clear, rain, then clear again: easy breezy: 61ºF

Every week the buds on the monk’s hood (aconites) in the Ottoman Garden slowly get bigger. From bud to bloom though seems like a month or more. As the buds expand, they look as though they’re being slowly inflated. This week the buds that are closest to opening look a bit like the stone statutes on Easter Island.




As expected, most of the summer-blooming flowers look tattered or are going to seed. But there are hold-outs on nearly every plant that refuse to concede. One or two perfect blooms are scattered here and there among the ruins. During the summer when perfect was the norm, I’d probably never notice the holdouts. Now it’s hard not to. This calendula will probably never have time to go to seed, but it is going out in style.

All of the eye-popping daylilies are long gone. Even the annual daylily sales have ended. The daylily garden is an expanse of green mounds of grass-like leaves. Even the seemingly never-ending blooms on the Stella d’Oro’s are gone. One exception: this daylily named ‘Gracilis’ is still in bloom. According to the sign, ‘Gracilis’ was developed over seventy-five years ago. It’s supposed to be one of the first daylilies to bloom. And now it’s the last too.


I’m not the first to notice that looking at landscapes from above is often the only way that patterns show themselves. YouTube is filled with videos that show the Nazca drawings and lines from the air. And for me the best part of using Google Earth is watching how the program zooms in to any spot on the earth from above. This plant – called a ‘Crested Euphorbia’ (Euphorbia lacteal) – is perfect for viewing from above. It’s planted here as a decorative in the Victorian Garden’s succulent beds among various palms, cactuses, and ground huggers. A whole clump of these plants is only about a foot across and no more than a foot tall, so I had to kneel down to get a shot from the air. The plant has lots of common names like “elk horn” and “frilled fan.” But from above though, I think “mountain trail” fits.

The bees aren’t awake yet. The prairie garden is brimming with goldenrod in full flower. Nearly all of the flower sprays have bees clinging to the flowers – black lumps on bright yellow flowers. None of bees are moving. The temperature dropped into the 50’s early this morning so I think the bees probably just got chilled and will stay shut down until it gets a bit warmer.

Late September isn’t the rose garden’s finest hour. Still as though stepping in to pinch-hit, the keepers of this garden have planted large expanses of a variety of a Japanese anemone named 'Prinz Heinrich' at the entrance to one of the rose gardens. Clusters of these magenta flowers fill in the spaces that would have exposed naked rose canes. The flower clusters jut up high over their leaves and everything else in the bed of roses to form a blanket of color. From what I’ve read the plants will continue to flower for three to five weeks. That ought to keep them blooming right up to season’s end.