I spend all my time trying to capture all the intense colors of the rainbow in my garden.
I live alone in a 50-year old, one story home full of memories. My home sits amongst 8 two story homes. Being different does not worry me because I am 90 years old and I could not climb the stairs in a two story home.
The thermometer on my back porch reads 100°. I know I have to put up with the heat to get full sun on my flowers. I look at the 3 pots of bougainvilleas on my driveway and ponder how I had to move them away from a tree (it was not sunny enough) and then how I had to move them away from a back door neighbor’s 11′ high fence and now they are getting plenty of sun on the driveway. They need water every day. Their burgundy red color seemed like a great touch in my driveway. My friend, Ollie, said to me, “When I was driving by your house and saw the great bunch of red blossoms, I just had to park out in the street to look in wonder!”
My rose colored crape myrtle stands nearby laden down with heavy blossoms bending down the limbs. I go out and happily release it of its heavy burden, knowing that cutting off the seed pods will enable it to bloom again. (It’s now in its third blooming.) I looked down on the ground and saw the pile of seed pods waiting for Raoul to carry them to the compost pile.
It is now early in the morning and cooler. I am sitting on the patio picking the leaves off a basket full of basil seed pods so I can hang them to dry in order to give them to the garden club members. It’s quiet except for the sound of dropping pecans, either blown down by the wind or thrown down half empty by the squirrels, and the occasional honk of car poolers nearby. It reminds me of all those sandwiches I made and car poolers or school buses honking.
It’s afternoon now and the thermometer reads 96°. It’s too hot to go out. The date is October 3rd. Two standbys for rose red are two flowers: the 6′ bush is Celosia Cockscomb (Cockscomb Celosia c.a. Plumosa) and the similar flower only 1 or 2 feet tall, a dark red called Celosia argentine cristata. They reseed themselves. You have to pull up seedlings because they are invasive, but I use the Plumosa type all summer long in flower arrangements for color and height but the Cockscomb type comes up in late summer. Both are excellent for drying by hanging.
I cannot leave the color red without mentioning the red roses, Mr. Lincoln, and the climber, Don Juan. Both have supplied me red roses for my arrangements and potpourri for 50 years. They always have 1, 2 or 3 roses right up until the first frost.
My potpourri spreads color and fragrance to many people. When my husband, my sister-in-law, and my niece were in the hospital I sent a box of potpourri for them to give the nurses. When my daughter’s good friend, wife of an astronaut, went away to live in France, my daughter gave her a party and some potpourri. Much later this friend opened a drawer and smelled the rose geranium potpourri and wrote to my daughter to tell her how the fragrance reminded her of the party.
The next color in the rainbow is orange, between red and yellow. The main plant I have in orange is a Hummingbird bush 10-15′ at my back door. It’s filled with tubular blossoms and black bumble bees and part of the time with hummingbirds which do not like bees. When I am eating my supper alone at my kitchen table, looking out the window, I notice the hummingbirds like to come late in the day at 6:30 p.m. when the bees are mostly gone.
I have lots of orange zinnias which thrive in the hot summer sun. I always plant them the Friday before Easter. That’s the beginning of hot weather and they grow until frost if they don’t get so much fungus on their leaves from being watered that I pull them up.
The roses have many blossoms in orange or peach shades. I planted 6 pots of orange nasturtiums but only 2 seedlings came up. I’ll plant 6 more 6″ pots of nasturtiums in the fall. My favorite arrangement of nasturtiums is using orange with greenery and purple pansies. I don’t stick their stems in juice; I use flower picks full of water to hold their stems.
The next color in the rainbow is yellow. A friend gave me a pot of crotons. Thinking with all the color in the leaves the plant must want lots of sun, but I was mistaken. Raoul helped me. We took the two plants out of the small pot, put them in two larger pots with good soil, compost, osmocote and placed them under the oak tree where they got filtered sun. You can see how intense and beautiful the color became.
The next color in the rainbow is green and my garden is green.
The next color in the rainbow is blue. All along the bed in the East is a border of blue Plumbago auriculata. It never gives me any trouble–no bugs, no fungus. It thrives in the hottest weather and lasts all summer until the first frost and then freezes and comes back next Spring. The blue is a delicate color–the blossoms are delicate. However, they do not hold up in a flower arrangement well. They look pretty; they grow nicely giving a good touch of light blue. What they really like as a treat is Epson salts!
The last color of the rainbow is purple. Against the 11′ wall of my neighbor’s fence is a bed of Impatiens on my side. They are a friendly little flower. They have been blooming all summer. The bed looks a little ragged because they send out seeds and you see little plants all along outside the bed–across the walkway. They pop up anywhere. Their colors are cheerful but not good in flower arrangements.
Now I have all of the colors of the rainbow in my backyard. I am preparing for a birthday party for my family and great grandchild and can pick those colorful flowers to make an arrangement for the party. We shall blow out the candles and sing Happy Birthday. I feel as though I have a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and lovely memories to celebrate.