Flower for the Day Butterfly Weed 6-30-25

This butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) is a milkweed and was the gift (by way of seeds) from my

med school roommate from the other side of the state. It has multiple names: Butterfly milkweed, Pleurisy root, and silky swallow-wort. This is the third year it has come back. My previous attempts to transplant it were unsuccessful because of its root system. Its orange umbels each have five petals and five sepals.

The Tuft of Flowers

I went to turn the grass once after one

Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

 

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen

Before I came to view the levelled scene.

 

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;

I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

 

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,

And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

 

'As all must be,' I said within my heart,

'Whether they work together or apart.'

 

But as I said it, swift there passed me by

On noiseless wing a 'wildered butterfly,

 

Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night

Some resting flower of yesterday's delight.

 

And once I marked his flight go round and round,

As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

 

And then he flew as far as eye could see,

And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

 

I thought of questions that have no reply,

And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

 

But he turned first, and led my eye to look

At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

 

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared

Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

 

I left my place to know them by their name,

Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

 

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,

By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

 

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.

But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

 

The butterfly and I had lit upon,

Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

 

That made me hear the wakening birds around,

And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

 

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;

So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

 

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,

And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

 

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech

With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

 

'Men work together,' I told him from the heart,

'Whether they work together or apart.'

 

Robert Frost

Flower for the Day Night Blooming Cereus 6-27-25

Well we had a disappointment the other night. We have had a healthy night blooming cereus plant (Epiphyllum oxpetallum) for many years. It is called the Queen of the  Night. It blooms once a year and only after dark. When I was growing up my folks used to have bloom parties for the opening of the gorgeous flower. It ordinarily blooms in September but just a few weeks after bringing it out for the summer three healthy buds appeared.

Another small bud appeared a week or so later.They gradually enlarged but were really much smaller than normal.

After a regular bloom the flower closes. Several  days ago I checked it in the morning 

and much to my chagrin all three early flowers had bloomed the night before. I realized that a year's anticipation

had vanished in an Augenblick. I had missed their only bloom of the year. This is what a spent bloom looks like the next morning.

Now I'm down to one small bud that is still growing. Will I see it bloom?

    Night Blooming Cereus

Maybe the moon or pieces of it, 

with gilded edge to contain it. 

Maybe just some breath,

the desert's prayer of gratitude

for a season of

abundant rain or maybe

the sudden opening into darkness

a question,

an urgency from another

of those many things that grows

most beautiful right before it dies;

this the branding of night by

something more ephemeral, some

brief satiny blaze that

yields itself to the morning

having found what I have found

in that same mood:

the desert wind is always

whispering its indigo secrets

but it never says

the same thing twice.

Christari Jay

Flower for the Day DayLily II 6-24-25

Just as amazing a the true lilies are the continuing day lilies. Since they

only live for a day there is a huge contest going on. The day lily plants have multiple buds AND 

the deer love to eat them which prevents them from blossoming. There are multiple buds but they are close together. Despite putting up physical obstructions against the deer and treating  them with foul tasting spray unfortunately the deer are winning. Yet beauty shows up.

Here are those that were able to bloom.

             DayLily Haiku

   stretching wide open -

   colors of every shade,

      for every eye.

Nikki -A girl and her garden.

stretching wide open -

colors of every shade,

for every eye.

Flower for the Day Lily II 6-23-25

It has been  an extraordinary year for lilies both oriental and asiatic.

Here is a feast for your eyes that speaks for itself - as the days get shorter.

         Lily - A Haiku

     White winter lily
     stolen on nigh of blossom
     sold with her body

   Caustic Camel

Flower for the Day Some Current Perennials

Here are some regulars that are flourishing this year.

Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella) - Gaillardia was an 18th century botanist while

pulchella is Latin for pretty. 

Their stalks are weak so if not staked these flowers can cover a large area.

They are drought resistant.

Lance-leaved Coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata). Its main other name is tickseed

describing the shape of its seeds.

Cleome houtteana is commonly known as spider flower, pink queen and grandfather's whiskers.

The flowers are purple, pink, or white, with four petals and six long stamens. In the fall

it produces multiple seeds which allow for yearly return.

CLEOME

---

         for Curt Hoffman(1945-1998)
 

So thick on the ground they look like weeds,
Cleome come up, it seems from every
Seed they sow.  Winter doesn't daunt them,
So in spring they're a small carpet spread
Between the daffodils, a soft, mild green.
Soon it's textured; some (part of some design)
Rising above the rest, so saving their lives.
Their stems grow thick as toothpicks, skewers,
Pencils, dowels over the long season.
Downy stem hairs coarsen, pricking careless hands.

All this noticing came after I'd planted
Them myself.  Before, they were only tall, feathery
Flowers in Curt's garden÷pink, shades of pink
From hot to pale to blush; elegant
Lacy globes of bloom, some a handspan full,
Small parachutes that kept opening upward,
Flowers for dreaming in, for cradling
The intricate airs, the light of the world,
And for starlight.              He taught me
The name÷clee-OH-may÷rounding the sound with
A kissing mouth, planting them
Part of the passionate universe.

Not a man's flower, you'd think, not phlox
Or hosta, or pungent marigold.
But Curt could surprise you that way.  Spiky
And strong-stemmed, he could bloom in a minute
With tenderness, hold out a delicate
Hand, invite you to dream.  Soft as petals,
His eyes would widen at the spaces his
Imagination held, the light cradled there.

My cleome came up on their own this year,
Some mixed in with the four-o-clocks,
Three in the sidewalk cracks.  One's pink, but I
Remember planting only white last year.
Likely that's accident, just seedy persistence,
Some way, through several seasons.  Or I'm just
Forgetful.
                        But maybe it's a gift
From that same passionate universe where my friend
Lives now, still teaching and naming and
Growing, at home in the surprising light.
 
 

Kathleen Mullen

Flower for the Day Some wild ones 6-18-25

Here are a few natives.

Slender yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis dillenii)

White clover (Trifolium repens)

Carolina horsenettle (Solanum carolinense) 

Carolina horse nettle is a perennial nightshade native ti the US. Other common names include radical weed, sand briar, bull nettle, tread softly, Apple of Sodom, devil's tomato  and wild tomato. The stem and undersides of larger leaf veins are covered with prickles. It is a noxious weed. It is especially despised weed by gardeners who hand-weed, as the prickles tend to penetrate the skin and then break off when the plant is grasped. The deep root also makes it difficult to remove.

The flowers have five petals and are usually white or purple with yellow centers, though there is a blue variant that resembles the tomato flower.

The Sweetness and the Sting - Two Poems

For my mother, walking in the woods at night
on the anniversary of my father's death

Unable to sleep with his silence,
she wanders through whispers
of nightshade. Horse nettles with
flowers of blue fire lie still
in the moonlight. These blooms
may kill her quietly or make her
believe she's in love – and
what is the difference?
This handful of bullets slips
easily into the chamber
that some call a heart.
She was an oak tree
for most of her life.
Tonight, she is a dandelion
blown apart by a wish.
Her memories – once photographs –
fall at her feet like confetti.

—–

Beautiful and potentially deadly, Carolina horse-nettle
can be used as a poison, a medicine, or an aphrodisiac.

Strata
-Excerpts from an Arizona orchard

1
Six days into spring and I am sitting in the kitchen
tending tins of dirt in the oven. Two hundred
and twenty degrees Fahrenheit bakes the last of the
rain from the soil we took from the orchard.
Our experiment asks: how much water is gone,
and long how can we live with what's left?
I'm falling in love with the warm earth. I want to sift it
like a powdered sugar into my father's fresh grave.
I want to fashion a blanket for him from strata gathered
with care and cradled for days in banana bread tins.
Sweetness we never knew how to give to the living.

2
There is much to be discovered.
I don't cry, but sometimes hives appear
above my heart. I fall asleep dreaming
of bees, carrying our memories
from tree to tree, humming love, bearing
more fruit than our thin limbs can hold.

3
We long for the nectar.
We live with the sting.

4
Out of the oven, the earth is sometimes
powder, sometimes clay, always on the verge
of crumbling. We bake away more water.
How carefully we measure what is lost.

5
We are not stars; we are the offspring
of organic hearts – salt of the earth, old
as dirt. Seeds in search of fertile ground.

6
Back in the field, our lungs fill with light.
We want to be essential as the earthworm
that breathes through its skin.

7
One day, my father will come up for air.
He will be trees, peaches, pistachios,
drinking from the mouths of bees.

8
And so we sit with incubators in our kitchen.
We learn from dirt how to hold rain for days,
no matter the heat, or the darkness.
We document the weight, the density
of our desire to drink our fill. We teach
the orchard keepers what is needed –
when to flood the fields and when
to say, enough. We sanctify our hands
to hold the sacred rite of watering our fathers.

Stacey  Forbes

Flower for the Day Common Mullein 6-17-25

The common mullein  (Verbascum thapsis) is a real eye catcher. It is a tall hairy biennial with small

yellow flowers densely packed on an impressive stem  and which grows from a large rosette of leaves. Its a plant and flower that you expect to do something but never does.

Flowers are pentamerous with  five stamen, a five-lobed calyx tube, and a five-petalled bright yellow corolla. Flowering lasts up to three months from early to late summer (June to August in northern Europe), with flowering starting at the bottom of the spike and progressing irregularly upward; each flower opens for part of a day and only a few open at the same time around the stem.

Great Mullen

One leaves his leaves at home
being a mullen and sends up a lighthouse
to peer from: I will have my way,
yellow—A mast with a lantern, ten
fifty, a hundred, smaller and smaller
as they grow more—Liar, liar, liar!
You come from her! I can smell her-kiss
on your clothes. Ha! you come to me,
you, I am a point of dew on a grass-stem.
Why are you sending heat down on me
from your lantern?—You are cowdung, a
dead stick with the bark off. She is
squirting on us both. She has has her
hand on you!—well?—She has defiled
ME.—Your leaves are dull, thick
and hairy.—Every hair on my body will
hold you off from me. You are a
dungcake, birdlime on a fencerail.—
I love you, straight, yellow
finger of God pointing to—her!
Liar, broken weed, dungcake, you have—
I am a cricket waving his antennae
and you are high, grey and straight. Ha!

William Carlos Williams

Flower for the Day Hydrangea 6-16-25

It has been a fabulous year for growth in the gardens. This hydrangea  sometimes does not even bloom. This year it

is blooming wildly and in several colors. Hydrangea is from the Greek for 'water vessel'.

Hydrangea flower color can change based on the pH in soil. Soil with a pH of 5.5 or lower will produce blue flowers, a pH of 6.5 or higher will produce pink hydrangeas, and soil in between 5.5 and 6.5 will have purple hydrangeas. The color saturation is genetically predetermined. In most species, the flowers are white. In some they can be blue, red, or purple.  Floral color change occurs due to the availability of aluminum ions, a variable which itself depends upon the soil pH.

The flowers are fluffy and delicate.

This plant blooms yearly and is white only.

And this little one is over 15 years old. It seldom blooms because the deer eat its leaves for salad.

With the rain this year the plant has been left alone and is thriving.

          Hydrangea

          Bloom and Buddha

          Calm in the rain

         Basho

Flower for the Day Day Lilly 6-13-25

On this full moon Friday the thirteenth the day lillies (Hemerocallis) are in bloom.  Hemerocallis are not true lillies.

They are herbaceous clump-forming perennials growing from rhizomes. They have a fibrous-tuberous root system with contractile roots.  The large showy flowers are produced on scapes. The slightly irregular shaped flowers are arranged in helicoid cymes. Hemerocallis flowers have three similar petals and three sepals, collectively called tepals, and each have a midrib.. The centermost part of the flower, called the throat, may be a different color than the more distal areas of the tepals. Each flower has six stamens joined to the perianth tube, each with a two-lobed anther. The unequal stamen filaments are curved upward with the linear-oblong anthers. 

Hemerocallis means beautiful for a day in Greek, blooming for one day and then dying. 

           The Day Lilly

 The magnificent perianths
Of the Day Lilies with their six
Spreading bright orange arms (funnel-formed)
Fixed in their clustered colonies
Absent of any luring scent
Still attracts the bees
And the poets aesthetic eyes.
Oblique, penetrating sunrays
Shine through the high canopied trees
Directly onto their blossoms
Seemingly glowing like embers
In a campers dying campfire;
And not unlike the fire, remain
Briefly beautiful and then die.

Albert Ahearn

Fwd: Flower for the Day Opium Poppy 6-12-25

Begin forwarded message:

From: Don Sessions <donsessions@aol.com>

Subject: Flower for the Day Opium Poppy 6-12-25

Date: June 12, 2025 at 9:12:39 AM CDT

Opium poppy (Paaver somniferous) is a flowering plant in the Papaveraceae family. It has not been simple 

for me to grow these perennials but transplanting the plant seems to work the best.The plant has a greyish-green color

and the stem and leaves bear a sparse distribution of coarse hairs. The large leaves are lobed, the upper stem leaves clasping the stem, the lowest leaves with a short petiole.

The flowers have four  mauve petals, sometimes with dark markings at the base. Once bloomed

the flowers last only a day or two as the petals fall silently.

The Red Poppy

The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.

Louise Gluck