Three Flowers

These three flowers are all I can muster tonight, and really I didn't have much to do with them. The allium in the front is a wild thing that grew in Nellie's garden, before we ever came here. The zinnia in the middle is maybe 'Queen Red Lime', and the echinacea in the back is one of those that's been The Next Best Thing for five years, but only ever lives up to my expectations for two weeks in June.

Pink Faerie Wings

I once knew a little farm girl who was really cute and a total pill. I can't remember her name, but I do remember that her pet bunny was called Cumbaline, after the flower. This flower.

Isn't that sweet? Maybe you have to love odd words and bunnies and Aquilegia to think so... but I happen to fit into that category.

Hibiscus trionum

I spent way too many hours trying to figure out what this flower is. It is a relic of Nellie's Garden, a late self-seeder that pops out of the soil when it's good and ready, 'round about July.

I have only ever seen it in my garden, so I thought it was Rare and Wonderful. Then I saw it in seedling form in one of those dirty sidewalk-tree-holes in Wilkes-Barre, where it had somehow persevered past dog crap and cigarette ash. It was alive, which is more than I can say for the tree that had once been there.

This city street sighting deflated my hopes of Rare, but confirmed Wonderful. Anything that is fertilized, instead of fried, by the fluid that was once malt liquor and is now pee, is Wonderful.

What I like about this flower is a lot of things: It has pyramidal lanterns. It is a really dark, shiny, healthy green with unusual long, lobed leaves and sharp, angular stems. You can scamper out first thing in the morning to see it, and the bud is a tight, white scroll. You can fix your coffee and sit on the bottom step and watch it, and hang out the laundry and load up the truck and walk the dog, and there it sits. You can sigh and flick it, to inspire activity, but... nothing. You can think it is a little bit more unfurled, which it isn't, and go inside to get your this-and-that so you can leave for the day, and then when you come back out, you see: you missed it.

Which is why it is called flower-of-an-hour. Like I said, I spent forever trying to figure out what it is, and finally in exasperation posted a question at the Dave's Garden ID forum, and someone replied with the correct answer in, like, 7.5 seconds.

On further reading, the following words and phrases have been used to describe Hibiscus trionum in the Dave's Garden PlantFiles: terrible, evil, noxious, bugger, scraggly, Attila the Hun, invasive, kill them early and kill them often. If that isn't enough to knot the little bastards onto my heartstrings forever, I don't know what is.

Nellie's Garden is Green and White and Gold

Euphorbia marginata, Snow-on-the-Mountain

Nellie lived in our house before us. She was 95 when she died, and she spent all of her life here, except for early childhood. She watched trees planted and felled. In her last years, she told her also elderly nephew (a sweet, sweet man, but afraid of heights) that if he wouldn't climb the pear tree to harvest the hard winter pears, she would do it herself. She washed her clothes on a washboard till the end, because the plug-in wringer washer a relative gifted her decades ago was too newfangled. She told our neighbor, thirty-something like us, that she didn't mind the parties one bit, but the nude barbecuing had to stop.

Argemone mexicana, Mexican prickly poppy, a vigorous volunteer

I never met Nellie, but I fancy that sometimes she sits with me. We rock on the back porch glider, considering our garden.

Unidentified white shrub rose

The plants in Nellie's garden are not ones I would have chosen. I do not choose white things. Or gold things. Or that fuchsia that is the color so many garden species seem to boil down to over time.

Hibiscus

But I do like unusual things, and some of hers are. Like the strange lantern-budded self seeder pictured below, which unfurls perfect cream-and-burgundy blooms each morning. I believe they are open from approximately 6:22 am to 6:29 am. I'll try to arrange my schedule around capturing a photo of one, one of these days. Here are the ones I'll miss while prepping for the farmer's market tomorrow.

This plant is a mystery to me. If anyone knows, do tell.

The real dope on my poppies

This godforsaken orange poppy was, as the story goes, also loathed by my garden predecessor, Nelly. She spent all of her life in this house except for the first few years, and she lived to be 95 or so. In her latter years she enlisted her nephew's help around her home and garden. One of his tasks that I know about - besides wheeling pea coal in the back walk via battered antique baby carriage - was whacking down the Oriental poppies, to prevent Nelly from being arrested by the Feds... Apparently she thought her Oriental poppies were opium poppies, or perhaps she just thought the Feds wouldn't know any better, which likely they don't. In any case, Matt and I now grow enough opium poppies in the backyard to make Nelly roll over in her grave continuously throughout the month of July.

The reason I hate these screaming orange poppies is that they broil up out of the ground each spring and pour like molten lava all through my strawberry patch, and they're impossible to pull out. At least they're good lookin.