Summer's sameness and differences

 

 

The first cooler days of August last week—and the rain, plus a dose of nutrients––prompted a rejuvenation in part of the flora that surrounds this Saline County Couchwood. Showing WHITE were abelia blooms, an airplane plant blossom and a recent yucca torch.

Tiny RED cypress vine blooms run up the lattice on the shed porch. Also, tiny red blooms on the Crown of Thorns on the front porch. PINK turned up in the Encore azaleas, crape myrtle, oxalis, two pots of petunias, althea and three of Mom’s old begonia plants.

BLUE wandering jew, PURPLE monkey-grass blooms and beautyberries, FUCHIA dianthus, YELLOW lantana, orange cannas and bronze mums complete the rainbow of colors. The yarrow’s once-white blooms are now brown, and I’ve begun pulling them up.

Everything in this hilltop acre survived the days with no rain. It was easy to water the front and porch plants, but also the back where cannas are still green and have bloomed—not like last year when goldenrod took over the bed. This year, we got ahead of the invader so that the main plants thrived. Oxalis and monkey grass planted around the yellow-ash stump (the round bed) pretty well went dormant/brown or the foliage disappeared, leaving bulbs stacked like miniature minarets.

Grandmother’s rock garden/our pet cemetery under a three-tree sassafras grove, is no longer out of reach of a hose since Plumber Dyer added a faucet to the north side of the house. Two hoses mean that even the far live fence of roses and Russian olive, red bud and crape myrtle can be watered when needed.

The pear tree, which did not bear fruit last year, is loaded again. This tree does its thing without the benefit of pruning—except what nature does––or spraying. A couple in a red truck caught me out by the roadside, stopped and asked about the pears. “Take what you can use,” I said. “Don’t you like pears?” she asked. “Yes, but I still have two freezers full from earlier years.”

The south mum-lily-iris bed is the hardest to keep clean. Located under the breakfast room windows, and close to the only outside faucet, it is built up a foot high with rock-and-mortar—Dad’s doing, I suppose. Though I’ve moved most of the mums into the Inset bed, the ever-browning iris foliage means more attention.

              The late summer colors are always the same. The next two months will bring the oranges of pumpkins, more bronze ‘mums, the multi-colors of oak and maple and sassafras leaves.

                Earlier this month, on the second night of wind-and-rain storms, a huge maple limb fell in the north yard, as did a smaller pecan limb in another area. As of this writing, we’ve clipped the smaller branches and lopped the larger ones, then hand-sawed the even larger ones. It’ll take another week of such ministrations to get the entire mess out of sight and onto the burn pile.

                Happy Labor Day.!

c 2024 by PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA