Size Problem

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One of the joys and frustrations of gardening the dealing with the vagaries of nature — both weather and pests.  The vegetable garden this year was decimated by critters, with nearly all of the peas lopped off by a lop-eared rabbit (sorry, couldn’t resist) who snuck behind the wire barricade I had in place.  Corn crop will be at most 1/3 of normal from a combination of seed eaters and poor germination (bad seed?)

Flower gardens on the other hand are doing wonderfully. The daylilies are scrumptious – we have a full palette range of whites, yellows, oranges and reds. Some years the beetles snarf them up but for whatever reason they are in control this year.

The clematis are also out in full force, which brings me to the size problem.  The big blues, showcased with Clematis, are especially large this year.  A collage with them and some other current flowers just isn’t possible as one bloom alone fills the width of the scanner.  So we’ll have to enjoy them on the vine I guess.

Another spectacular bloomer this season is the butterfly weed (one work featuring them is And They Call It a Weed).  The plants seem especially large this year, with the top specimens having tops 3+ feet in diameter.  The oranges are just delightful, and any plant has a spread of red-orange outlying buds yet to open shading to yellow-orange in the active middles.  The butterflies, while inexplicably sparse this year, do indeed love them. Last year we had five (yes, five!) Great Spangled Fritillaries in our front garden at the same time, all fresh and newly emerged.  Three of them cooperated to pose at one time.

Great Spangled Fritillaries (Speyeria cybele) on Butterfly Weed

Great Spangled Fritillaries (Speyeria cybele) on Butterfly Weed

So while the big clematis have eluded the scanner this year I’ve been exploring more butterfly weed works but lots of editing to do yet before they can be shared.  They are relatively pollen-free but regardless of care some dust or wandering mites inevitably get caught by the scanner and have to be delicately cloned out.

Ah, well, something to do on a cold, dark winter’s night!

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