Poetry. What would the world be like if we didn’t have poets to bring us words such as “flimmering”?

Flimmering: A flickering glimmer.

Carl Sandburg wrote of the “gold of the southwest moon” and “Canada thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue.” As I scattered larkspur seeds about my garden months ago – a little here, a little there, quite a few over there – never did I imagine that I would today write about flimmering larkspur blue. Nor did I ever imagine that a garden visitor would paint me – Me! – a picture of my larkspur blue.

In some ways, this story begins a year ago April. Or maybe it began nearly twenty years ago when I first stumbled upon the children’s book Miss Rumphius. Either way, let’s begin in April, 2022.

The garden club I have long been a member of was in need of someone to coordinate tours of the club members’ gardens. “I’ll do it!” I found myself saying, eagerly thinking ahead to the many wonderful garden tours I might arrange. Then summer hit. That would be the summer of 2022. The one that will live on as one of the hottest and driest on record for North Texas. The one that saw temperatures of 108 degrees. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the summer was hot on the heels of Snowmageddon 2021.

Snow. Sleet. Freezing rain. Oh, by the end of it, we all knew the difference between the three forms of wet stuff that fell from the sky. And lingered. Because not only were we covered in a sheet of ice, we had record low temperatures, which meant the frozen stuff stayed around. For days and days on end. Now for the gardener, a deep freeze means potentially losing tender vegetation. And ice – while it can provide a layer of protection against the cold – tends to break tree branches and split shrubs in two and all around wreck havoc on the landscape.

Which brings me back to…. arranging garden tours.

“Ask me again in the spring, when the garden has had a chance to recover,” was the answer I heard time and time again. Fair enough. Summer was brutal. We all needed time to recover.

Then came December. Which opened with a rare winter tornado and closed with yet another – though less icy – deep freeze. Nine degrees, so soon after endless days above 100 degrees, added more losses to the garden tally sheet.

If our gardens looked a bit weary and beaten down, who could blame them? They had been through a literal hell (summer), bookended by the two extreme cold events. The only saving grace – weather such as we have experienced of late creates space for renewal and renovation. And. Buying new plants, amiright?

I decided this was my chance to be brave. To look at the stump of my 25 year old bay laurel tree – once as tall as our roof – and to see the potential in the fresh, tender new growth slowly emerging at the base. We gardeners are an optimistic bunch, aren’t we? We scatter seeds, in hopes that flowers will emerge. We can look at what once was and not be sad that it is now gone, but see the promise that is emerging.

In many ways, that has been my gardening life the past few years. Gone are the roses, destroyed by rose rosette virus. A new garden has grown out of the ashes. Was it ready now for prime time? Could I be brave and open up my garden to the garden club? I don’t garden by the rules so there is always the fear: Could others appreciate what I had created? The last time my garden was on a tour was two decades ago. Yes. 2-0 years ago. It was time – perhaps past time – to allow others to see the new garden.

It was a beautiful day. Just the sort of flimmering larkspur blue day that Sandburg had written about. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever penned a poem about my garden. But I now have something far better than a poem, for one of my garden visitors painted a picture of my garden.

My garden. Painted!

With my flimmering larkspur blue and my southwest moon gold primrose.

Sandburg also wrote about crying over beautiful things, “knowing no beautiful thing lasts.” Beautiful things may not last. The larkspur are now fading away as the temperatures inch upward. The painting, hopefully, will last forever. And – yes – I cried when I opened the envelope that landed in my mailbox a few days after the garden tour. The painting of my garden. Truly, I have never received such a thoughtful and heartwarming gift as that painting.

Larkspur was one of the first annuals I planted when I first broke ground 28 years ago. For years, they returned like clockwork, until the antique roses overfilled the flower beds and squeezed out the larkspur. Miss Rumphius is the fictionalized story of Hilda Hamlin, The Lupine Lady, who sowed lupine seeds along the Maine coast. In Barbara Cooney’s book, Miss Rumphius is told by her grandfather to find a way to make the world a more beautiful place, which she does by scattering lupine seeds. Lupines are not fond of our Texas weather but larkspur is just as beautiful and just as flimmering blue.

The variety I grew this year is Giant Imperial Larkspur. And giant it was, with many reaching five feet tall. I am currently saving seed to sow again next year in my garden and to share with the garden club. And perhaps, like Miss Rumphius, to sow about the town.

Fall may still be a week away, but the many seeds about my garden have me thinking of autumn, harvest and the promises held within each seed.

“For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.” ~ Edwin Way Teale

Red yucca (shown above as a dried seed pod and below as a green seed pod) has put on quite the show this year and, as always, was a hummingbird magnet.

“The milkweed pods are breaking, and the bits of silken down float off upon the autumn breeze across the meadows of brown.” ~ Cecil Cavedish, The Milkweed

Milkweed, shown above and below, is still flowering and just now starting to set seed. It will be another month or so before we see the mature pods split open and the silky down float upon the autumn breeze.

“Flowers and fruit are only the beginning. In a seed lies the life and the future.” ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

Pomegranate (above) has quickly become one of my favorite shrubs. In flower and in fruit at once, it offers many colors and shapes at one time!

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don’t have much to say about Emerson’s quote… Please excuse me while I grumble under my breath about picking up buckets and buckets of acorns to stop those thousand forests from sprouting within my garden. (I do love my oak trees. I just don’t love the potential forests contained within each acorn the squirrels bury and leave behind for me to deal with.)

“This very act of planting a seed in the earth has in it to me something beautiful. I always do it with a joy that is largely mixed with awe.” ~ Celia Thaxter

Looking at the seed heads of the native coneflower, one is able to see where its common name originates.

“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?” ~ G.K. Chesterton

“Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.” ~ Jim Bishop

Golden rose hips (above and below) from Thomas Affleck contain the rose’s many seeds.

“The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending roots into the ground.” ~ Ancient Egyptian Proverb

(Bee balm seed head below)

Spring in North Texas went out with a bang. Correctly, it went out with a rumble of thunder, a flash of lightening and 60 mile per hour winds. And, as a dear gardening friend said, “a legit downpour.” The rain was a much welcome sight. The wind, not so much. And with that —- spring is over and we welcome in the first day of summer.

Daylilies have been blooming for over a month now, yet I still walk the garden each morning, eager to see which ones are blooming that day. My garden is in transition – leaving behind the pink flowers and rose-filled cottage garden to a tapestry of bold colors and even bolder blooms, sans the roses. (Rose Rosette is still running rampant in North Texas…)

“Clapping my hands
with the echoes the summer moon
begins to dawn.”
~ Basho

A new daylily for my garden, still in its nursery pot on my driveway. The blossoms are larger than my hands.

“To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie  –
True Poems flee”
~ Emily Dickinson

Tropical plumbago (Plumbago auriculata) perfectly echos the color of the summer sky. Though not winter hardy in my zone 8a garden, it has overwintered in a container in my garage for many years now.  It has a sprawling habit, so is great to grow in a container or spilling over a retaining wall.

“The hum of bees is the voice of the garden.” ~ Elizabeth Lawrence

The coneflowers were abuzz with bees this morning, a good reminder this week – National Pollinator Week – of the importance of planting flowers that attract and nourish our pollinators.

(I am not sure why bees always pose for photographs on the rattiest flowers available.)

I cut back the coneflowers once they have bloomed in early summer, allowing for a second or third wave of blooms in the late summer and fall. Below, a gray hairstreak braved the bees to partake of the coneflower’s nectar.

(See above about bees posing on the rattiest flower. This hairstreak sure picked a messed up flower!)

Two of my favorite flowers for pollinators are red yucca and Turk’s cap (Malvaviscus drummondii). Red yucca is extremely drought tolerant, once established, and makes a nice “evergreen” in the winter garden.

Turk’s cap has proven to be extremely adaptable in my Denton County garden. Originally planted in partial shade in an area that stays relatively moist due to our neighbor’s overwatering tendencies, it has spread into heavier shade and out into full sun and very dry patches. It grows just as well in all areas of my garden, though the leaves are smaller on the plants in full sun. Turk’s cap blooms from May until first freeze. It dies to the ground in the winter. I generally wait to cut it back until new growth is appearing in the spring. Below, Turk’s cap has spread along our driveway. Some of the plants are under the shade of a bur oak tree, while others are out in full sun.

Below, Turk’s cap has seeded out into full sun.

“There ought to be gardens for all months in the year, in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season.” ~ Sir Francis Bacon

Summer is the perfect time to gain an appreciation for foliage, reminding ourselves that beauty does not only come from flowers. Below, an ornamental banana, which overwinters in my garage.

Coneflowers have popped up next to a variegated canna.

Caladiums, to me, have always been a foliage filler in a summer container arrangement… And then along came… Frog in a Blender, pictured below. I was wandering around Marshall Grain early this spring, when I spotted the bulbs, in a box labeled… Frog in a Blender. Always game for something unusual, I grabbed a few bulbs. And… I may now be addicted. To Frog in a Blender.

“Gardening imparts an organic perspective on the passage of time.”
~ William Cowper

We are always reminded to stop and smell the flowers, but we should also be reminded to stop and look up, for you never know where you might find a cicada molt.

The pink rainlilies have been especially beautiful this season. I wait until the seedpod has dried and cracked open to take the fresh seeds and scatter them throughout the garden.

Below, the seedpod to the far right is still drying… I will wait until the seedpod has split open, like the one in the middle of the photo. One can pop off the seedpod and rub the papery seeds to the wind, allowing rainlilies to pop up wherever they may.

“When on a summer’s morn I wake,
And open my two eyes,
Out to the clear, born-singing rills
My bird-like spirit flies.

To hear the Blackbird, Cuckoo, Thrush,
Or any bird in song;
And common leaves that hum all day
Without a throat or tongue.

And when Time strikes the hour for sleep,
Back in my room alone,
My heart has many a sweet bird’s song —
And one that’s all my own.”
~ William Henry Davies, When on a Summer’s Morn

Whichever way you look at the blossoms, the crinum lily (above and below) are a true Southern garden staple. Steve Bender writes that the crinum lily “has a bulldog constitution.” Yes, they are that tough. And yet – so beautiful!

“Now summer is in flower and natures hum
Is never silent round her sultry bloom
Insects as small as dust are never done
Wi’ glittering dance and reeling in the sun
And green wood fly and blossom haunting bee
Are never weary of their melody
Round field hedge now flowers in full glory twine
Large bindweed bells wild hop and streakd woodbine
That lift athirst their slender throated flowers
Agape for dew falls and for honey showers
These round each bush in sweet disorder run
And spread their wild hues to the sultry sun.”
~ John Clare, June

Below, Leia, now nine months old, looking adorable and innocent in the garden. (She had just eaten my brand new prescription bifocal glasses an hour before…)

“When June comes dancing o’er the death of May,
With scarlet roses tinting her green breast,
And mating thrushes ushering in her day,
And Earth on tiptoe for her golden guest.”
~ A Memory of June, by Claude Mckay

The first of June in North Texas, where a forecast “cold front” promising highs “only” in the mid-90s is music to the ears. We are coming off one of our warmest and driest springs, with summer heat setting in early. But the garden still shines bright.

The coneflowers are coming on strong. I love the varying shades of pink as the blooms slowly open to reveal the center cone, the source of its name. Coneflowers will bloom from now until the approaching winter. I deadhead coneflowers through the summer, then stop deadheading them in early fall so that the cones can remain upright through the winter, a source of food for songbirds. Come spring, I will remove the remaining stalks standing in the garden and scatter the seeds wherever I want coneflowers to grow.

“What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.” ~ On Gardening, by Gertrude Jekyll

The colors in the early June garden still radiate, no sun bleached petals yet. The daylilies are having their time in the spotlight.

“It is the month of June,
The month of leaves and roses,
When pleasant sights salute the eyes
And pleasant scents the noses.”
~ The Month of June, by Nathaniel Parker Willis

“And since all this loveliness can not be Heaven, I know in my heart it is June.” ~ Abba Woolson

“In June, as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them.” ~ Aldo Leopold

I love growing sedums in clay pots inside ornate metal hanging baskets. They bring another layer to the garden, where the sun, peeking through the tree leaves, highlights sedum and metal alike.

No bees this morning, but the bee balm is blooming beautifully.

Vitex, sometimes call the Texas Lilac, is blooming and buzzing with life this June morning. (Perhaps it has lured the bees away from the bee balm?) Alas, the vitex smells nothing like the real lilac! (I find it malodorous…) Vitex has been noted as a Texas Superstar plant, as it is very well adapted to grow and thrive throughout the state, even in hot and dry locations. The spiky lavender blooms attract both bees and butterflies in abundance.

“Summer is coming!” the soft breezes whisper;
“Summer is coming!” the glad birdies sing.
Summer is coming – I hear her quick footsteps;
Take your last look at the beautiful Spring.
~ Summer is Coming, by Dora Goodale

Passion fruit vine is showing off its exotic blossoms. It scrambles here and there throughout my garden, not being the best behaved of plants. Passion fruit vine is often grown in butterfly gardens, as the gulf fritillary butterfly uses this as a host plant.

I love to grow fennel both for its ferny foliage and for the black swallowtail butterflies. This caterpillar has been munching and growing for the past week or so.

“I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.” ~ L.M. Montgomery (Montgomery is the author of The Anne of Green Gables series, a great book to read-aloud! Boys and girls alike can identify with the lovable Anne.)

Though I don’t have much shade, I love to tuck in hosta plants wherever I can. While grown for their foliage, hosta have beautiful and delicate blooms in early summer.

Hosta leaves and blooms are both edible. I have not yet tried them myself, but these blossoms would be a colorful addition to any salad. (As would daylily blooms, which are also edible.)

I love how dainty hosta blooms are! This one is no larger than a nickle.

Hellebores, which began blooming in mid-winter, are still going strong.

I love using metal tubs and buckets and such as planters. This old tub is planted with coleus, rue, silver thyme and begonia. Rue is a host plant to both the black swallowtail and the giant swallowtail butterflies.

An orange scented geranium and an old ceiling tile add a mix of texture to my potted garden by the front door.

Ah… The fig tree. Beautiful leaves. Wondrous shade. Edible figs! Though they are little now, they hold the promise of an abundant harvest.

Once upon a time, when I grew antique roses by the dozens, I planted garlic around the garden, as it is reported to ward off insects. While it didn’t save my garden from being ravished by rose rosette, I still have garlic blooming here and there. I love their large flower heads.

I will leave you with one more bloom – a mutant coneflower. And one last poetic look at June.

“With flower petals soft unfurled
And vines around the trellis curled.
The grass is sweet and richly green
With shining luminescent sheen –
Your face, my June, a beauteous scene.”
~ My Lovely June, by Valerie Dohren