A Summer full of wildflowers

Yesterday we took a peek at some of the wild flowers that bloom in June, which is the start of meteorological Summer. Photos of plants which blossom in July start with a nearby rain garden that has more plants in bloom than I can readily identify.

rain garden with butterfly weed, brown or black eyed susans, purple coneflowers

Photo by J. Harrington

purple prairie clover

Photo by J. Harrington

carolina or prairie larkspur

Photo by J. Harrington

Last year seemed particularly full of Summer rain, and the wildflowers responded more beautifully than usual. Tomorrow we see what's flowering in August. Work has begun on the review of which month(s) have the most blooms listed and by how many. I'm getting curioser and curioser about  how that's going to turn out. Once that's done, we can see what happens when we match it against vascular plants native to Chisago County.

Moonflowers

By Karma Larsen 

Milly Sorensen, January 16, 1922 - February 19, 2004 

It was the moonflowers that surprised us.

Early summer we noticed the soft gray foliage.

She asked for seedpods every year but I never saw them in her garden.

Never knew what she did with them.

Exotic and tropical, not like her other flowers.

I expected her to throw them in the pasture maybe,

a gift to the coyotes. Huge, platterlike white flowers

shining in the night to soften their plaintive howling.

A sound I love; a reminder, even on the darkest night,

that manicured lawns don't surround me.

Midsummer they shot up, filled the small place by the back door,

sprawled over sidewalks, refused to be ignored.

Gaudy and awkward by day,

by night they were huge, soft, luminous.

Only this year, this year of her death

did they break free of their huge, prickly husks

and brighten the darkness she left.

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