I really hadn’t planned to do a Bloom Day post this month, because I didn’t expect to have anything to share. For the last week or so, Mom and I have been taking advantage of the beautiful weather to work on garden cleanup, and there isn’t a whole lot of pretty left. But when I took a few minutes to walk around and look at the areas we hadn’t attacked yet, I found a few bits of flowers, foliage, and seedheads lingering long enough to make an appearance for the last Hayefield Bloom Day of 2010.
The hardest part of pulling together this month’s Bloom Day post was deciding when to stop taking pictures. The angled autumn light is lovely all day long, and as the cooler temperatures bring out the richest flower and foliage colors, I keep wanting to grab the camera and wander around outdoors. I guess I should be grateful that we had a rainy afternoon to make the computer more tempting than the garden.
My first attempt at this post brought a strong sense of deja vu. Sure enough, when I looked back at last month’s Bloom Day post, I realized that the closeups and combinations that I’d shot for this month were almost identical. Obviously, things hadn’t changed all that much over the last four weeks – at least at first glance. I headed out again with the goal of finding something fresh for this month, and ended up with a number of new things, starting with some colorful closeups.
I don’t know how anyone who looks after a garden can have any sort of ego. Just when I think I know what plants need to grow, I quickly find out how wrong I can be. At times, I’ve given them “perfect” growing conditions and watched them wither away. And yet this year, with its ridiculous excess of heat and appalling lack of rain, the gardens have somehow managed to survive with almost no help from me. I’ve spent much of this summer moping around indoors, whining about the weather and wondering why I even bother trying to garden. But now, I remember why.
We’ve finally gotten some rain here in southeastern Pennsylvania, along with a brief respite from temperatures in the 90s and 100s, so the plants have perked up just in time for a quick Bloom Day photo shoot. I could easily fill a whole post with pictures of my new favorite plant: ‘Jade Princess’ millet (Pennisetum glaucum). I love the form, and the flower and foliage colors too. I’d like to see it with a little more height – maybe to 24 to 30 inches, instead of the 18 it has reached so far – but otherwise, it’s just lovely.
