from spring into summer

The spring orgy of flow­ers is wind­ing down. Some spring bulbs flashed for just a few days and were gone. But it didn’t really mat­ter because they were replaced by some­thing else interesting.

Summer’s flow­ers seem to come at a more mea­sured pace. But for me it’s a dif­fer­ent sort of plea­sure, let­ting me focus on more sub­tle things like plant forms, leaf col­ors and textures.

Here’s some of what’s still bloom­ing from spring, along with the begin­nings of plants that will accom­pany me through the sum­mer months.

The flow­ers above, left to right, top to bottom:

1: Blan­ket flower (Gail­lar­dia pul­chella).
2: Laven­der cot­ton (San­tolina chamae­cy­paris­sus–I have to look up the spelling of this species every time).
3: Deer­weed (Lotus sco­par­ius) You might con­fuse this Cal­i­for­nia native for one of the inva­sive brooms. It’ll drop most of its leaves to sur­vive the sum­mer drought, but the del­i­cate wands of branches stay attractive–at least to my eyes.
4. St. Catherine’s lace (Eri­o­gonum gigan­teum)–a buck­wheat from the Cal­i­for­nia Chan­nel Islands and coastal regions. This is a young plant, but its umbels are already huge–the largest in this photo is two feet across.
5. Santa Cruz Island buck­wheat (Eri­o­gonum arborescens)–another Cal­i­for­nia buck­wheat.
6. This is a Crinum that came with the house. It might be C. pow­ellii.
7. Ver­bena bonariensis–a flower that’s exactly the same color as the ver­bena in the final pic­ture in this post, though their plant and flower forms are totally dif­fer­ent.
8. Clarkia williamsonii.
9. Same as 6.
10. Bro­di­aea species, one that I lost my records for–maybe B. ele­gans (any­body know this one?).
11. But­ter­fly bush (Clero­den­drum myri­coides ‘Ugandense’)–In the same fam­ily as mints and sages, this has square stems and a del­i­cate scent to the leaves and stems. It enjoys water but doesn’t get much of it and still looks pre­sentable.
12. Ver­bena lilacina, a tough species from the Isla de Cedros, off the coast of Baja. At first glance it looks like the laven­der lan­tana many peo­ple around here grow, but the leaves are totally dif­fer­ent. Here it’s planted along­side some suc­cu­lents with red and blue-gray leaves.

Thanks again to Carol at May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing Gar­den Blog­gers Bloom Day!

June 14 2009 08:38 pm | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • •

14 Responses to “from spring into summer”

  1. Bird on 15 Jun 2009 at 2:38 am #

    What lovely, var­ied blooms! The Veberna and the Clarkia are wonderful.

  2. ChrisC on 15 Jun 2009 at 5:26 am #

    What a great post for GBBD.And I llove your presentation!

  3. Kim on 15 Jun 2009 at 6:02 am #

    I love the mon­tage of pho­tos — your flow­ers are lovely. I espe­cially love the Clarkia, one I’ve never seen before. Thanks for sharing!

  4. Town Mouse on 15 Jun 2009 at 7:41 am #

    Inter­est­ing how the blos­soms just explode in other parts of the coun­try while we cher­ish a few strag­gling spring blooms, the buck­wheats, and a few other spe­cial delights in CA. Happy bloom day!

  5. Dreamybee on 15 Jun 2009 at 11:21 am #

    What a peace­ful, sooth­ing col­lec­tion. :)

  6. tina on 15 Jun 2009 at 1:57 pm #

    Lovely set up of all the pic­tures! I have the Laven­dar cot­ton and it is in bloom right now too. I really like it. Your St. Catherine’s lace is won­der­ful. Never seen it before.

  7. Gayle Madwin on 15 Jun 2009 at 10:20 pm #

    It’s nice to see what my Clarkia williamsonii flow­ers will look like if my plant ever blooms. I had no idea they could grow five and a half feet tall either … one foot tall is about what I was expect­ing. I’ve researched it now, though, and appar­ently the height they grow to is a mea­sure of how much water they get. I never inten­tion­ally water mine, but our yard was badly flooded over the win­ter, so I attribute the mon­strous height of my Clarkia to the win­ter flooding.

  8. Brad on 15 Jun 2009 at 11:26 pm #

    I really like that bro­di­aea, what­ever type it is. And I like the color of your clarkia much more than the neon vari­eties I have in my yard.

  9. Nell Jean -- seedscatterer on 16 Jun 2009 at 5:00 am #

    Great pre­sen­ta­tion. More than the blos­som pho­tos, I enjoyed your descrip­tions. The lotus and the erigon­ums are new to me. Inter­est­ing that you have crinums.

  10. Jan on 16 Jun 2009 at 4:54 pm #

    Lovely June blooms. The blue but­ter­fly is my favorite.

    Jan
    Always Growing

  11. Sylvana on 16 Jun 2009 at 4:56 pm #

    Nicely orga­nized! You have great eye for color and texture!

  12. lostlandscape on 16 Jun 2009 at 6:15 pm #

    Bird, Kim, Brad–I’m start­ing to get more attached to this clarkia. This is the first year I’ve grown it.

    And Gayle, I hope you get some blooms from yours. Mine is in a really water-deprived spot.

    Chris, Tina, Nell Jean, Sylvana–Thank you! The flow­ers are a lit­tle more chaot­i­cally arranged in the gar­den, but it’s fun to imag­ine new rela­tion­ships between them by rear­rang­ing the flow­ers in the post.

    Town Mouse, it’s inter­est­ing to go from the envy of the gar­den­ing world in the mid­dle of win­ter to being one of the strag­glers when sum­mer heats up. Well, we’ll always have our buckwheats…

    Dreamy­bee, only now do I real­ize that I didn’t show any­thing red in this mix. There’s some of it in the gar­den, but it def­i­nitely on the more del­i­cate, more pas­tel scale right now.

    Jan, many thanks. The blue but­ter­fly has got to be one of the most reward­ing and easy things in my garden.

  13. ryan on 16 Jun 2009 at 7:31 pm #

    I really like that clarkia. I might try to grow it next year. I don’t know which bro­di­aea it is, though I don’t think it’s any of the laxa varieties.

  14. ~~Rhonda on 18 Jun 2009 at 6:21 pm #

    The blues and pur­ples with the white/silvers and grays…so pretty! ~~Rhonda

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