Warmth, Rain, Bloom!

Our April was unusually cool this year, with very slow snow melt and a sense that spring might never come. Then May arrived with unusually warm – even hot – temperatures. This was not the hot, humid air of July and August, however, but heat that was dry, dry, dry! Relative humidity hovered around 25%. Plants grew rapidly in the sudden warmth, but only a few bloomed. We needed rain.

On the last day of May, the rain came. It started raining on that Sunday morning, and continued for three days. Fortunately, we did not get the destructive, hard-driving rain that visited other parts of the country, but a gentle, soaking rain that was just what the doctor ordered. And, in a phenomenon reminiscent of what happens in the desert when it rains, thirsty plants burst into bloom.

I was away the day the rain started and didn’t get home until after nightfall. But as I walked up the stairs to my back door in the dark, I could sense the presence of masses of blooms and foliage beside me on the back slope. In the morning, I went out to look around, and this is what I found:

My sense of a massive plant presence on the back slope was correct. Large clumps of hosta leaves were overlaid by the exuberant blooms of the rhododendron that sprawls over the top half of the slope (photo at top of post). In the deck border, Rhododendron catawbiense Album had also begun to bloom, and the first flowers of Geranium x cantabrigiense ‘Biokovo’ had opened.

In the blue and yellow border, Tradescantia ‘Zwanenburg Blue’ and Amsonia had begun to bloom, accompanied by the soft yellow flowers of Baptisia x ‘Carolina Moonlight.’ The first Siberian irises had also opened (with many more yet to come).

Elsewhere in the garden, Geranium maculatum Album is blooming more profusely than it ever has before, and Heuchera ‘Raspberry Regal’ is just beginning to unfurl its flower spikes.

This is the time of year when new blooms appear every day. And these rain-encouraged flowers are just a preview of the great show to come.