Choose Your Color

Do you like white, purple or pink? Beautiful gems of the garden...perhaps a little diamonds, amethyst, or rose quartz. These dwarf Mexican petunias shine and sparkle in the sunlight.

"Coffee. Garden. Coffee. 

Does a good morning need anything else?"

~Betsy Cañas Garmon

Yellow Bells Ringing

Definitely grabbing some seed pods off of this plant this time. They bloom all the time. May not be yellow roses, but Texas Yellow Bells are just as beautiful. O.K. they don't have a wonderfully fragrant smell, but there are no thorns.

"The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs toward him." 

~Auguste Rodin

Rose of Lela

My grandmother always had these blooming in her garden. And where ever she was living there would be a bush by the porch, near the driveway, along a path or lining the backyard. They were her babies. I remember spending one of her last summers looking at her beautiful Althea bushes. Pink, white, lilac...she had them all, and photographing them was a wonderful experience. Of course maybe it was just spending time with Grandma. She loved to talk...well...tell stories. These flowers still tell a story. Only the world calls them Rose of Sharon....I call them Rose of Lela. 

"I will be the gladdest thing

Under the sun!

I will touch a hundred flowers

And not pick one."

~Edna St. Vincent Millay

Afternoon of Dragonflies

These were the few that would stop for a moment and let me capture their good side. Most of the dragonflies are buzzing me at about 25mph. Little bombers after their targets. So glad they like mosquitoes. Natures little bug zappers. And they really do sound like a zapper going off. One day I will get a photograph of that enormous fat one. He looks like a CH-47F Chinook trying to get off the ground with a full payload.

                                 

"Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly

Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:

So this winged hour is dropped to us from above.

Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

This close-companioned inarticulate hour

When two-fold silence was the song of love."

~Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Little Pink Flowers

Little pink flowers embraced in purple leaves. They are tiny and delicate beauties floating in the breeze. This small blossom fills the entire frame and begs to be photographed. Beautiful...Colorful...like every creation of life. Simply a miracle of intelligent design!

"Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, 

and forgot to put a soul into."

~Henry Beecher, 1858

Blue Mistflower

First small blooms of the mistflower have arrived in the butterfly garden. Fall is approaching. Hopefully this will lure a few more butterflies into the garden. It has been rather sparse.

"Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made

By singing: 'Oh, how beautiful!' and sitting in the shade."

~Rudyard Kipling

Peacock Lily

Beautiful eyes dot these delicate petals. 

The blooms sit a top towering stalks that sway in the summer breeze.

Shades of cream and yellow wave swiftly in the wind. 

Elegant shapes and patterns glow while butterflies hover, and nectar they tend.

"Tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes!"

~William Wordsworth