Not too many plants blossom in the middle of summer. But the bottle brush buckeye is reliable shade tolerating plant. Not only that but once established it manages with minimal watering. If you have enough room this is a great plant. Our gardens have two clusters of this shrub and it looks wonderful.
The weather pattern seems to have changed to a hotter, wetter July. At least for now the almost 3" of rain has spelled recovery for most of our gardens. About the only plant that did not suffer was the native prickly pear cactus. It produced a hundred or so bright glossy yellow flowers, a good candidate for the Friday Fabulous flower, although today is the 4th of July, a Tuesday. There are some sand prairies over by the Rivers, and this cactus can be quite abundant in many of those.
Any way you want to slice it our gardens are suffering through a drought. Areas that would be called "lawn" are brown and crispy, and they would burn should anyone drop a match. Our lily/fish pond is down some 6-10 inches. Some trees must be watered or else they would die. A Kousa dogwood is struggling, but not much else is newly planted. So TPP is dragging hoses around to give the most sensitive plants water. And you can hardly blame bun-buns for eating plants that are best at keeping themselves alive. The bird bath and garden fountain are very popular with our avian residents. The native Prickly pear did flower very nicely.
As many of TPP's reader know Magnolia's and nagnoliid flowers are a great favorite. The collection includes two species of big-leafed magnolia, M. tripetala and M. megaphylla (var. aschii). Both have leaves that are routinely more than 20 inches long. The Asche magnolia also has really big flowers 9-10 inches across and it flowers when quite small and young if polar vortexes stay away.
A very large, very old shrub blooms every year about this time no matter what the winter weather has been like. It's covered by pinkish flowers and is quite striking! However the bush is rather course when not in flower. As you can see it has flowers rather like honeysuckles and it is in the Carifoliaceae. TPP thinks it's more of a specimen plant that is pretty in flower, easy to grow, and reliable. Kolkwitzia amabilis, the beauty bush, introduced around 1900 from central China belongs in most largish gardens, but is a rather old-fashioned plant. Our gardens came with this plant and it is clearly decades old, decades ago.
Here is a woodland spring ephemeral that you probably have not seen before. It is not a native, but since our gardens are so shady this quiet addition seemed logical. It is about the size of and grows rather like a Trillium. Several ivory-colored perianth parts surround numerous stamens and a small number of pistils. This is Peonia japonica. In general it does not like being moved or crowded. Several plants are scattered around our wilder gardens. The seeds take two years to germinate, and several years to flower, so it is not at all common. Except among us (rare) peony enthusiasts.
OK but first a shout out to Earth Day. TTP remembers the first Earth Day, but mostly because of all the other struff that was going on, mostly anti war things and the Kent State shootings, deciding to try out grad school to study botany, and other things. Sorry, Earth.
It's the third week of February, the high temperature will be in the 40s and the weather is presently a thunder storm. Very much unlike usual winter weather, so no surprise that snowdrops and winter aconite are in flower, along with early crocus and witch hazel. Never even touched our little snow thrower and that's good because Mrs. Phactor has her new electric vehicle plugged in there now. Snowdrops usually flower near the end Feb or the first week of March. The whole yard turns Scillla blue by the second week of March. But except for a couple of artic blasts, the winter of 2022-23 has been quite mild. But the Artic blasts may have killed a couple of TPP's plants. A dwarf Tsuga is clearly dead (TPP has had great trouble trying to grow this plant over the years). Too hot, too dry, and maybe too cold in the wrong time of year. So even though the winter has almost been a no-show, lingering drought and brief sudden cold can be a bad combination.
