Last Summer’s Flower

Last Summer's Flower

Things have been scattered here – but looking through old photos is always fun. This is a picture I took on a hike with a friend last August – a wild morning glory alongside a local creek. This year the wildflowers are even more amazing than last year’s because of all the rain. I hope to see more!

Mexican Evening Primrose

This is one of my all time favorite flowers, except for one thing: it is invasive! Many of my other favorites have the same characteristics, and are best contained in containers unless you want to be taken over. In hard-to- grow areas, this is an attribute, such as covering hillsides, or in wilder areas with seasons. Bulbs are great for this, but in small gardening areas, invasive species can be very problematic.

The Mexican Evening Primrose – Latin name oenothera speciosa – is a perennial wildflower that lies close to the ground because it is rather a floppy plant even though it can grow rather long in length. What makes the Mexican Evening Primrose a good garden plant, at least for dry areas, is its tolerance of drought and hanging out despite bad growing conditions.

Spread over a hillside or in a small patch, the cheerful pink and yellow center flowers are striking. They are also abundant in bloom, and this is even better in my opinion! The local botanical garden has a number of patches which mix in with other plants.

These flowers are lovely in bouquets, too, as their drooping nature and vining tendencies add a bit of curve to upright flowers along with their beautiful pink.

Fallen Flower

Fallen Flower

One of the pictures from my walk around the botanical garden here in town. Up at the potting shed, this wooden platform holds containers to be filled with dirt and plants to be nurtured before being planted or sold at the weekly Sunday sales. This is a flower fallen off a nearby tree – don’t ask me what the name of the tree is! – and I thought it was so lovely against the grain of the wood.