Summer vacation perennial flowers

Hummingbirds delight when their beak and tongue are in this flower. The intense red color of “lobelia cardinalis” beckons them from afar with this native wetlandy plant.

The long time favorite arrives every summer with its intense flower spikes covered in blossoms for you and hummingbirds both.

Improved summer flowering phlox has resistance to powdery mildew. So far, I agree that it does.

Gentian flowers beginning to unfurl.

As they slowly open, there is a hint at what’s about to happen:

Gentian is a very uncommon perennial that I rarely see available to us. These plants are the best I’ve ever had. It’s a rock gardeny kind of perennial.

A look inside the volcano. I almost always wonder who pollinates individual flowers, and how long it took for the symbiosis of flower architecture and insect morphology to occur- thousands of years? Hundreds of thousands of years? Millions of years? Some things we will never know the answer to.

It’s raspberry season, and this year everyone has a tremendously huge crop. Two mouthfuls, and...

Our 100% organic chemical-free lawn, not even a year old yet, is doing great. After eight months of gathering energy, the clover is just now flowering.

Happy happy happy clover. Next year, we will be selling our own home collected honey with our own hives.

Humongous red flowers of butterfly bush. These keep flowering for(almost)ever.

This black eyed Susan cultivar is in peak display now. A favorite of everyone who enjoys being outside in summer.

Crape myrtle with shiny maroon foliage hasn’t flowered yet.

Titillating hollyhock flower provides you with something to stare at any sweltering summer day. Good cut flower for the kitchen table.

I am very interested in watching insects do their thing. I have a general idea of what they’re doing, but the speed at which they do it, and the way they go about it is unmatched by humans. Gathering pollen is a small part of their lives. The rest of their time is spent in an invisible parallel universe to ours. Building homes, raising young, killing other insects, being killed by birds and other insects. We know nothing about the food chain and how it’s all interconnected. Just watch this bumblebee vibrate it’s way around this flower.

Observing mother nature’s creatures is addicting. Once you start, there’s no turning back. Last year I watched a bumblebee vibrating it’s way up and into a foxglove blossom. When I saw that, I realized that the bee was made specifically just for that flower, and the flower was specifically designed just for the bumblebee. I’ve been hooked ever since, wondering stuff that there’s usually no answer to. It’s almost a curse. It consumes time, as well as space on your phone when you snap pic after pic.