It rained and rained and rained here. It rained much of the time for two days. It was the most rain we’ve gotten in a while, though we’d had a fairly wet winter. Yesterday, when the rain temporarily lessened to a drizzle, I went out and took some pictures in the shady back garden. Here are some of them.
Fern-Leaved/Fringed Bleeding Heart (Dicentra eximia), bloomstalks waving around in the wind
If you only click one photo in this post for a larger view, make it the above one. Trust me.
Variegated Honesty / Money Plant / Silver Dollar (cultivar of Lunaria annua [syn. Lunaria biennis])
My old garden with the columbines also had self-seeded honesty (this is one of several cottage garden flowers that are technically biennial – blooming in their second year and then dying – but in actuality tend to perpetuate in a garden through self-seeding once planted; other examples are foxglove and hollyhock). This is the only time I’ve ever seen a variegated form. I think I got it last year from Select Seeds‘ mail-order catalog, but if so, they don’t appear to be selling it any more. Honesty is most famous for its seed heads, and all its common names derive from them. Here is someone else’s photo of them. I caution you that in some areas, honesty plant can be invasive, so please try to find out in advance whether that’s true where you are.
Epimedium, blooming, bloomstalks again waving around in the wind
Wild Ginger is sprouting in the background (vivid green). Here is a nice article on epimediums from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I quite understand the author; I fell in love with epimediums at first sight, just like columbines. They have beautiful shows of blooms, usually in spring (sometimes into early summer), and the flowers are so enchanting – both individually and in their clusters. The leaves, too, are gorgeous in this difficult-to-describe way. Though they tend not to be evergreen here – in my experience, most claims of “evergreen foliage” regarding perennials turn out to only extend as far north as some areas with a rating of USDA zone 7 or 8 – they are constantly changing over the course of the seasons. And many epimediums can take dry shade better than just about anything else non-invasive. Some of them form clumps, while others turn into groundcovers.
The Wild Ginger/Canadian Ginger (native Asarum canadense). Sorry this was the best of my shots.
Toadflax and nemesia, waiting to be planted
Toadflax is the purple and yellow one in the bottom.
Corydalis ‘Purple Leaf’ and Saxifrage ‘Purple Robe’, blooming while waiting to be planted
The leaves in the bottom right corner are from a Colchicum, an autumn-flowering bulb whose strappy leaves appear in spring (in most species, including almost all of the ones planted in gardens).
Wild violets, native sedum (Sedum ternatum), and Heart-Leaved Alexander (Zizia aptera), also waiting to be planted
The plants in the above photo are from Toadshade.
Rain gage (about 1.5 inch as of this photo)
…
We are supposed to get scattered frosts here tonight. We’ll see if my garden is impacted.
