My Favorite Flowers This July

I\’ve always been drawn more to the slight flower, the mere leaf, the understated beauty as opposed to a flower bed overflowing with grouping of the bold and beautiful. Not that that sort of arrangement doesn\’t merit admiration, try strolling through Buschert Gardens, for example, and not be overwhelmed with the color and scents; but here at the log house, it\’s prairie simplicity I prefer.

A single orange tiger lily against a burnt wood log wall. A sprig of lavender-hued bachelor buttons waving in the afternoon breeze. That sort of thing.

Sometime last summer I spent an afternoon at a neighbour\’s house – it\’s an English cottage meets wide open space type of setting. She has a small, seemingly effortless room furnished simply with a few books, a daybed, and brightened with a largish window, the lower sill of which, if you are reclined on the daybed, is about chin level and offers up a classical prairie view – immense skies, waving fields of alfalfa, and a horizon of Rocky Mountains in the distance. She planted an entire meadow of wild flowers against this window and though I was only in the room for a few minutes on a bright blue-skied afternoon, I\’ve dreamed of it since. It was breathtaking. This kind of clarity –  natural and mostly untouched simply cannot be paralleled. Perhaps I love it because of the absence of complication, an aspect that my psyche may be drawn to in my daily life of chaos, hecticness and an agenda which overflows with addendums.

I suppose that\’s why I love the simple flowers most. Typically, I have difficulty keeping up with the weeding, watering and daily maintenance flower beds, gardens and planters require. This year, a little help from overnighting family, and Mother Nature with all her rain showers helped fill in the gaps and I get to enjoy a yard resplendent with flowers and greenery.

I\’ve always liked the color combination of blue, yellow and white, and use it often on my deck. It might be just that I have a yellow door, and a once-blue deck, now distressed and sanded down. Around here, the rustic look rocks our world.

There are a couple of overflowing baskets of color on the deck, both purchased one Saturday morning at Frog Hollow Garden Center. I\’ve been really pleased with both of these. I can build my own hanging baskets, but this was just not the year for that!

I\’m loving the combination in this window basket – slight and elegant.

In the flower beds it\’s all about hardy and drought-resistant. There are simply too many weekends we are away showing to be anything but. So, there\’s plenty of these in mass plantings.

And finally, against the garage, supported from wind are these perennial beauties – delphiniums.

Hope the flowers in your yard are bringing you pleasure this summer too!