I love to garden in the evening. It’s cooler and the sun isn’t beating down. Tonight, while planting a couple of zagreb coreopsis I saw my first lightening bugs. Sometimes we call them fireflies, but that’s only if we are in “serious” company. 🙂 They were lightenin’ bugs when I was a kid, and that is still the most comforting name for them. A friend once observed that they only glow when they are flying up. One year when we were scheduled to have a particularly spectacular display of meteor showers, I went with friends out into the country to observe them away from the clutter of town lights. We stopped first in a deserted parking lot about a mile away from the small town I lived in at the time. I looked up and for a moment thought I was seeing hundreds of falling stars. But it was just lightening bugs. When the stars did begin to fall, it was hard to believe that I had initially mistaken lightening bugs for meteors.
A pair of small hawks flew over the garden this evening and landed in a tree in the park. They chattered a bit, and then one flew back. At first I thought they might be screech owls. I hear one almost every night. I didn’t get a good look at them as they flew into the park. I realized they were small hawks when one flew back into the neighborhood. I’ll have to look up small Michigan hawks to see if I can tell what they were.
A friend did a little “guerrilla planting” in my yard this afternoon. He planted crocosmia and something else. It looks sort of like a geum, but he couldn’t remember the latin name, and I don’t remember what he said the common name was. I love crocosmia. It has such a vivid read flower.
As he was planting those in my garden, I was gathering more plants at a huge garden center in Allendale. I bought three zagreb coreopsis, three heathers, some coral bells, and some perennial salvia. I got something else, too, that is shade loving. It has an interesting leaf that I thought would go well with the hostas, but I can’t remember the name of the plant. I haven’t planted it yet, but as soon as it is in the ground I will bring the tag in and record it in my garden book.
I hope it rains tonight. Though we’ve had a lot of rain the garden is dry. Or, the new plants are dry, and so are the potted plants. I felt a few drops before I came in, but I watered pots and new plants just in case. The wind has picked up, though. I can hear it.
I must clean the fountain tomorrow. I miss its burble.
Garden 337 