Alan Ilagan

This summer I was not good to our clematis plants. Normally I pamper them a bit – prune according to each plant’s wish and whim, mulch and keep their roots cool while providing sun and warmth from their feet up. With everything else we had going on this year, those bits of care fell by the wayside, and our clematis were left to fend for themselves.

A few weeks ago, the old-fashioned purple variety you see in these photos was looking so ragged (I hadn’t even bothered to stake it) that I cut all the dead, and living, vine off at the base, hoping the rootball would survive.

Apparently it has forgiven me, and made a bright spurt of growth, reblooming for the first time in its history. Though the blossoms are smaller, the color is just as true, and more welcome now than when it has to compete with every other blooming thing under the sun. Next year, my darling clem, I will be better to you.

This spectacular annual is best known as “Love-Lies-Bleeding”, which has always seemed a rather morbid name for a lovely flower (and completely inappropriate for its chartreuse cousin). It’s another late-summer/early-Fall bloomer that we usually catch in Ogunquit. That’s also where Dad got a few seed strings from the ancestors of these very plants. He’s been growing them ever since.

I haven’t had as much luck. I can work wonders in the garden, but starting seeds has always proved elusive, so I generally leave it to others. I’m better at dealing with plants when they’re a bit older and hardier. It’s not so different from the way I relate with people.

Bordering our pool is a patch of mint and rudbeckia that I do nothing for throughout the year. Both are so hardy, all I really attempt is to keep them within bounds, which seems to be the results of a rather harsh and indiscriminating early-Spring session of pulling them all out and allowing what remains to stay (hopefully) where it is.

It makes for an interesting way of gardening, but if you have a system that works, why mess with it because of unorthodox methods?

With all our beach time, we didn’t get a chance to walk the Marginal Way, so on Sunday morning I got up early and made the journey alone.

A sunny Sunday morning in mid-August by the sea is a gift, and I gleefully unwrapped it while traversing the Maine coastline. What can one say about such beauty? It is a balm for the most troubled soul, a respite from the most wretched ways of the world.

The first yellow light of the goldenrod was just coming into bloom. A sign of the coming Fall that always struck dread into my school-boy heart, followed by the asters and thistles beginning their late-summer glory.

On the shoreline, a city of rock towers, something we had never seen before this visit.

One of our favorite wedding gifts is a painting of these stones, and though we’ve been coming to Ogunquit for a decade, we have never seen them in evidence as they were this time – a painting come to life, a dream born into reality.

Along with the goldenrod, an abundance of Rosa rugosa rose hips, ripening into shades of orange, red, and maroon, lined the rocky coast, a few stray flowers still opening up and drifting their sweet scent in the salty ocean breeze.

I reached the last stretch of the Way far too soon, dwelling in a grove of junipers for a bit, not wanting to turn around and start the journey home.

{To Be Continued…}

The blaze of morning glories greets vacationers as we greet the day.

These aren’t your standard summer vines in soft, pastel hues – these are winding stems of flaming red mandevilla, day-glo thunbergia, and psychedelic morning glories that are a far cry from the subtle sky blue shade that is usually seen.

These are the flowers of Ogunquit, filling in every available space – from the ground below, from pots at knee-level, from window boxes at chest-height, and from hanging baskets above – they offer cheery bursts of color and form at every step.

Most of the ones pictured here are warm-weather annuals, or tropicals that only survive in the heat of summer. Given the way they grow and bloom, however, I may have to change my preference for perennials and fill our backyard with pots of some of these beauties next year.

They seem to know their life-cycle is a short one, going out in a colorful blaze of glory, putting out more and more blooms in the long-shot hope that one seed may survive the winter, may make it through to next year. And we get to reap the beautiful benefit of all that effort.

There is no happier sight than a flower lit with the sun of a summer day. It feeds the soul, stoking the heart and saving up a little bit of warmth for when the weather invariably turns.

{To Be Continued…}

Years ago, my brother and I had a summer friend whom we played with during the long stretch of sunny days. At his house, there was a garden border in the back overflowing with evening primrose, bee balm, and towering Heliopsis – a veritable heaven for the butterflies and bees.

There was one creature that baffled and frightened me, as much as it intrigued with its alien-like configuration. It was a ferocious-looking beast that flitted from flower to flower with a long pointed beak that seemed designed to puncture the skin of any boy caught sneaking up on it. It could almost have been mistaken for a hummingbird, such was the motion of its flitting and hovering, and the fast beating of its wings, but upon closer, and careful, examination, it was clear this was no bird, but an insect of some kind.

We watched from afar, approaching cautiously when it seemed safe, and scattering when it sensed our presence. I saw it a few times that summer, always in the monarda, and always instigating a fright with its immensity and long snout.

This week one visited the butterfly bush in my backyard. It turns out that it’s actually a hummingbird moth – or Snowberry Clearwing. Scientifically it’s called Hemaris thysbe. The “snout” that so scared me so many summers ago is simply an extended tongue of sorts – the proboscis – that unfurls when the moth is foraging for nectar.

The one in the photos here, and all of those that have visited my current garden, have been slightly more tame than the ones of my childhood, even allowing some photos and video to be taken of their time at the butterfly bush.