Remember when I wrote about The Perfect Perennial Garden? So much for highfalutin thoughts!
Today it is 96 degrees and sunny Maybe a little hazy. Too hot for gardening. So I wander instead, barefoot and lost, surrounded by butterflies and bird song in that ether that is a garden in summer.
The verbena bonariensis is taller than I am and as I walk, dodging it and the assorted other path plants, clouds of butterflies move all around me. White ones, orange ones, brown ones, yellow ones, all kinds and sizes. A jungle, children call it.
Sometimes children find turtles or toads or bird nests or cool insects. Today I found polliwogs. I don't usually mention the snakes.
We tromp on the thyme, and watch for bees if it's blooming. "Hi bee!" (Take a breath and count to ten and step back slow.) "G'bye bee!" (Take another breath and count to ten and step back slow again.) "Fly away bee!" (Take another breath and see, you're fine.) Although sometimes they are so sated I think I could hold them in my hand.
A goldfinch comes to eat some early thistle, and the hummer spins by dipping at the mimosas. Little puffballs of pink with white centers atop lacy foliage, butterflies like them too. This weedy clump of trees works magic this month. So it stays in my jungle, too.
So much of the garden is in big swaths of pink, white and purple with clouds of white. This surprises me, but there it is. There are some clear yellows winding through, and a few supercharger reds. Some orange notes, too. How does this happen every year?
I am amazed.
The purple is primarily butterfly bushes and countless self sown verbena bonariensis, which usually bloom later here. Last winter was so mild that last year's verbenas survived and the seedlings got a head start. There are hundreds of them I am sure. Maybe a thousand. I 've never bothered to count them. Some serious gardeners call it a weed, but I like it so it stays.
There are also several soft purple unnamed clematis, strongly purple Campanula glomerata, several daylilies in that color range, a surprise platycoden, stokesia and assorted salvias. The salvias are more purple than blue, really, although "Blue Hill" is close. Salvias grow well here in my hot and sunny garden, so I like them.
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