Where are the Songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

As August comes to a close and the nights are starting to get cooler, the thoughts of spring are getting more and more remote and fall is fast approaching. This past spring was so glorious, I can't help but take a fond look back! Four months ago the daphnes were still in bloom, and tulips were dotted about here and there...

It's a pretty awful combination, but which do I take out? The pale pink Aethionema or the fiery Firespinner sib? Or do I just grin and bear it?

Draba rigida (left) Draba longisiliqua (right) and Gentiana acaulis (upper right)

I hoped but didn't really expect to find Draba rigida in the Caucasus--and yet I did--not far from Mt. Kasbek: how surprised I was to see it was still in bloom the day after I returned from Georgia--just a little past the stage I saw it blooming in the wild! Alas, I didn't find its woolier cousin pictured right--nor D. mollissima which is blooming just off camera to the left: the finest drabas seem to come from there!

Gentiana acaulis

Alas, the trumpet gentians don't make it to the Caucasus! But they do love our home garden!

Including this icy white!

The garden is a tad "overmature"--everything is growing into one another--I like to think they squeeze out weeds that way!

Salvia caespitosa (center) and Asperula daphneola (left) aren't weeds! Yet anyway!

The everchanging rock garden

The various gardens here occasionally get away from me--but the rock garden is right by the kitchen and gets extra attention and care.

We are fortunate to have almost 20 drop from the top end of the property to the lowest corner of the lot!

April is daphne season, and dozens of species and hybrids bloom sequentially--and there are iris in bloom from January to July some years! Two of my favorite genera...come to think of it, I have a LOT of favorite genera...

And there seems to be more shade all the time as the way too many trees we've planted get bigger...I like the foliage contrast of woodland plants...

Polygonatum hybridum ‘Grace Barker'

The Solomon seals are proving to be quite diverse and durable in my often dry shade. This is the most spectacular of them all--a gift of Rob Proctor who got it from Helen Dillon: quite a pedigree!

The shade vignette I featured a few panels above can also have flowers--Monardella macrantha 'Marion Sampson' glowing red above. Much more petite than the monsters at Chatfield!

Looking at the same from a different angle, with a vista opening up of the lawn below and distant hills.

May is saxifrage season, and I seem to be getting more and more of the silvers....

This year I mystified a few visitors by bedding out a small Aeonium tabuliforme, which (needless to say) will not be staying out for the winter...I'll probably repeat the experiment--it almost doubled in size over the summer!

The colors can be brash in late spring...delospermas are not modest in their hues...but they are my claim to fame, and I have to grow a number of them. Dozens actually!

A late summer picture of the "vegetable garden" (a very liberal use of the term)....Jan doesn't have the heart to pull out the Ipomoeas!

Another view of the so-called veggie garden. Oh well...it is pretty in a very wuld way...

The various borders around the garden are somewhat more managed...only somewhat! But they're full of goodies. The phlox was growing here when we moved in--and we kept it.

A dry border with Amsonia illustris (which seeds about a bit too much perhaps) and giant Atraphaxis buxifolia behind. Alas, the atraphaxis smells bad. We collected one in Kazakhstan that blooms in summer and smells like honey...

Closer look at our heritage phlox...

A combo in a border with Orientpet lilies, Eryngium giganteum and Hemerocallis 'Corky'

Glaucium season! Peak color for us...several species have hybridized and we get every shade from nearly red to yellow...

It coincides with Oncobred Iris season--we have nearly a hundred along our "ridges"...

West ridge is full of cacti and western wildflowers--the scary part of the garden for gentle souls...but it needs no water!

Some of the hardy Southwestern cacti are getting bigger and bigger...

Some more views of the dry gardens in horned poppy season...

The mulleins seem to modest this time of year!

By late summer, the mulleins (several species and hybrids) create a rather wild tableaux of anorexic ballerinas careening wildly through the dry garden!

But the thing that's perhaps most special at Quince St. garden is the views--here Mt. Evans in full snowy panoply in spring--he's almost snowless now (we can finally see him again now that the winds have cleared the smoke of Western forest fires).