The Life Right Around Us

The summer has been hot, but we've gotten a lot of rain showers, and the back yard has been very green. Adding to the conditions, we took down some trees, so it has gotten more direct sunlight. The Beacon impatiens have added color in the round bed and in the Nemo boat garden.

This pitcher plant (some variety of calla lily?) had maybe one bloom the first year, but now has three, with the first one showing the darker color above. The youngest bloom is the light colored one at right. Growing in the bed of red Beacon impatiens, it makes a nice accent plant. That flower garden in a boat originated with the Nemo that Mark built for a movie set in 2007.

This is the first bloom on the gardenia plant given to us several years ago by Sara Payne. It was about 6 inches high when we got it, and we tried to protect it, but it got cut down several times by people we brought in to trim weeds. Now with about two years to grow undisturbed, it grew amazingly and finally bloomed.

I think the aroma of the gardenia is one of the most beautiful, and I actually smelled this bloom before I realized that it had finally bloomed. Once it figured out how to bloom, it didn't stop until it had produced seven beautiful blooms, with an enchanting aroma.

This is one of the nicest of these Canna Lily blooms I have seen in our yard. We started with a few plants close to the road, and it self-propagated to the round flower bed in the middle of the front yard where I found this one. They bloom profusely, but the blooms don't last long and are very attractive to Japanese beetles.

This is a flower that I actually stumbled onto when I was looking for a colorful celebration plant for Mother's Day for Brenda. Its common name is purslane, and I have found that it has quite a personality. It closes up at night, and sleeps until mid-morning sometimes. But when it wakes up and opens up, it is dramatic. It is very attractive to the bees, and you can see that it is providing a lot of pollen. It then closes up again in late afternoon.

In the back yard we have a collection of iron plants, which have very little personaliity, just a collection of large wide green blades. Nevertheless, they provide home for some interesting life.

I kept getting closer to this green frog to see what his alarm distance was. But he apparently had great confidence in his camouflage, so when I got to two inches from him I decided to leave him in peace.