Count On These Cheerful Flowers To Light Up the Garden More Reliably Than Sunshine

You know the weather is pretty bad when the local weather guru begins a blog post with "I think we communally must have sinned." On July 14, Cliff Mass went on to write "I have followed the weather around here for a long time and I can't remember such sustained cool, cloudy weather during the middle to end of July (including what is going to occur)."

Luckily, garden flowers are offering plenty of solace during this damp, off-and-on gloomy July. Soon enough, dahlias, hydrangeas and lilies will light up the garden, but for now these little yellow and orange flowers warm up the garden and our hearts... Here's what's in bloom and cheering me up in my garden today -

A marble-leafed nasturtium

These sweet-smelling wallflowers have been blooming since March and will continue dependably on, even though they compete for space in a raised bed with raspberries, through first frost.

These old-fashioned little Black-Eyed-Susans charm me today as they have generations of gardeners.

Comments

[J]

Hi Valerie, that is one awesome marble-leafed nasturtium. Personally I enjoy the foliage and the habit of nasturtiums in general rather than the blooms, but the flowers are an additional plus! Love the way the foliage holds the raindrop so perfectly like epimedium, lady's mantle, akebia, etc. Definitely a plant to be cheerful about. (-: Thank you for sharing those photographs.

[Denise]

Nobody watches the weather like gardeners, and it's garden blogs that really bring home the weather to me from other regions. I had no idea the PNW was having unusually cool summer conditions while a good deal of the rest of the country broils. So far So. Calif. has been pleasant -- not too hot yet, mostly just in the 80's near the coast. But we certainly can't grow wallflowers in July!

[valerie Easton]

Hi Denise,
I agree about the weather - have you ever been with a group of gardeners when the topic of weather didn't come up in the first five minutes? You can always count on a gardener to give you the specifics of rainfall, temperature and wind....it's endlessly fascinating to us...and, yes, we've had record lows here all spring into summer, with more thunderstorms and rain today...
Val

[Susan]

Valerie, you inspired me to add more yellow and orange blooms to my garden.......adding that sunshine we so often miss in Seattle! One of my, and the hummingbirds', new favorites is Kniphofia 'Shining Sceptre'. It glows on a grey day....like today!