The garden is coming into it's glorious self. In the early morning the Chocolate Flowers bloom. They last only until it gets hot later in the day, then they drop their petals. But oh they do smell wonderful in the morning, they have the odor of hot cocoa - honest! While they are not eatable by humans, the birds feast on the seeds.
I have no idea what these gentle lavender flowers are. They have appeared by the magic of nature around my mailbox. I am sure some people would call them weeds and pull them up. I call them a gift and enjoy every day I go out for the mail or newspaper.
I have two kinds of plants in my garden: happy and dead. This Apache Plum is one of the happy plants. It is a member of the rose family but has no thorns. When the flowers fade they turn into feathery seed heads that resemble Indian Headdresses. The finches come from far and wide to dine on them.
Nature has designed my garden. Plants frequently die where I put them, but there seeds come up someplace else where they thrive. The plants under the sundial are all "volunteers". All I had to do was stand back and let them happen.
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I'm definitely in favor of volunteers. Although everything seems to love Portland as a place to grow in (well, perhaps not cacti), some of my favorites are those that I can't control, that appear and disappear, willy-nilly, over the years -- the silver dollar plant which is large and magenta in the spring, the violets which come and go as they will, and other such that just seem to do as they will do and there's no doing anything about it.
ReplyDeleteThe volunteers are my favorite ones. They look so pretty next to the sundial and the ones by the mailbox are just lovely!
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