I’m gushing every day over my lush garden; once again this year, but twice as much, the extra rain has prompted everything to grow BIG! A friend said it’s because the precipitation was spread out more evenly over the season.
Nigella, or Love-in-a-Mist, has spread its soft, blue-blossomed self all over the place, so much so that I needed to rescue a lot of plants from the stems that had grown tall, taller, and so tall, with their seed pods getting heavy, that they lost their balance and fell down on the surrounding lavender, germander, yarrow — whatever was there, trying to come into bloom itself.
It’s a happy chaos, out there. But a gardener must garden, and manage things, if lightly.
The hopbushes (dononea) seem to be extra full and extra colorful this year:
When I was lifting nigella off the echinacea out front, I noticed that the Golden Margeurite also was encroaching and reclining, on the germander nearby. I had to cut it back a lot, but you can hardly tell, there is so much of it. I brought it indoors and it has made a long-lasting bouquet of golden sunshine.
Gladsome Lights 
What a collection of lovely flowers — and at least one katydid nymph as lagniappe! I’m really fond of the love-in-a-mist. A friend had a good bit in her garden until the west Texas drought took them out, and I liked the colors as much as the seed heads. I’ve never seen the showy milkweed; it’s very pretty.
I’m curious about the Mexican primrose. Do the long ‘thingies’ that look like seed pods belong to it? None of our primroses have such long pods, or such long throats on the flowers — at least that I’ve noticed. The star, of course, is that plump caterpillar. What a beauty!
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Those seed pods you spy in the bed of oenothera belong to the California poppies that have established themselves there in recent years. As to the long throats, none of the primrose blooms that show in that picture seem to be all the way open, so they don’t look quite themselves.
Here they are last spring, at the very bottom of this post: https://gretchenjoanna.com/2023/05/16/red-poppies-keep-the-coolness-relative/
I was thrilled to see that caterpillar in my garden, having only last year encountered the Sphinx moth for the first time. May its tribe increase!
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I really should plant some nigella. But then, in your blog, every bloom looks exquisite!
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I was thinking about you the other day, how you know all the names of stuff and I only know the traditional garden plants. I was thinking about how a persistent weed I’ve been pulling might be a wild flower. LOL.
Sending love your way, sweet friend.
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How lovely to see the abundance in your garden! Having a second wet spring has done wonders for our gardens, hasn’t it? Hopbushes around here are grown as hedges, but I’d never seen their blooms until this year.
You’ll have to tell me how to deal with germander. After a wonderful spring bloom, it just looks kind of dejected and a few yellowing leaves. How hard a prune should it receive?
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I prune it very hard!
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