Muggy Morning

Another hydrangea comes into bloom against the back corner of the house, with an assortment of bright asiatic lilies arrayed before it. I love these orange lilies, but with such saturated color, they are difficult subjects to photograph.

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We have so many trees around our place that I only thought it was humid this morning. I didn't quite realize it was raining lightly until I walked out to the back garden to do some watering. On the way, I found foreshadowing in this lovely rudbeckia blooming in our now-squidgy and sodden meadow.

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In the back garden, this green-eyed rudbeckia "Prairie Eyes" is growing terrificly in this, its second year (last year it was almost consumed by the infinite oregano), and began opening its first blossoms this morning.

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Across the path from the green-eyed beauties, a cousin of that other rudbeckia plant (this one was transplanted from the meadow last season) began opening as well.

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Another perfect daylily today.

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Here's another one of those old spiny roses in bloom, with a few more buds still to go. My eagle-eyed pal Lili recently tipped me off to having spotted its species in an online catalogue of heritage roses. It is, at least, a moss rose. Now I can do a little more research and see what I ought to know about them.

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Just to confuse the issue a little, here's a lovely little portulaca blossom, against a patch of thyme in bloom.

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What confusion, you ask? The portulaca, you may recall, is known also as the moss rose. Of course, the portulaca exists on a completely different scale than those roses, so any confusion is probably just a matter of semantics...a moss rose by any other name, blah blah blah...at best.

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Some of the earlier flowerheads of the verbena bonariensis weren't up to the rain's attention (you can see them scattered about the adjoining hollyhock leaf), but so far they just seems to keep on blooming. I LOVE that in a plant.

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Today's Cape Cod Times featured some bad news for Cape and Islands gardeners: the greater occurence of the Lone Star tick to our area. Watch for the white spot on its back, and don't forget the Deep Woods OFF spray. Seems like yet another harbinger of the imaginary global warming...just like those imaginary Portuguese man-o-war jellyfish stinging folks off the south coast.

On a happier note, this red snapdragon stages a return engagement from last year's planting, cavorting happily with a pair of calendula blossoms in the understory of the garden.

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Meanwhile, in the front garden, the pineapple lilies are putting on quite an entertaining show.

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Here's a glimpse of the pond this morning, dimpled with rain. The pickerel rush is blooming this week, but the blue flower fades at a distance.

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Late afternoon found the sun returned to the Cape, and with it, swarms of happy horny dragonflies darting (and mating) over the surface of the pond.

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It seems one of the laws of nature is that, where there are big juicy dragonflies, you'll also...eventually...find big hungry bullfrogs.

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And of course there's also the other law of nature, about where there's rain you'll find mushrooms.

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