GBBD

Happy Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. Special thanks to Carol for hosting Bloom Day at May Dreams Gardens. I wasn't sure if I would get a post done this month. It was gray, wet and windy most of the weekend, which didn't lend itself to taking photos.

The penstemon pseudospectabilis looks so healthy this year. It has already started to peak and the blossoms are starting to fade.

Another photo of penstemon on the left. The rose queen salvia in the upper right corner has become one of my favorites. And the primroses in the bottom corner are more plentiful than they've ever been. 

Everything is coming up primroses. The primroses started blooming earlier than they ordinarily do and have ensconced many of the flowers.They surround the penstemon, columbine and ultraviolet salvia.

I feel like a woke up one day and there was an unexpected sea of pink of primroses. A parting photo of the front garden on an overcast day.

Morning Light

I'm more of a night person than a morning person. Some evenings I suffer from fits of insomnia. After falling soundly asleep last Thursday, I woke up Friday morning around 4:00 am. I was wide awake and couldn't return to a restful dream state. I washed a load of clothes. Probably looked at some gardening blogs. Hmm, I can't recall much more.

At 7:00 am, I decided to go see how the flowers were doing. I put on a hoodie and hoped that none of my neighbors would observe me taking photos of the plants in my pajamas.

As I sat outside, peering at the blooms, the sun made its way overhead. Lighting larger and larger swaths of the flowerbed.

The light is so concentrated that the two ultraviolet salvias that I planted last summer were aglow. They replaced two Spanish lavenders that started to take over the small flower bed in my front yard. In less than a year they've grown to their full height. It's a hybrid that was introduced by Lauren Springer Ogden and Scott Ogden. I'm not sure if I love them, but they attract pollinators.

Some people find Mexican evening primroses invasive, but since I put in a drip system a few years ago, they don't seem to have spread so much. I enjoy the cascade of pink that doesn't require much attention.

I went to check out what was happening in the backyard. Some of the firecracker penstemon were translucent.  

I couldn't help taking more photos of the Missouri evening primroses. They seem more delicate in the morning. Alas, I had to get ready to go work.

Penstemon and Primroses

This post was inspired by Stacy's post called Mezzo Piano at Microcosm. I read the post a while back, but it still resonates with me.

Infrequently, my garden feels like a symphony. With the Oriental poppies raising the conductor's baton to start the bloom season. And the flowers blooming in succession. One plant taking the cue from another. This year the garden feels more like a chorus with a bunch of soloists shining momentarily in the spotlight. Now I have a duet moving to the front of the spotlight, the Rocky Mountain penstemon (penstemon strictus) and the Missouri evening primrose (oenethera macrocarpa). 

The penstemon reseeded itself in the front of the perennial bed in my backyard. To call it a perennial border would be an overstatement. Unfortunately, the wind scattered the penstemon seed directly in front of the Missouri evening primrose (oenothera macrocarpa).  In more temperant years, I would have found the penstemon homes with friends. However, the intermittent freezes and warm weather have made it inconvenient to transplant them. 

All the stages of blooming are intermingled together in the photo below. I love to watch them in the early evening and again the next morning.

 

Both the penstemon and primroses are so vivid in the undiffused sunlight of Santa Fe. The penstemon seem ultraviolet and the primroses fluorescent. I will enjoying seeing the interplay of this duet for a few more weeks.