gardening: observing, planning, designing, and editing
Purple greets you at the entry to the garden. The Baptisia australis, also known as blue false indigo, that first poked above ground May 1 is in full bloom. Disturbingly rare this year are the bumblebees that usually adorn these plants.
There is a lot of purple in May and early June. Here are four purple-flowered plants, two natives and two not, that have done very well. They will all take light shade, although the geranium would probably be happiest with more sun than the others.
This native plant erupts from the ground the second week of May, and is blooming by the end of the month! It is very popular with our bumblebees.
The purple period marks the transition from spring, with its columbines and Baptisia, to early summer, with its roses and peonies, and irises bridge the seasons.
The planter box at the end of the driveway runs south to north; just north of it, the Alpine columbines are coming into bloom. Right behind them are the rather asparagus-looking Baptisia flower buds; the highly divided leaves to their right belong to the geranium Johnson’s Blue, which is just budding up. The last plant wraps around the outer edge of the entire bed; it’s crested iris, which was at its peak Saturday.
After 11 inches of snow on November 11, things got quiet weather-wise. Winter did not quite settle in. We got less than two inches of snow in December, and just a dusting on Monday—not enough to stick to the sidewalks. So what happens in the pause, the interregnum, between fall and winter? Continue reading “Interregnum: December, the Fall Into Winter”