Dog days already. The peonies went from lush to louche in less than a fortnight. These days, all I need for my impression of Albert Brooks in Broadcast News is to step outside and stand stockstill.
Just before the sun sets, the duskglow of the garden takes on a sepia-toned cast from the sodden, humid air, like a historical flashback in an artsy movie, or a fugue state. Pinks, yellows, reds, grays and blues buzz through the haze like old neon light fixtures.
The other night, my husband was out in a stretch of the back border sequenced in jewel-toned 'Caradonna' salvia, yellow coreopsis, purple-bronze sedum, red-to-yellow blanketflower, magenta petunia, lemon yellow 'Happy Returns' daylily, pale blue catmint, this meadow buttercup, sunshine orange calendula, and blue-purple 'May Night' salvia. He was stopped at one spot, looking at the buttercup, and then the salvia, and then back and forth again. Look, he said. See how the blue looks after you stare at the yellow. He was right. In daylight, 'May Night' is pretty much a plain blue salvia, without the pizzazz of 'Caradonna' or the subtlety of 'Blue Hill', but it turned electric in that light with our little gaze-shifting exercise.
Which all brings to mind this from Gertrude Jekyll, the first and last word on color in the garden:
Each portion now becomes a picture in itself, and every one is of such a colouring that it best prepares the eye, in accordance with natural law, for what is to follow. Standing for a few moments before the end-most region of grey and blue, and saturating the eye to its utmost capacity with these colours, it passes with extraordinary avidity to the succeeding yellows. These intermingle in a pleasant harmony with the reds and scarlets, blood-reds and clarets, and then lead again to yellows. Now the eye has again become saturated, this time with the rich colouring, and has therefore, by the law of complementary colour, acquired a strong appetite for the greys and purples. These therefore assume an appearance of brilliancy that they would not have had without the preparation provided by their recently received complementary colour.
Gertrude Jekyll, The Gardener's Essential Gertrude Jekyll (selected and with an introduction by Elizabeth Lawrence). David R. Godine, 2000. ISBN 0-87923-599-3.
Newly blooming: Ratibida columnaris (Mexican hat), Alcea rosea (pastel hollyhocks), David Austin rose 'Bibi Maizoon', Monarda didyma 'Jacob Kline', Hemerocallis 'Happy Returns' (daylily), Clarkia unguiculata (mountain garland), Linum grandiflorum (red flax, self-sown), Zinnia tenuifolia 'Red Spider' (self-sown), Nicotiana langsdorfii (green flowering tobacco, self-sown), Phlox paniculata (pink and 'Bright Eyes'), Asclepias tuberosa (white butterfly milkweed), Cichorium intybus (chicory), Aconitum (white monkshood), Heliopsis helanthiodes (false sunflower), Echinacea purpurea (white coneflower), Prunella grandiflora (selfheal).
Thank you for taking me into your garden. It is a lovely place.
Posted by: Patry | June 30, 2005 at 09:22 PM
Welcome, Patry, and thank you for your kind compliments.
Posted by: Chan S. | July 05, 2005 at 11:24 PM