Soft Light

Day 321: With clouds on the eastern horizon, the soft light of early morning provided an opportunity to photograph the Cosmos. I prefer to shoot in natural light, often using a tripod to obtain a long exposure, and sunlight, although something of a rarity in the Pacific Northwest, makes for "hot spots" on light-coloured flowers. My camera is less sensitive to red and purples than I'd like, but I find I get truer tones when there is a slight overcast even though the greens appear somewhat duller. Now as for the pinkness of these particular Cosmos, they may be volunteers from past years. The package I bought this year was supposed to be yellow and orange shades, and a shorter variety. I am beginning to have reservations about buying any more seed from the company I normally use. Germination rates have been very low for their products over the last several years, and this is not the first time the variety has not been true to the description. It may be time to move on.

When Pink Is Permissible

Day 284: I take a lot of flak from people who know I detest pink when they see these flowers in my garden, but above all, I respect Ma Nature, and since she's insisting that these self-sowing, persistent volunteers be given their time in the sun, I'm not going to object too loudly. All four (Rose Campion, Deptford Pink, Cosmos and Nigella) are on the "magenta" end of the scale, not even close to the "baby pink" which causes my gorge to rise. They give a bit of colour to the flower beds now that the blues have mostly gone by, and for the most part, they remain below the taller yellows and golds (Snapdragons and Gaillardia) which currently dominate the Barren Wasteland. Bright reds are woefully lacking in my yard other than Crocosmia, somehow brushed aside when I was planning a "no-theme" planting scheme. My one main consideration was to avoid pink, yet here it is, and though it pains me to admit it, I'm glad to have them. Magenta...I'm tellin' ya, they're magenta! Shut up with the "pink" already!

The Colour Garden

Day 300: Perhaps they aren't as unstructured as a traditional English garden, but my flowerbeds are nevertheless a themeless riot of hues and growth habits. I grow "for pretty," with no particular mind to borders and backgrounds, not objecting to those things which reseed with wanton abandon, totally happy when a solitary yellow snapdragon pops up amid the cosmos or nasturtiums creep out on the far side of the hellebore. This is my "colour garden," the morning-sun bed which often may sprout the occasional sunflower, courtesy of the careless eaters in the bird feeders nearby. I love the little surprises each growing season brings: Nigella over here, a Gazania which survived the winter, a pop of blue Lobelia from a seed a decade dormant. Nature knows no truly straight lines, and neither should a garden be anything other than a crazy-quilt in my conception, its floral patchwork calling to memory the dearest fabrics of bygone years.

A Glad, Good September Morn

Day 323: A Glad, Good September Morn to you, my friends! As many (but not all) of you know, this is my personal "holiday," second only to Christmas on my calendar. Traditionally, it is celebrated with a swim (or at least a dunk) in a chilly alpine tarn somewhere, but with this being Labor Day weekend, the celebration will have to be put on hold until it can be performed without the chance of being seen. Instead, I have chosen to bring you the beauty of my garden, just a small bouquet which includes no more than three stems of any given plant species. Believe me, the sacrifice was negligible! Included are two types of Coneflower (Rudbeckia), two Cosmos, Nasturtiums, Lavender, Delphinium, hardy Fuchsia, Snapdragons, Nigella, tall Phlox and a few California Poppies which were in a "wildflower" mix. May your coming year be as bright and festive as these flowers, and may you find joy in the Beautiful Month.

Botany Of The Cosmos

Day 330: What is "a flower?" Maybe it's not as easy to define as it sounds. Let's take a Cosmos blossom and break it down. Cosmos belong to the family of composites (Asteraceae), a word which might give you a clue that there's more going on here than meets the eye. In the most basic terms, there are two types of "flower" in the makeup of a Cosmos bloom: ray flowers (the "petals") and disk flowers (the "center"). What we commonly refer to as a Cosmos "flower" is in fact a head bearing many small flowers. You can see this in the closeup example, upper right. If you examine the disk through a hand lens, the smaller flowers will become apparent. Depending on the plant species, disk flowers may be a mix of male and female as they are in Cosmos, or male and female flowers may be borne on different heads, in which case they are referred to a "staminate" or "pistillate" depending on the sex. The microscope views show both sexes of Cosmos disk flowers, the brown stamens of the males obvious in the center right image, females lower right. The "birds-and-bees" of botany is quite a complicated process!