Tag Archives: crape myrtles

Favorite trees of summer

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Woweee – it’s hot here. After a cooler and wetter than usual season, the summer heat and humidity have finally arrived.

I’ve struggled to run all week. It doesn’t matter how early I get up to run. If I get up before the sun, it’s more humid. If I wait until the sun rises, the humidity starts to drop a little, but then there’s the blasting heat of the sun to contend with.

That’s why I especially love and appreciate trees during the summer: their glorious shade. I can wait for the sun to come up and then run a mostly shaded route. The shade keeps me from getting burned and provides good resting spots so I can catch my breath.

While I’ve been appreciating the shade that trees offer, I have also been thinking about the beautiful and delicious offerings trees give us in summer.

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My favorite summer fruit from a tree

Of all the summer fruit, I love peaches the best. When I was little, we loaded up on peaches when we visited my great aunts each summer, and Mom would make an amazing peach cobbler with some and can the rest to last until the following summer. This has spoiled me to the point that I cannot eat store-bought canned peaches. But I do love eating them fresh during summer. I don’t even bother to peel their fuzzy skin.

In the beauty category, nothing tops the showy display of crape myrtles. I realized just yesterday that all of a sudden (at least, it seems sudden to me), the crape myrtles have flowered. The young tree in my front yard hasn’t bloomed just yet, but I drove over to one of my favorite streets in the city to take a few pictures of the crape myrtles in bloom there:

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One of my favorite streets near where I live

It’s a narrow, twisty street, with cars usually parked on both sides. So drivers have to be polite to one another and let one car at a time go through the space between the cars (for the most part, drivers are respectful of one another while navigating this road; it’s a free-for-all again on connecting roads). The crape myrtles that adorn the street, though, make it worth the slow drive.

The trees on this particular stretch of the road are mostly dark pink, but I found one darker red one in bloom among the pink.

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Red crape myrtle blooms among the mostly pink trees

The largest crape myrtles, like the one below, offer not just beautiful color but also a canopy of shade against the scorching sun.

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What summer trees do you love best, and is it for their beauty or for their fruit?

Surprises in the garden

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“I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow.” – David Hobson

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I was at the hardware store this past weekend and overheard two men talking. One had come across a snake in his garden and was buying something (poison? trap? I didn’t look at what he was holding) to get rid of the snake. The other told him if it was a black snake, then he should leave it alone. He went on to say,”If you ever see a black snake out along the roadside, put him in the car and take him home with you.” Ugh.

I know he speaks some truth. Black snakes are supposedly your best friend when it comes to keeping poisonous snakes away from your yard. I just … well … I just don’t like snakes at all. I know they exist, but I prefer never to see them in my garden or along my running path or even behind glass in a cage at the nature museum.

My husband and I commented again about the two men’s conversation when we saw a large black snake on the other side of the road as we were out driving a few days later. Our dog was in the back of the car, and we envisioned the total chaos that would have ensued had we stopped and tossed the snake in with the dog to take home. I’m not sure who would have fared worse: the snake, our dog, the car or us. Again, ugh.

So I’m glad that I’ve only had pleasant surprises in my garden this past week, and I wanted to share some of them with you. I promise: there are no scary critters involved.

First was a calla lily in bloom. A dear friend of mine carried a bouquet of orange calla lilies at her wedding, and ever since, I associate these flowers with her. As I was planning out a new backyard garden spot a few years ago, I knew I wanted to put in some calla lilies. I have been disappointed each year as the huge, green leaves came up but never any blooms. And then this, as we officially entered summer:

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I noticed a spot of yellow from my kitchen window and went running outside to see if my eyes were playing tricks on me.

I guess it’s simple things like this that delight my soul. The bloom has lasted for days now, and others have joined it to add beauty to my orange and yellow garden patch.

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A calla lily bloom heralds the start of summer

The second surprise showed up in my front yard at about the same time. A Lady Baltimore hibiscus (one my longtime readers may remember from a post two summers ago) came up this summer as a double stalk instead of just the single one that has been coming up for several years now.  Continue reading →

Springing forward

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The expression “Spring forward” has always bemused me. I’m not a person who leaps from bed each morning ready to greet the day with enthusiasm and energy. So I always find this first week after we change our clocks to be a troubling one. On the one hand, I’m thrilled that it stays light later. But I definitely don’t enjoy having lost the light in the morning or the feeling that it’s going to take me another month to catch up on that lost hour of sleep. “Spring forward” no doubt is supposed to connote cheerfulness and pep and maybe even dancing through meadows of wild flowers, none of which I want to do at what my body feels like is an hour earlier than my eyes should be open.

What does energize me about this week, though, are the flowers and trees that are blooming. Check out the view I get to see these days as I go about my day:

Continue reading →