All Summer's Glory

There is a time around the middle of July when the garden looks absolutely resplendent. It feels like every flower is in bloom, competing for attention. The late spring blooms haven’t faded yet and the some of the late summer ones decide to show up early, so there is a surreal mix of seasons that coexist in harmony before my very eyes: delphiniums, lilies, salvias, roses, daisies, bee balms, cone flowers, catmints, lavender, yarrow, spider flowers, black eyed Susans, day lilies, hostas, coral bells, and last, but not least, giant clumps of fragrant garden phlox.

The garden mellows out a little bit after this explosion of blossoms, settling into a tamer, more mature pattern, but for now the flower beds are tiny versions of a jungle, growing faster than they can be contained.

Later in the season the long blooming perennials will take over, have you noticed that the late summer and fall plants keep their flowers long after the first frost? The sedums are already displaying green flowers, just waiting to ripen. Speaking of long blooming plants, the hellebores are still in bloom and they started in March, so that would make it, what, six months now?

The vegetable patch is not too shabby either, I picked up a first batch of tomatoes, beans and squashes yesterday. The squash leaves sprawled all over the garden path again, as they do every summer, but I gave up fighting them.

There is a mass planting of pale lavender hostas in one of the part shade flower beds, and they all arch gracefully, as if bowing, over the front lawn, covered in raindrops and sparkling in the sunshine. They look like a poet’s dream.