Flowers for Mid-Summer

We have had rain showers, mostly at night or early morning, nearly each day since the weekend.

My white tree lilies began to open as the huge orange ones faded.

The fragile poppies delight me.

I photograph them quickly as a few hours can spoil their beauty.

Monarda lambada.

I grew this from seed our first summer in Kentucky. The plants reappear each season in slightly altered groupings.

Elderflower.

So lovely and so quickly over.

The elderberry bush near the clothesline.

One of the few deeper hued poppies.

Achillea raised from seed in 2012.

Shasta daisy, also from seed, in its first season of bloom.

My seed-raised clumps of coneflower are a joy, sturdy and vivid.

Another seed-grown achillea. This opens as a soft yellow, fades to cream and finally an off-white.

This achillea, "Paprika" was puchased at a local nursery. I divided it into two clumps last year.

It is not as vigorous a spreader as some.

Trumpet vine runs rampant.  This one grows from a thick trunk and reaches to embrace a nearby crabapple.

 In spite of the cheerful note of color it adds to the dooryard, trumpet vine has to be restrained.

In this zone 6 climate, it romps over everything, stretching out ever more tendrils.

Two shades of pink achillea in the shadow of the elder bush.

The elderflowers have rained tiny white petals onto the ferny foliage.

This is a fine season for the hydrangeas at the west side of the house.

Last year frost blighted the emerging buds and we had no flowers.

This blossom has a hint of lavender.

Two leaning stalks of yucca have blossomed this week in the shade near the carport.

A view of the unidentified vine which has twirled its way up the yucca stalk.

The above photos were taken during the past few days.

A 10 minute torrent of rain and whipping winds this afternoon has altered the garden landscape.

View from the carport toward the backyard during the fury of the brief storm.

The heavy rain and wind which rode in from the north, knocked over our two rows of sweet corn.

As soon as the rain quit, I hauled on my boots at J.'s request and we slogged to the upper garden.

Gathering the wet stalks in bunches I held them upright while J. used a hoe to pull the muddy loam around the roots, mounding it at the base of the plants to firm the stalks into a standing position.

Melon plants sprawled in pools of muddy water.

I was glad we had picked berries early this morning.

In the lower garden strips, squash vines, potato plants and my stalwart rows of sunflowers had been thrashed about.

I attempted to shore up leaning stems of cosmos, but the mud was too slippery.

I will go out tomorrow with the hoe [providing there is no more rain tonight] and resettle the cosmos, pull a bit more soil around the sunflower stalks.

The yuccas by the carport are keeled over, a sunflower which seeded itself at the edge of the front porch was snapped off at the base; clumps of achillea have been whipped and hang heavy with water.

It doesn't rate as anything like loss or devastation--merely some minor messes to tidy up when the storm front is safely passed.