Ka-Bloom!

I don't get to see much of the garden during the week.  Crazy as it sounds, I have an hour and 40 minute commute to work -- each way.  So Monday through Friday I leave the house at 6:25AM and walk back in the door just before 7PM.  That makes for a bit more than a 12 hour day away. It's really depressing in the winter when it's dark for both trips, and the only time I actually get to see the exterior of the house and whatever's left in the garden is on the weekends. 

But in the warms months, it's a different story.  The light holds til 8 or 9 at the peak of Summer.  Dinner is usually delayed by a leisurely walk through the garden, generally with a light pre-prandial drink in hand.  (This is no time for my preferred beverage, because negotiating all the paths and steps in fading daylight after a stiff shot of single malt scotch would really be tempting fate.  It would be truly embarrassing, not to mention painful, to tumble down in a soused heap onto the patio.)

It's been a somewhat cool and rainy Spring for the most part, but last week we finally had a stretch of beautiful 70 degree days.  On the fourth sunny day -- a Thursday -- in the 12 hours I was away, magic happened.  All the mid-Spring blossoms burst open in an exuberant riot of color -- the floral equivalent of an orchestrated fireworks display.

The Chinese Tree Peonies are the star of the show. Unlike deciduous peonies, they don't die back each year, but set new growth on old limbs which hold their blooms upright. When I left for work that morning the blooms were clenched tight.  But as I set out for the evening stroll, I saw that they had sprung wide open in a shameless display of color and intoxicating aroma.  We have two varieties whose names I'm no longer sure of but I seem to recall that the dark red one is something like "Red Dragon in a Green Pool" and the other is  "Phoenix White Feng Dan Bai."  Whatever they're called, they are spectacular.  I do wish I could make these photos scratch 'n sniff for the full effect, but you'll just have to use your nasal imagination.

Red Dragon in a Green Pool

Red Dragon Blossom

White Phoenix

White Phoenix Blossom

The Tree Peony display was just the beginning.  During the same 12 hour span, other small miracles occurred.  Here are a few of the other surprises I found on that same evening stroll.

The Rhododendron along the driveway burst into full bloom

On the mound the Allium -- a garlic relative -- opened

Allium close-up -- looks like something
Buckminster Fuller could have designed

Geum -- also known as Grecian Rose, also on the mound

Iris in the front garden

A clutch of Columbine, also in the front garden

The lower hill in back is now a symphony of pinks and blues

Carpets of Creeping Phlox and Ajuga (Bugleweed)
paint the hill above the patio.

Purpurea forms a light blue carpet below the Phlox

And up top, the variegated Azalea brighten the first rock outcropping

Not a bad day's work for Mother Nature!