant with small 5-petaled flowers and finely cut feathery leaves similar to cosmos or a wisp of fennel. I have had no luck so far trying to find its name.