Balloon Flowers

My favorite flowers are blooming right now. And that right now means both that they are currently blooming and they are currently my favorite, until the next ones bloom.

Purple balloon flower. They are gloriously star shaped, but mostly I love how they open, like one of those paper secret keepers that a middle-school girl folds. Then it pops open to reveal the five silken petals.

Do you have a favorite flower blooming in your garden this time of year?

Garden Secrets

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, has does your garden grow?
I've been thinking about my garden lately, but this rhyme reminds me of my friend Pat who auditioned for a fairytale theme park when she was a little girl and got the part of Mary, Mary, quite contrary. Her mother, who I can picture in low heels, a shirtwaist dress and a string of pearls, smirked a bit at the part she received.
Anyway, last year at this time, my flower garden at front was devoid of color, except for green and sometimes brown. Once the spring Irises and the June tiger lilies have faded, I had no color. I vowed that this year, July would have color.
I have a few spots of color, like my balloon flower

or my echinacia.

But they are sparse so far, not spreading in my garden. So this year, I planned ahead.I ordered some zinnias from the PTA plant sale, and my husband planted them along the front.
Zinnias are kind of flirtatious. They start to show a bud and they tease you that they will arrive soon.

And then you wait and wait for them to actually open.
Oh, but when they do.
They appear in shades of yellow, orange and red, and even purple.

They come in pink:

And even pinker:

They start out opening flat like a daisy then add layers and layers of petals until they are thick and lush.

Here's a photo from the back garden that shows a zinnia mingling with a pink hollyhock and some blooming purple hostas.
The hollyhocks come every other year and the soil around this house doesn't appear to nourish the hollyhocks that I've transplanted from my parents' house in Kentucky to Michigan to Ohio. The hostas are these hilarious little low growing shade plants that suddenly send a shoot straight up in the air, like a flag pole with purple hanging blooms.
But wait until I tell you about the surprise in my garden. I planted something that I forgot.
I'll tell you next time I'm feeling contrary.

Flourishing Plants

This summer, Earl cleared the garden in front of the garage and planted strawberry plants. Strawberry plants come back every year and they spread. They shouldn't be allowed to grow fruit their first year. Instead, Earl had to pull off any flowers so the plants would grow well.
After the first few weeks, a couple of volunteer plants stuck their heads through the soil in the strawberry patch. A tomato plant began to grow in the front corner away from the strawberries, so we left it. Then some sort of melon began to grow right in the middle of the strawberry bed. We love a good melon at my house, so we let it grow too.
We weren't too surprised about the volunteer plants since we had grown tomatoes and melons there the previous year.

Here's a picture of the leaves on the melon plant.
All of a sudden, the melon plant began to grow up instead of crawling along the ground. And then it sprouted this:

Something that was not a melon was definitely on its way.
And mid-morning, the plant would flower into a tiny yellow bloom with a reddish center.

It closed again before noon, so I was the only one in my family who ever saw it since everyone else slept most of the morning.
One morning, before the sun became ferocious, my neighbor Sandy joined me in the garden with a couple of wildflower books. We searched until we found the same bloom with the same leaf shapes. It was called "Flower of an Hour." Well, that made sense because it only bloomed for an hour. And it was a wildflower from "Eurasia." Truthfully, it was a weed.
Earl asked if he could pull it since it was a weed. I said no.
"Why?"
"Because it's pretty."
And in spite of its beautiful blooms, as it grew, it began to look weedier -- tall and rangy.
Finally, when Earl asked his weekly question about pulling the Flower of an Hour, I told him to do it.
Now our nobbly strawberry patch is without the gangly weed in the middle.
Here are a couple of actual flowers growing around our house. I'm not going to let Earl pull them. This is a Chinese bellflower, or a baloon flower, and I love it.

This is how it looks before it blooms, like a Chrysler symbol.
We also have a rose bush for the first time at this house. It has bloomed for nearly a month now.
I don't spend a lot of time on flowers. I usually plant some things in the spring and hope they continue through the summer. About this time of year, I run out of color in my garden. Before long though, the mums will begin to bloom and I can stop worrying about whether the neighbors are whispering about my garden or lack of it.