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.

Dreamland Pink

Believing that one can never have too many zinnias, and that hot colors are best, I returned to my nearest garden center yesterday in search of reinforcements for the spindly seedlings I planted earlier. The selection was still a bit thin, but I did spot several packs of the Dreamland series labeled as to color. Wrongly labeled, as it turned out. For example, this promising orange blossom was nestled in a pack labeled "Dreamland Pink". The other buds in the pack were not so far along as to declare their specific colors, but still far enough to hint that those colors will all be different. Now I'm even more curious to see the colors of the packs labeled "State Fair Mix" that I planted earlier. I wouldn't be surprised if they all turned out to be pink.

Optimism

The sign at the local garden center warns that our average last frost date is April 30, but I was not the only optimist last Saturday buying a first installment of summer. Sunday was my day in the yard, cutting back the forsythia, weeding, and starting to plant. I cleaned up the area along the fence beside our neighbor's driveway, taking out the ailing caryopteris that finally gave up under 30 inches of February snow, and planted cleome, little yellow marigolds, and a blue larkspur, hoping that the proximity of concrete would keep the temperature up just enough in spite of a frost warning. The larkspur (labeled "Siberian larkspur" and allegedly perennial!) seemed expensive for one plant, but I succumbed to its lovely and almost unphotographable blue flowers. It turns out to be a bargain: there were 4 plants in the pot. I spread them around hoping they are all the same blue. Still waiting on our front steps are some zinnias for the back corner, and a couple of geraniums.




The azaleas are having a great year, in spite of those 30 inches of snow. This one is Herbert, the only one of the evergreen azaleas that we planted. I think we bought it at an Azalea Society sale at Brookside Gardens many years ago. The color is a little bluer than the photo shows. I would like to try taking cuttings of it as well as some of our other azaleas, especially the white one that made a great comeback after a couple of bad years.





We also have a deciduous azalea (Northern Hi-lights) doing very well in the back yard and just starting to bloom. It's currently perhaps 30 inches tall and should eventually reach 4 or 5 feet. The flowers are creamy, almost a pale yellow, when they start to open. The fully open flower is white with a yellow blotch. I could fall for another one, or perhaps another golden orange one like the one we used to have.







All in all, the hard winter seems to have agreed with the flowering shrubs that survived. Not yet blooming, but lighting up its corner of the yard, is the Deutzia I brought back from Maine a few years ago. The yellow-green leaves seem to glow in the late afternoon sun.

In the produce department, I planted seedlings of lacinto kale, green swiss chard, and what I though was red chard, which turns out to be beets. I just didn't want to fuss with seeds. Peppers and tomatoes in pots will come later.

It was lovely to spend the day outside just poking around, following my inclinations and getting things done as it suited me, with no meetings, committees, or project plans.

Sundial, with zinnia

 
We're having one of those crisp blue sky winter days that don't generally show up this far south, with a bright sun reflecting off the sparkling snow. The volunteer zinnia is still on the job, this time as a depth gauge for the snow. And the sundial? It's right there in the middle, at the end of the walk.

First snow, last zinnia

This morning's rain has turned to the season's first snow. It's falling in big thick fluffy flakes, melting on the pavement but clinging to plants. The volunteer zinnia's last blooms are wearing little mounds of snow.

End of Summer

 
 



Yesterday morning was overcast, windy, and threatening rain, but the volunteer zinnia was still blooming. A lone monarch clung to it, feeding.

Volunteer update

That volunteer zinnia is still blooming its head off:



We actually hired someone to mow the lawn, which is why it is looking so nice in the background!

Mixed blooms

As previously noted, back in the spring or thereabouts I hastily planted a couple of little packs of seedlings, labeled only as mixed zinnias. You don't have to be a deeply experienced gardener to have learned that "mixed" in this context can mean anything from "our own uniquely tasteful blend" to "color unknown", and to suspect that spindly little seedlings in an inexpensive pack fall into the latter category.
As it turns out, the seedlings from the first pack, planted behind the house, are all a vivid hot pink bordering on magenta--except for one white one. The ones from the second pack, planted in front, have been paler--a weak pink, white, a faded salmony orange--except for the most recent one, which is taller and hot pink like the ones in back, and attracted a hummingbird this afternoon.
We have had at least two hummingbirds in and out of the yard lately, sometimes arcing towards each other as they fly upward. I don't know if this is some sort of territorial challenge, or courtship, or play.

Blooming volunteer

It started out looking small and weedy. It survived in a thin patch of soil, and bowed to the mower without losing its head. Once I recognized as a zinnia, I protected it with a leftover bit of wire edging and waited, hoping it would prove to be a true zinnia in color, and not some bleached pastel. It began to show a nice bit of yellow on August 8:



And here it is today:

Volunteer

It started out to be the year without zinnias. Hopeful early visits to the nearest garden center were disappointing, and travel cut into my home gardening time. Two little market packs of spindly zinnia seedlings distributed between the front of the house and a spot in back near the fence grew slowly into discouraged-looking plants with no buds in sight.

The discouragement wasn't only local. The slightly larger plants purchased and planted in my parents' garden were beaten down by Maine's wet weather and devoured by slugs.

Not until the end of July did my plants begin to show buds, with two of them blooming this week: a pleasingly hot violet pink in the back and an anemic salmon orange in front.

Meanwhile, a stocky mystery plant had begun to grow on the edge of the back walk, or rather (because it hasn't actually been edged in quite some time) in the meager layer of soil gradually building up on the edge of the aging pavement. Curious, or perhaps unconsciously recognizing a familiar form, I let it grow. Now it has a bud, and is clearly a zinnia. I can't wait to see what color it turns out to be. Will it be one of the hot zinnia colors I love, or a weak pastel? In either case, it tells me that next year I should just plant some seeds.