A bounty of beauty

It's been a tough few days. I want this blog, like my garden, to be a respite from the rest of reality, so I'll skip the details. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of horrible things happening in the world right now. So I've taken every opportunity to find peace in the garden. For once I haven't done a lot of actual gardening, though I did manage to pull a few weeds and extend my new path a few feet. Mostly I've tried to just be in the garden, to notice beauty both large and small, to watch the bees and butterflies, to savor the exuberance of life in the summer garden (except for the grasshoppers. I could do without their exuberance.) I took these pictures yesterday as I was enjoying some horticultural therapy. One of the best things about being a gardener is that beauty is so easy to find: it's right outside the door.

Blue Mist Spirea 'Dark Knight' - just started blooming this week.



Here's part of the side garden. The ornamental grass also just started blooming this week. Last year I left it standing through the winter; those plumes looked so cool sticking out of 2 feet of snow.





Petunias and purple alyssum - such a pretty combination. And in case you're wondering about the bites taken out of the petunia petals, you can blame the grasshoppers for those. Apparently they find flowers delicious.



Wanna know something else that grasshoppers find delicious? Cosmos! I got these at the nursery about a month ago, and the grasshoppers ate most of them down to the stems. Most of them came back, though, and they're lookin' good.



I think I posted a pic of this chair a couple of weeks ago - back when you could tell it's a chair. The morning glories have mostly covered it now, and they're starting to bloom. And yeah, it looks like the grasshoppers think morning glory flowers are delicious too. Bastards.







Another favorite on the grasshopper menu: bachelor buttons. For a couple of months, the stems of my bachelor buttons were bare, stripped clean by those hopping marauders. Some of them are coming back though, and this little clump looks mostly healthy.



Bee balm, winter-sown and planted in my newest whiskey barrel planter.



I think I'm in love with larkspur. The grasshoppers mostly ignore it (a miracle), and it's been blooming since May. These were winter-sown from seed I brought with me from Southern California. I bought a pot of them at a garage sale, and they proceeded to seed all over my SoCal garden. I hope they do the same here.



The bog is a jungly mess, partly because of string algae and partly because I scored some water plants for 50% off at my local nursery last week. Gotta love Flagstaff, where end-of-season sales start in early August. Tomorrow's project--if the rain stops long enough--will be to repot my finds and put them somewhere in the main pond.



More string algae. Bleah. But also a water lily, some water hyacinth, and at the left, some water mint. I didn't know water mint existed until this year. I bought some cuttings from a nursery in Las Vegas, and they rooted in just a few days. Now I have several clumps of this charming plant, and it's even blooming. And yes, it's a true mint. I'm told you can cook with it but that the terrestrial mints taste better.



This pic shows the area of the yard that's mostly not landscaped yet. I've started clearing a path to the arbor, which you can see if you look closely, and I've lined the walkway with rocks so I can raise the soil level by adding lots of organic amendments. Then I'll create some winding paths and more planting beds to feed my ever-growing addiction.



This is the Devil's Trumpet (also called Sacred Datura) growing at the base of the M*A*S*H* sign. I got it from the Flagstaff Arboretum's native plant sale a couple of years ago. It's been left without water, eaten down to the stems by tomato hornworms, and accidentally buried when we were digging the pond, but it keeps coming back. And now I have a bunch of seedlings sprouting all over my yard.



Aren't the blooms gorgeous? I hope to relocate some of the volunteers to various neglected corners of the property, since these things will grow anywhere and (as I've demonstrated) virtually impossible to kill.



And last but not least: I bought a 6-pack of portulacas, because the ones I winter-sowed didn't survive. These have flourished. They tolerate dry, poor soil, the grasshoppers don't like them (another miracle), and they keep pumping out these gorgeous blooms.



I feel better just posting these pics and writing about plants. Perhaps I should have titled this post, "Gardening: It's Cheaper Than Therapy." Now if only I could get my health insurance to pay some of the cost...