My moment of glory is over: the summer doldrums have started in earnest. A couple of days in the 90's and the alpines have hustled through blooming, everything looks a tad wilty and the mariposas are done for the year. One or two bedraggled blossoms are left is all. The bluegramma meadow (my pride and joy) in the soutwest corner of the garden is drying out again, and the speckling of calochortus you see in the picture above are forming fat seedpods. I wish Wayne Roderick were alive for many reasons, not least of which would be to show him how his godchildren, his minions that he sent to Holland have come back to the state where his mom was born and grew up in to thrive. Amazing these California lotus eaters thrive so well in our dusty steppe prairie. But life is mysterious like that: Wayne's house is where Tom Peace's brother now lives, Tom being a good buddy of mine who lives not far away: it's a small, cuddly world, this gardening world of ours. Spangled with magical flowers like mariposas: I'll share a few of the red ones that knocked everybody's socks off (beginning with me). Don't you love it when life is as sweet as good red wine, or Burgundy Calochortus venustus?
Ah... the rarefied alpinists. The inauguration of the doldrums merely marks the dawn for Oenothera macrocarpa, O. caespitosa, Callirhoe involucrata, Argemones, Petalostemums, Calylophus, Psoraleas, Zinnia grandiflora, Opuntias, Chamaebatiaria and Amorpha canescens to mention only a few. And the yellow season has just begun.
ReplyDeleteWho do you think you are, Claude Barr? I would add Eriogonum allenii, E. corymbosum, E. niveum and ilk, not to mention a gaggle of Salvias (which are starting to come into their autumn pride). Mentzelias above all else, and the ubiquitous yellows (surprised you didn't mention Thelesperma)...
ReplyDeleteStill not quite as sexy as a Mariposa Lily!