Evanescence

The dictionary defines evanescence as “the quality of being fleeting; impermanence,” but I especially associate the word with a  fleeting beauty. It seems to me that much of the beauty of a garden comes from its evanescent, ever-changing quality. When I told a visiting friend last year that the garden is never the same twice, he said “Well, not two days this year, but it will be like this again at the same time next year.” “No,” I said, “next year will be different. The weather won’t be the same; trees will have grown taller and changed the patterns of sun and shade.” One year, two plants create a luscious color combination when they bloom together; but the following year, their bloom times slightly diverge, or one is now overshadowed by a taller plant and barely blooms at all. A plant that struggled in last year’s drought conditions explodes into lush, exuberant blooms in this year’s rain.

Nothing makes me more aware of the evanescent quality of my garden’s beauty than the daylily season. Plants in the genus Hemerocallis (from Greek, meaning “beauty for a day”) exemplify the quality of evanescence; each big, gorgeous flower blooms for only one day. The quality of evanescence seems to dial up the intensity of an experience, and that is true in my experience of the daylily season. It begins with weeks of anticipation as I peer into daylily foliage hunting for flower buds on my morning walks through the garden and obsessively count flower scapes as they appear. I feel intense joy at seeing the first flower open in late June and intense excitement as more and more daylily flowers open each day until their bloom reaches a crescendo in mid-late July.

But evanescence is also a bittersweet quality; even as I welcome each new bloom, I’m aware that it will be gone tomorrow. As the acceleration of daylily blooms peaked in mid-July, with a half-dozen or more varieties beginning to bloom each day, the early varieties were opening their last flowers. Now, in early August, there are only two (very late) varieties that have not yet begun to bloom and many that have finished flowering for this year. Where a month ago, I was counting the varieties opening their first flowers each day, I am now counting those finishing their bloom. My joy in the beauty of those daylily flowers is entwined with the melancholy of saying goodbye to them until next year.

Sometimes I can get so wrapped up in the melancholy of saying goodbye to these favorite flowers that I forget to embrace the joy of the moment. So, this morning, I walked through the garden counting how many daylily varieties still had buds left to open – more than fifty, which is more than half of those I grow. It’s time to focus on the joy of those evanescent blooms.

Tall Plants and Floppy Stems: GBBD, July 2023

In Maine, our rainy weather has continued into July, although with more dry days, heat and sunshine than we experienced in June. Shade-tolerant, moisture-loving plants like astilbes have grown exceptionally well in this weather. In the deck border, Astilbe x thumbergii ‘Betsy Cuperus’ has more flowers than it has ever had in the more than twenty years since I planted it, and the tall Astilbe x thumbergii ‘Moerheim’s Glory’ is putting on a lush display by the front porch.

Many sun-loving plants, like lavender and coreopsis, are blooming happily, seemingly unfazed by the weather.

Others, like false sunflowers (Heliopsis helianthoides) and anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) have grown extra tall, with etiolated stems stretching toward the sun.

Daylilies (Hemerocallis) are loaded with flower buds this year, but their stems are not always strong enough to support the weight of so many flowers heavy with rain. There aren’t enough plant supports in the world for me to prop up all these floppy stems, so I’m just getting used to looking down at the ground to see their flowers.

Even with some floppy stems, daylilies are the stars of my garden in July. The first to bloom this year was ‘Orange Prelude,’ which opened its first flower at the end of June. A day later, another daylily variety opened its first flower, and then two more a couple of days after that. In the two and a half weeks since the first daylily opened, they have been building to a crescendo, with more varieties beginning to flower each day. Yesterday, no fewer than ten varieties opened their first flowers, and six more joined the bloom party today. There are now fifty different varieties blooming, but today was also the day that ‘Orange Prelude’ opened its last flowers, coming to the end of its bloom.

All the daylilies in the patio border are now blooming.

Yellow is now the dominant color in the blue and yellow border, as yellow daylilies bloom. These include several small-flowered varieties like ‘Happy Returns,’ ‘Boothbay Harbor Gold,’ and ‘Cinnamon Dew.’

Across the walkway, in the deck border, the barely lavender daylily ‘Silver Ice’ has opened its first flower.

There are more yellows in the front garden, including a number of fragrant yellow daylilies in the fragrant garden,

… and this garishly gold variety blooming in the front border.

Was it fragrance that enticed this little amphibian (a tree frog, maybe?) to curl up in ‘Susan Elizabeth’ for a nap?

The soft blues, violets and pink of the June garden have given way to stronger colors and strong contrasts in the July garden. Nowhere is this more true than on the front slope, which is now a riot of hot colors.

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is hosted each month by Carol Michel at May Dreams Gardens. Visit her site to see what other gardeners have blooming in July.

Lots of Moisture, Little Sun

Maine has been having an exceptionally wet summer, stuck under upper-level low pressure areas that have kept us mostly cool, wet, and gray. It’s not that we have had an exceptional amount of rain; more that we have seen exceptionally  little sunshine. In the month of June (usually a lovely month of blue skies, sunshine, soft breezes and temperatures in the seventies), it rained all but a handful of days.

Despite the dearth of sunshine, however, the garden has made the transition from spring to summer. Daylilies, the quintessential high summer flowers in my garden, have begun to bloom, and the lavender walk is in its seasonal glory.

Many plants have responded to the extra moisture by growing lush foliage. The wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) that showed up in the fence border last year have grown this year into a luxuriant groundcover carpet.

Many sun-loving plants have grown extra-tall this year, as they stretch themselves upward searching for light. Rudbeckia x ‘Herbstsonne’, which grows at the back of the blue and yellow border, is normally a tall plant, but it has grown extra tall this year, already more than six feet tall even before it has begun to bloom.

In the front garden, anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) is as tall as I am,

and this false sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides ‘Summer Night’) is blooming above my head.

I am also looking up at the flowers of the common orange daylily (Hemerocallis fulva) blooming beside the driveway.

The flowers of one of my favorite daylily species, Hemerocallis citrina, are not quite that tall, but their wonderfully fragrant flowers are blooming conveniently at nose level.

One bright spot in this summer’s weather pattern is that the low pressure areas that have brought us lots of moisture and little sun have also kept out the extreme heat and wildfire smoke that has plagued other parts of the country.  And it is easy to forget that the sun is not shining when the vibrant yellow flowers of sundrops (Oenothera fructiosa) are lighting up the garden.

Inching Into Summer: GBBD, June 2023

June has been cool and rainy in Maine; but, despite the cool temperatures and scarcity of sunshine, the garden has been inching into summer. Little by little, spring flowers have faded, and early summer flowers have begun to bloom.

By the patio, the roses seem to have benefitted from this cool, wet weather and are particularly lush this year.

In this part of the garden, the number of self-sown spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana) plants seems larger than usual this year. I dig these plants up when they seed themselves in inconvenient places, but I like to let them bloom before I decide their fate. Most of the seedlings bloom in shades of blue-violet or white brushed with blue-violet, but there are exceptions. This year, I’m excited to find vibrant hot-color magenta flowers on one plant and pure white flowers on another (a first among my self-sown volunteers).

I don’t know if these are going to stay where they planted themselves or be transplanted elsewhere, but both are keepers.

Spiderwort are blooming throughout the garden in June. In the blue and yellow border, which is in a primarily blue phase, the blue spiderwort are a big part of the display. Normally, there would also be lots of blue Siberian irises blooming here at this time of year, but they are sulking after being divided and moved around as part of the renovation of this flower bed at the end of last summer. Instead, the color of the spiderwort is echoed by hardy geraniums ‘Brookside’ and ‘Rozanne’ and by the flowers of Baptisia australis.

Elsewhere in the garden, Siberian irises are blooming happily. In the deck border, the lovely ‘Lavender Bounty’ has just begun to bloom.

In the front border, Siberian iris ‘Hubbard’ is putting on a lush display, as is the beautiful velvety violet variety that was one of the original pass-along irises planted in my garden thirty years ago.

The garden has a sweet look in June that is created by a low-contrast display in shades of blue, violet and pink. You can see this in the front border,

where the color scheme includes the blue of this Baptisia australis

… and the soft mauve of this Tradescantia virginiana.

The peonies that have just begun to bloom in the fragrant garden echo this same color palette, which also includes white flowers,

like peony ‘Festiva Maxima’ in the front border

… and mapleleaf viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium) in the shrubbery.

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is a monthly celebration of flowers hosted by Carol Michel at May Dreams Gardens. Visit her website for links to other gardeners’ June blooms.