Alan Ilagan

This is the butterfly bush ~ Buddleia ~ which just started coming into bloom this week in the middle of all the heat and humidity. The specimen seen here – the only one currently in our yard – is a pink version. Purple is the more common color among butterfly bushes, and this lighter strain seems to have given up some of its butterfly-drawing power in exchange for the rarer shade. I say that because the traditional purple form seems to have many more visitors. Don’t get me wrong – ours attracts a decent number of butterflies and bees and moths – I’ve just seen others that actually bring in swarms of flying friends.

Being that this one is right by the pool, however, I suppose its lighter drawing power is a blessing. I’ve fallen in trying to avoid insects that mistake me for a landing pad.

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.

By all informed assumptions, and my own admittedly grand expectations, today’s high sunny weather and soaring temperatures, coupled with a day off from work and a pool that Andy had the foresight to keep heated, should have been a gorgeous repeat of this past summer’s best days. And while it was a beauty I forgot the wise words of a woman who knows all too well that, “You can never do the same thing twice, no matter how fierce.”

The air is hot and the sun is high in the sky. The sky – not piercing blue, but blue enough – has only the slightest wisps of clouds in it. A breeze rustles the tall plumes of the maiden grass and the spent seed-headed stalks of the cup plant. There is a monarch butterfly momentarily trapped beneath the bright awning, but soon it escapes. The sweet perfume of Autumn clematis carries around the corner of the house, and I pull the soaring umbrels of a seven sons flower closer to my nose, breathing in the not-so-subtle fragrance. “Autumn Joy” sedum provides a last bit of color, and the roses are still hanging on, Knock-outs indeed. For all of this, something is missing, because something is over.

Along with all the beauty that remains, there are signs of the impending winter. The lack of rain has many of the plants and shrubs wilting – the same look after a killing frost, and just as unexpectedly sad. Though the temperatures are in the 80’s, it is apparent that it’s not summer anymore. The grasses have gone to seed – the Northern sea oats, once so fresh and green have ripened into shades of rust and tan. All of the ferns have withered and shriveled in the dry heat, brittle and brown like gnarled old hands clutching rosary beads, and the peonies went all powdery and faded weeks ago.

The garden – like the backyard – is a different place to be. Even reclining on a lawn chair and reading in the heat of the sun is different now, and I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s the same feeling I get whenever I go back to some place that has held special meaning for me. The site of a cherished friend’s wedding, the hotel lobby that formed a meeting hub for a fantastic vacation, the street where I once held hands with my boyfriend – if ever I revisit them, there is an emptiness there, a disappointing hollowness, and they only end up being a shell of what they once were.

On bad days, it feels like life is nothing more than a sad recreation of everything good that came before, and a rather sorry one at that. Today was not that bad of a day, but when I put something like Summer to bed, I don’t want to be awakened in the middle of the night for a glass of water.

Tomorrow, I am off to Boston…

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.

At this time of the year, it’s difficult to find floral fragrance in the garden. Fall is mostly about the smell of the earth, the dried leaves and pine needles, always more pungent than sweet. There are, however, a few plants and trees that offer one final whiff of sweet perfume, starting with this seven sons flower – Heptacodium miconioides.

It is also less-commonly referred to as the Autumn lilac – a name I love for its Spring-like connotation. The fragrance of the seven sons flower is indeed sweet, if a little lighter and less pervasive than a lilac – but on slightly breezy days it can carry on the wind.

When caught, the scent is always a surprise – the flowers are so unassuming (these are extreme close-ups), and you simply don’t expect this sort of fragrance in the garden right now. Also of note is the graceful yet rustic way its bark peels. The trees I have are about three years old, and this magical process is just starting on them. The mottled bark that is revealed is the main reason this plant caught my eye at the nursery.

One final note of whimsy – the bees absolutely love these flowers,  but instead of inducing a frenzy, the blossoms seem to get them drunk, to the point where they are literally falling over themselves in mid-air, stumbling from bloom to bloom in a sedated state of giddiness. You can’t help but love a plant that offers beauty, fragrance, bark, and intoxication.

The under-utilized garden plant seen here, Caryopteris - commonly known as bluebeard, is just coming into its own this week. It is one of the last plants to bloom, and it provides a sorely-lacking bolt of blue (since the hydrangeas didn’t get enough acid in their soil and went on the side of pink this year).

This particular plant was a self-seeded start-up, and though it wasn’t exactly where I wanted it, it’s my tendency to leave self-seeders where they come up. Sometimes we don’t get to choose the way the universe works, or where it puts its plants – but you just have to let it go, and trust that whatever’s meant to be will be.