Tag: honeybees

The End of Summer

This is being posted in 2024. This post was drafted last year, but languished on my computer following an accident. I am dating this according to when the photographs were taken so that the posts land in the right spot in the timeline.

So much for August. August brought rain, causing some plants to sulk and wait for drier days. September is feeling more like August—a lot of dry, sunny days with pleasant temperatures.The Japanese anemones budded a little late, but bloomed the first week of September, as usual. They had—I kid you not—flower stalks that are pushing 4 feet in height. I did not have to bend over to get photographs of these flowers, which just started to bloom.

A Japanese anemone soaking up an early morning sunbeam, with dozens of flower buds behind. Photographed on September 5, 2023.

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More Rain Today Than in the Month of June

I cannot believe I’m saying this, but I was very happy to be blasted out of bed shortly after 5 a.m. by very loud thunder. When I looked out the window, the rain garden had plenty of puddling in it, so it was doing its job keeping at least some of the rain from running off down the sidewalk and into the overtaxed storm drains.

By 8 a.m., the silver maple had stopped dripping enough that I could walk around and enjoy my second cup of coffee. The hydrangeas looked terrific. Looking more closely, I realized that a month with many more promises of rain than actual rain had taken its toll. The flowers heads are smaller than usual, and the individual flowers are quite a bit smaller, but the green of the leaves was already shifting from that piny, water-stressed blue green to a much brighter and greener green.

Annabelle hydrangea, closeup. The individual flowers are just over half of their usual diameter, due to a very dry June. Usually the petals hide the stems behind them completely. Photographed July 7, 2017.

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