THE LIFE OF A FLOWER

I have been enjoying the garden so much the past few weeks. It's sort of a sweet time in the garden for me as most of the plants have done (or are doing) what they are going to do, the weeds, although ever present, don't have a lot of places to grow and, thanks to a lot of rain, everything is looking pretty good. In fact anything that's looking shabby got that way because of slugs, and that's just a given with rain.

So I've been doing a lot of something I rarely do: Sitting in the garden. Mr. Much More Patient and I seem more intent than ever to soak in these glorious summer days while we can. Several times during the week we have a glass of wine on the patio. This is pretty much a required activity on the weekend, but in previous years we've not done it much on weekdays. This has allowed me to spend more than two weeks watching the same flower, just a couple feet away from where we sit.

I grew 'Crichton Honey' dahlias for the first time last year and stored the tubers over winter. It's a short-growing ball-type dahlia that blooms in a range of colors from yellow and apricot to coral and pink. I wish that some of those planted farther back in the garden wouldn't have been ravaged so badly by slugs.

I started taking a quick snapshot of this particular flower when it was just breaking bud. It was the first time I noticed how beautiful an opening dahlia bud is, like a fiery pincushion. I have taken pictures of this same flower as it got bigger and changed.

The last photo was taken this morning. Its petals are getting tattered—I blame that on slugs as well–and started to turn brown underneath. I have to say it's been fascinating documenting it.