Good morning, gardeners, and welcome to the Saturday Morning Garden Blog!
Summer is here and it is HOT HOT HOT in Western Colorado! Our forecast went from rainy and somewhat cool to 90's overnight. The garden and lawn benefited from the moisture but then began to dry out fast!
I do think that the earlier moisture did help to get the gardens going and now we have lots of summer flowers beginning to bloom. Among them are the Maltese Cross (Lychnis chalcedonica) - if you want seeds, I'll send them, but beware.
These 3 foot tall flowers will reseed and end up everywhere. I have them now in almost every garden around the house. They even reseeded into a big pot where I had an Arbor Day crabapple tree planted. Those plants went to the Front Range with the crabapple tree, where they will probably start taking over my mom's garden (also known as the back yard). I think they have lots of competition....
More summer garden craziness past the orange Lychnis in stylized form....
My mom refuses to plant grass like everyone else. She's lived in a house in a suburban development in a little town just northeast of Metro Denver, along the South Platte River floodplain. The soil is sandy and rich, and she's let all these different flowers just go to seed where they will. The yard has flagstones and perennials in strategic places, as well as some nice trees and bushes. I love seeing this yard-as-a-garden as it evolves, and this year it did not disappoint!
When my mom and I get together, a lot of our conversation revolves around the gardens, and our successes and failures as gardeners. Although we live in the same state, we have very different soils and weather patterns. When the Front Range is getting drowned in flooding, hail, and tornadoes, we're getting sunny, hot days in the 90's with nighttime temps in the high 50's.
We compare stories, swap plants and seeds, and discuss the best products we've found in our respective gardening stores. I love that we both are more organic than not, and that she is willing to listen to my advice as much as I am willing to listen to hers. It's our biggest bond, the gardens, and I love that we have this in common. I know I inherited my green tendencies from her, although my dad was no slouch when it came to knowing how to garden! Although he's been gone these many years, we still talk about what he loved to grow. My mom has already let me know that the garden plants in her yard are mine to inherit - although she has made it clear I'll have to wait for that variegated iris until after she is gone. Darn it!
Thanks, Mother, for all your wisdom and penstemon seeds! I treasure our garden time together.
An afterthought but also a major subject of discussion and interest with my mom and I - the universe and all the wonderful things in it. Are any of you able to watch Venus and Jupiter on their journey to conjunction this end of June!? I can watch them get closer and closer to each other as I sit out on our side porch of an evening in this beautiful weather. It's just so awe inspiring to think of the planets and the stars, and how they are so mysterious and complicated. I hope you don't miss it.