The Ongoing Garden Tour

 I can already feel summer slipping away, see it in the yellowing leaves and hear it in the tree crickets and the mournful kowp of the cuckoo. So I've saved it here, and I'm enjoying going through blossoms present and past and sharing them with you. Here's Rose of Sharon "Satin Blue," much the finest Rose of Sharon I've seen. Great big glorious blue flowers, shiny big dark green leaves. Its breeder seems to have conquered the spindliness that makes so many older Rose of Sharons look ungainly and out of place.

 

I miss the snow peas already. I got a bad batch of seed, labeled "Sugar Snap" and actually about 95% snow peas. They were delicious anyway, but I'm not going to buy them at Apex next year. Somebody was asleep at the wheel in the bulk seed section.

  

My friend Nancy gave me a spectacular calla lily called Flame. 

 

Never having grown one, I was enchanted by its single long lasting flame-orange flower, and its speckled tropical leaves.

 

 It comes from a big bulb that I'll dig and save over inside. It's too precious to leave it to the elements.

In the same shaded garden, Fuchsia magellanica is blooming like mad. Native to Chile, it's hardy over the winter, a most disarming thing: a hardy fuchsia that comes bravely up in spring and blooms hard until frost. Hummingbirds love it, of course. I like to wonder if it's the progenitor of many cultivars.

 

Speaking of hardy plants, here's an iceplant Delosperma cooperi. Apparently it's native to South Africa. I'd always hoped it was native to California, since I saw it growing amongst the rocks in Monterey. Hmm. Clarification needed. It persists through the winter and blooms all summer long. Very nice solution for the stone steps on the side of our house.

Of course I'll have my fancy little annual portulacas, too. I love those plants. My dad always grew them and called them "moss roses." For some unfathomable reason the rabbits left them alone this year. Usually they're wabbit candy. Yay!

 

 The lavender hedge was spectacular this year. It was buzzing with bees and ever so fragrant when brushed against. Of course I let it sprawl all across the sidewalk just so we can brush it with our legs. Phoebe deliberately careens into it while riding her razor scooter so she can smell of lavender, if not of old lace.