Flower Round-Up

Once again, I barely left the house yesterday. I sat in the back garden and finished "Hidden Valley Road." Many of you observed in comments yesterday that it sounded like a sad book -- but somehow it didn't strike me that way at all. It was more like, look at this remarkable situation, and at what researchers have learned from it. While compassionate, the book is not a sob story. It's about the science of schizophrenia and how the individual members of that family were each affected, and how they coped. Apparently they wanted their story told. I enjoyed it a lot.

So, anyway, because I've been hanging around the house, it's time to catch up on the garden! A lot has been happening.

First of all, our scabious (above) has burst into bloom.

This is coltsfoot that grew wild between our patio stones. We've left it because it's such a nice looking plant! It blooms yellow in the spring.

Here's a slightly lopsided corncockle. This is the third year I've grown corncockle from seed I collect from the previous year's flowers.

This is ragwort, which many people regard as a weed. But I like it and we let it grow in our garden. I took this just a few days ago and now the flower heads are almost solid yellow.

One of our many hydrangeas. They're mostly this color, even though some of the plants are supposed to be the Nico Blue variety. Dave has added colorant and done other things to adjust the acidity of the soil, hoping to get bluer flowers, but so far they persist in being mostly pink. I'm cool with that.

This is great hairy willowherb, a wildflower that we've allowed to grow in the back corner. It's kind of taking over, honestly. I may pull some of it up, but for now we're enjoying the flowers.

Our crocosmia "Lucifer" has added bright red flames of color to a few spots in the garden.

I don't know what's happened to all our Nigella -- we used to have quite a bit of it, but this is the only mature plant we have so far this year. I planted an envelope of new seeds but they don't seem anywhere near big enough to bloom yet.

This cornflower appeared in our flower bed, apparently re-seeded from that wildflower mix I grew last year.

And finally, our "Bishop's Children" dahlias are starting to bloom. The first flowers are often a bit wonky, like this one, which looks like it's winking at us. (It has since opened more fully.)

Someone in the neighborhood has been setting off firecrackers the last few nights -- or maybe full-on fireworks, though I haven't seen anything in the sky. I've just heard the explosions. Fortunately Olga is pretty placid about fireworks. She doesn't love them, but she doesn't become a trembling mess, either. I guess a fellow American somewhere nearby is celebrating. (We ignored July 4th entirely this year, but then, we never really celebrate it. I'm just not a flag-waver.)