Friday Fabulous Flower - Bottle brush buckeye

 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.

Once you see the brushy white spikes of flowers you'll understand where the common name bottle brush  buckeye comes from.  Aesculus parviflora is one of several buckeye species including red buckeye and Ohio buckeye in our gardens. 

Relief - Late, June rain makes Friday Fabulous Flowers bloom

 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.