The Bachelor's Buttons

The morning sunshine was more a theory this morning than actual blazing rays of orange and gold. A quick check of the forecast (where every day in the coming week had been wet with rain a day ago) revealed now only a "chance of a shower" today, and as there'd been no rain in the night, or at least very little, I went about the usual routine.

Unexpectedly, the overcast mornings are often when you get the best garden photographs. After all, you don't have that brilliant light directly on your subject, but a nice strong bright light, naturally diffused by the clouds. Of course, there was a strong breeze continuing. This is comforting, in light of the recent humidity, but it does make it more difficult for the subjects of the photo to sit still, especially if they are thin stemmed, as the bachelor's buttons are. I imagine it's a lot like trying to take class photos of kindergarteners.

Still, I managed some nice shots in between gusts...tho I can assure you there were plenty of misfires deleted from my memory card in addition to these three sweet shots.


I just love how easy it is to grow these little guys. Because they are lovers of full sun, I haven't had the pleasure nearly often enough. But whenever I have, I've had nothing but praise for the show they put on, in exchange for some commitment to deadheading.

Curt asked about the story behind the name, bachelor's buttons (Centaurea cyanus) and so I did a bit of checking around. They are so named because, as they are small (an inch and a half across at their fullest), and hold their shape well out of water, they became a popular choice as a bouttonniere. According to the Victorians' Flower Code, bachelor's buttons symbolized solitude. (So if Superman had landed back then, he might've had a Fortress of Bachelor's Buttons instead, which might've looked pretty cool! Hmmm...)

Since the blue ones (originally the only color) grow wild in the fields of England, they are also known as cornflower, for their appearances amongst the corn stalks there.

I'm sure the way they bend and bounce on the breeze works to their advantage as far as getting their seed flung as far as possible. I'm always fascinated with the devious and delightful ways plants have for reproducing, on the pollination end and the distribution of the resulting seeds.

This is my sixth gardening location on Cape Cod--nine if you count workplace gardens--and I imagine it won't be the last, either. It makes me happy to work with plants who I suspect may carry on after I've moved on to my next bit of earth.

The flowers only last a couple of days at best, but each plant will flower all summer as long as you continue to snip off the fading flowers. I don't have any problem letting them drop down into the bed of the garden as I do snip them, since they will re-seed nicely.

If you have a small patch of bare earth that you want to dress up real simply, I think you couldn't pick an easier (and relatively quick growing) combination of seeds than bachelor's buttons, cosmos (they'll be blooming shortly, I think...) and allyssum.

As an added bonus, at the end of the season when I do let them go to seed, they will be popular with the local finch populations. I remember the first time I saw a tiny goldfinch perch on the flimsy stem of a bachelor button plant...and it was a great insight for me into the tiny bird's weight that the plant didn't drop to the ground like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.

Not that I'd thought birds were heavy exactly, that would make no sense as far as the Flying thing goes...but it just wasn't something I'd really given any thought to before, and really, it was just idle musing as I watched the miniature acrobatic show as the finch feasted on all the seedy past flowerheads. I know there are goldfinches hereabouts on Not Wisteria Lane, so hopefully we'll see that show again here, too.

While I love the true blue of the originals for their cooling of the oranges and yellows I enjoy so much, I've quickly become a big, big fan of the different colored hybrids...particularly this purple one. I wonder if they will come true from seed or revert back to the original blue? Either way, I think I win.


One more thing I almost forgot to tell you about bachelor's buttons: they are an edible flower! I've not tried them yet, but I've read that they bring a nice spicey note to a salad. Can't think of a more fantastic garnish for anything, though!

These smaller variety sunflowers are certainly doing their thing in a strong way. This is the first plant to bloom and the new flowers just keep on coming. The best part is that, while the current crop is distracting me with their commanding floral presence, I can see the later successions growing taller and fuller in my peripheral vision.

I still have sky-scraping high hopes for some of those Russian Gray Mammoths. Who knows what August may bring?

Here's a great shot of the marine heliotrope. Two of the plants have been cut back after their blooms faded, as they were a little leggy when they came home from the nursery. I see all kinds of side shoots forming on them now, so the Cropping was a wise choice.

Meanwhile, this one, which hadn't been blooming when it came home has now begun scenting that corner of the lamp post bed with its distinctive, but hard-to-describe scent of intoxication.

As you can see, the latest seeding of allyssum has come in nicely in the background there. This morning, I got out the edging shears and tidied up the outside of the beds, and was somewhat stern with the earliest allyssum plants, as well. While they were still flowering, they were doing so on stalks that were now going on four or five inches long.

I cut them back in patches, so that some remain, which I'll deadhead a little later on. That way I should have a nice staggered cycle of blooming from them for the rest of the season. The dianthus are picking up a little slack along the lowest edges of the garden and the pansies are still blooming their happy little heads off.

As Jenn pointed out the other day, the Midnight Garden is also a Learning Place, and so, while we continue to learn about the blooming habits of the hens and chicks, I present to you the first flower on that stalk I've shown you in previous posts. As you can see, it looks to be one of many and I'll do my best to show you the full glory of it all.

As I mentioned before, the sunflowers really have been going to town and are forming the framework of the garden "wall" which is slowly rising all along the fence.

The daisies, I'm sad to say, are requiring deadheading at a faster pace, and for them, this doesn't always bring reblooming. Perhaps we love their joyfulness all the more for it's brief stay.

But the cosmos will be coming into their own shortly and the Queen Annes lace (there are more than I remember transplanting, which is by no means a complaint) have just exploded into clouds of those distinctive and detailed flowerheads, each one like a giant snowflake floating at the top of a stem.

While there's obviously no lack of flowering to hold my interest in our front yard, I'm also happily drawn around the block to all of the beautiful things happening in everyone else's yards.

There was a stand of deep purple astilbes blooming around the corner last week, but they didn't last particularly long...at least not long enough for me to remember to bring my camera along on our nightly walks.

This blue hydrangea across the street caught my eye this morning and drew me over for a closer look. I do miss the hydrangeas we had at the old place, but they were too large to move and really at home where they are. But I don't mind not having too many of them here, as the mid-cape area has been known for hydrangea-nappers.

I know, it sounds ridiculous, but almost every August since I've lived here, there's been a news story about police arresting someone with their cars loaded with trashbags full of cut hydrangea stems harvested from people's homes, businesses and condos. Apparently, a single stem can be sold for $4 or more each, because of their popularity in flower arrangements for weddings. Crazy world, isn't it?

Not that I'm in any way trying to devalue the flower's beauty. Sigh. It just feels wrong to put a price on it.

Tomorrow, I will have to pay some attention to the cleome flowers, as they continue to bloom as their stalks climb, but they leave long seedpods hanging out from the stalks where the previous flowers were. You can see one of them here, in the lower right.
I haven't grown these in a while, so I'm putting out the call for advice here. (Lost, you know these guys, right?) The seedpods are a pretty distinctive look as the cleome gets taller, but should I remove them in order to keep the flowering going?


A few new evening primrose flowers had opened this evening, as I went about lighting the candles along the fence at dusk.

I would've taken the time to sniff for their scent, since that is surely how they attract the night-time pollinators, but I'd forgotten to douse myself in OFF and as the breeze had become more occasional, I was swarmed with mosquitos and so kept my time out there somewhat brief.



But I did notice that, in the section of garden underneath this particular coreopsis plant, there was an unseen cricket tuning up for an evening's outdoor concert in the park.

Our temperature at 10:15 is 74 degrees and I'm enjoying the cricket's debut summer concert through the window as I write this.

Anyone else a fan of this book?

Last Sunday in June

Another daylily country heard from this morning, as this one opened amidst a jumble of curly grass to the right and rudbeckia to the left (and pansies and allyssum all around). It seemed to me it has a little more red in it than the others, and is about half the height of those other orange guys.

I did welcome some new daylilies to the fold last fall (divisions from a friends renovated garden) without having seen them in bloom. I wonder if this is one of those.

This here pot gnome is the reason I was so happy to find those tiny hens and chicks yesterday. The pots he holds are big enough, but still pretty small, and so something with an alpine background was called for. I hope these guys will do nicely in his embrace.

Last night's weeding opened up a few spots in the border, so I already knew where I was going to be siting the marine heliotrope plants before I grabbed hold of my trowel this morning.

I also finally planted out that last wave of morning glories, putting a few near the base of the lamp post. I figure they can hitch a ride in the clematis vines this season, since they are already a tangled mess...and I'll sort it all out come fall.


I also dug up and relocated a few of the seedlings which are now large enough to cope with such activity. In the case of just about every kind of seed I'd sown, there were healthy looking plants too close together. So I pried loose some cosmos, or some bachelor buttons and moved them around to different locations, watering in well when I'd finished.

I also potted up the fuschia I mentioned yesterday, and a lantana I forgot to. Those are both in hanging baskets on the front of the house, where I expect they will do very well. I also scattered still a little more allyssum seed along the margins of the lamp post garden and planted a pack of Four O'Clocks, which are among Granny's favorites.

Sometimes it seems that she's on the mend, but other times her recovery seems a little tougher going, and of course, it's hard to be sure of what's really happening at such a distance. Still, I hope to talk with her soon and perhaps that will shed some light...and maybe I can get some advice about those four o'clocks.

I learned this week that I have possibly been doing myself and others I know a disservice all these years. I had always heard that yellow roses signified Friendship. But in that book I was talking about the other day, as well as Love in the Time of Cholera, I have read that yellow roses signify Jealousy...which was never my intention.

Oh, dear, what a confusing world of flowers and love it is, eh? I think that's the Chrysler tea rose with it's first yellow bud, and a host of others following shortly after. If so, it has apparently somehow lost its metal tag in the move.

There's a fifty percent chance of showers for us tonight, though so far nothing has materialized. This storm, seen over Cape Cod Bay from Rock Harbor late this afternoon, seemed to be a localized affair, as there were a few spatters of rain on my windshield as I left town, but I seemed to drive out of it.

Dogs Walk. Boats Return. Tide Rising.


Here's one of those heliotrope plants, making a nice pre-Fourth of July display of patriotism in its new location.

Of course a bluer tone would be more ideal, but the white centers of those tiny purple flowers do approximate the whole starry field thing nicely, don't they?


Once the planting and watering was complete this morning, I rounded up the appropriate hardware to get the new flags added to the fence, just in time for celebrations of Pride.

Of course, there was no parade in our neighborhood, per se, just the usual assortment of dog walkers and Big Wheels. But I celebrate in my own quiet way...and I'm glad to know that the next time I go looking for a Rainbow Flag, I won't have to look any further than my own front yard.

For those of you rolling your eyes and grunting at the whole business of gay pride parades, please, let me encourage you strenuously to check out Joe.My.God's take on that whole attitude. If you will.

To my gay, lesbian, transgender friends and our friends(and Dorothy's)and supportive families, near and far, hither and yon, up and down, left and right and wherever else you may be (we don't need all the details), Happy Pride!

Celebrate wisely, but do celebrate!

Sunshine Saturday

Ahh, Saturday morning. I was apparently quiet as I came out the front door with my first cuppa joe today, as I had been sitting for a minute or more, the caffeine slowly prying my eyes open, before I realized that one of my bunny friends was enjoying some of the lawn for breakfast.

We regarded one another for a moment, him doing the big freeze routine, before I wished him good morning and went back to my coffee, and he returned to his grazing.

He continued to nibble around, eating a little plantain here, some clover there, until I was awake enough to get up to connect the soaker hose, and he took off for the woods across the street, behind Sophie's house, where I believe he and his family have their warren.

It was still a little while after that before I realized that our first morning glory of the season had begun blooming on the street side of the fence.

Here's a sample of the variety I'm seeing from the portulaca, all in a single photo. These guys are especially loving the sunny location.

Once the watering was finished, I headed off about the rest of my morning, which involved a little shopping on the way into work.

First up was a visit to TJ Maxx, where I picked up a couple new pair of shorts. The summer heat has definitely found us now, and while the garden is thriving, I was getting a little tired of wearing the same old thing.

I found what I was looking for and went to pay. On line behind me was a woman I had noticed earlier in the store, because of the black sequined cowboy hat she was sporting and I turned to compliment her on the hat. We ended up talking, as reasonable people often do to make long lines more bearable (there was air conditioning, so it wasn't all bad) and I learned that she sells the hats on the internet, to raise money to research Pancreatic Cancer, which took her husband in 2006.

Impressed with her story, I asked for her business card, so I could pass her link along to all of you. After all, while I rarely remember to do so myself, wearing a hat when you're working in the garden is never a bad idea. If you need a new hat, check out Sue's: you'll Love Your Hat.

No, no...the Midnight Gardener was not involved in, or witness to, an accident: this is just the kind of cluster -schmozz that driving looks like here on the Cape now that July's bearing down on us.

My next stop was a visit to our local farmer's market, which happens every Saturday morning in summer.

It's located on Old Colony Way at the far end of the parking lot by Dunkin Donuts and Willy's Gym.

There's a great assortment of vendors, offering potted plants for your home or garden, produce, baked goods and other assorted products.

Naturally, I'm usually there to check out the plants and today, I was particularly looking for some of the tiny versions of hens and chicks, for a particular planting I wanted to do. I found these two tiny pots of tiny plants for a dollar a piece, a price you really can't beat.

Next, I was off to spend the last of some Christmas gift card bling at one of our local nurseries, since I hadn't yet acquired any marine heliotrope, and it's a plant I just adore. They had three left, so I scooped them up, as well as a small fuschia plant...I think a variety with a purple center. We'll see when it blooms.

Here's the marine heliotrope, which is, by the way, an annual, but totally worth purchasing every year.

As you can see, it puts out these delightful flowerheads of tiny purple flowers. The flower colors cover a range of purple shades across the head, as they lighten as the individual flowers age.

The scent is amazing, and I'm afraid it's a bit of a challenge to me and my feeble writing skills. I find it to be one of the most extraordinary of garden scents, but it's also tough to make you understand. I've always thought it had a sort of vanilla-esque, sometimes almost a light almond-y scent. But two other people I had sniff these new plants today gave me completely different responses. One suggested it smelled like baby powder, the other chocolat.

I'm beginning to suspect that perhaps the plant actually does something to your pleasure center and makes you smell the thing you like best. All I really know is that, whatever the scent/flavor is, they really ought to try making an ice cream flavor from it. I bet it'd be divine.

I think I'll continue to ask visitors to the garden for their impressions as the season progresses, and I'll try to report the various responses here, for your entertainment, if nothing else. Perhaps by Labor Day we'll have some over-arching sense of this scent.

Late afternoon found the first of these tiny coreopsis flowers beginning to form.

I love these guys with their seemingly never-ending waves of daisy-like flowers all summer. Their bright yellow color is a terrific partner for the white Shasta daisies and the orange daylilies, which are both also blooming now.

I haven't counted how many stands of this stuff I have now - it seems to be everywhere - but it all started from a little side-shoot I dug out of a friend's Wellfleet garden when we lived there back in 2001. It's amazing how it has thrived over the past seven years, moving through three different gardens with us in that time. No doubt the regular divisions have helped spur it along.

The spirea bushes (there's two) along the fence are also starting to bloom these week. I love the hot pink of these tiny flowers...and they also form these great heads. This plant would probably be big and round like many of it's relations in the area, but again, this one has moved a number of times with us...and has broken off into several plants during one or two of those moves.

The other day, Afod pointed out some particular attributes that set the daylily I was showing you off from others you normally see. At first, I sort of discounted this, as I believed them to be just sort of standard, that tall orange daylily you see growing just about everywhere alongside the highway.

But I took another look at this second flower, from the same clump and it looks just a little different to me. The petal colors are a little lighter, as are the anthers...and so I'm just not sure. Both those things could be attributed to the fact that one was photographed shortly after opening in the early morning, while the other was photographed at the end of its life, in the glow of early evening. A mystery?

Perhaps not...but there are so many less pleasant things to ponder.

You didn't think I could resist another look at my magnificent first sunflower today, did you? I'm kind of excited that these guys have decided to start blooming this week, as I am anticipating a visit from Kelly and Carol around midweek, and Kelly is essentially the goddess mother of my sunflowers, having provided the seed packets in the first place!

Their visit is always a highlight of the summer season for me, though it's coming a little earlier than usual! I wonder who I'll drink weak margaritas with as summer winds down this year.

In advance of their visit, but also just because it was overdue, this evening I spent some time trimming off the spent roses from the big rose bush and also working at that infinite business of weeding...mostly limiting myself to the witch grass, while I wait for other seedlings to be large enough to identify.

And now that I've removed lots of that grass, it's so much easier to see how well things are doing...lot of big cleome plants and bachelor button plants and sunflowers and asters (I didn't remember planting asters, I'll have to go back and look at my seed packets...nope, no asters...hmmm, I could swear that's what those are...we'll see...)and two kinds of cosmos, all from seed.

Ah, what a fun garden this is.