Flowers: Wild and Domesticated

Double Red Knock-Out rose.

The mid-season pink peony which was part of the plantings made by former owners.

This one is a deeper pink than the early peony and has darker striping on the outer petals.

Rain began early Saturday morning and I haven't wanted to take a good look today at the peony which was just reaching the height of its blooming beauty.

This photo was taken earlier in the week.

Another photo of peony Duchesse de Nemours.

This too has been shattered by today's rains.

I never tire of looking at and photographing the blooms in my garden.

I enjoy garden notes and photos from other blogs--never boring--so I continue to share my delight in my own garden here.

I set out several varieties of foxglove last spring.

Sadly, this is the only one to survive.

Yellow Simplicity rose in bud.

Red clover flourishes in the meadows.

This plant has been blooming in great swaths through the meadows in front of the house.

I spent some time last Sunday taking photos and comparing to those I could find on the web.

The square stem suggested the broad category of mints.

I investigated photos and descriptions of skullcap before locating the identifying details of lyre-leaved sage.

I recall only isolated clumps of this last spring and wonder if the successive mowings during the season encouraged the crop this year.

Close-up of lyre-leaved sage.

Blue-eyed grass.

Lyre-leaved sage with daisy fleabane in the foreground.

Fleabane is a wide-spread "weed", familiar from our New England years and even found in arid Wyoming.

Interestingly, the variety found here has a distinctive pink tinge to the petals as they first open.

Here a clump blossoms between two chunks of maple in the pile of chunks curing for next winter's firewood.

For several weeks there has been a light, sweet scent drifting over the meadow.

I haven't been able to trace it to any one plant.

Along the roadsides and in abandoned dooryards, the wild rose, rosa multiflora, is beginning to bloom, honeysuckle is adding its almost cloying sweetness to the air.  Both these plants are considered to be invasive weeds, yet both add to the complex perfume of the season.