This is our first year in Estes Park. We have had large quantities of snow, and we have also had numerous days of rain. It hasn’t been the constant day-long rains some of you experience, but once the snow quit around June 5th, we have had a number of storms that produced thunder and lightning along with hail and good amounts of rain. The flowers have really been loving it and I wanted to bring to you a few flowers from my yard as well as many, many flowers I’ve been seeing as I wander around the neighborhood. In the future I’ll bring you a diary or two of the meadows of wildflowers to be found up in Rocky Mountain National Park. Today, though, I just wanted to show you the gardens for our house and our neighborhood.
First though, my inner courtyard. I didn’t do anything to plant in the courtyard this first summer. I wanted to see what would come up from pre-existing plantings. I had tried to grow columbine in Denver, but they just wouldn’t flourish. They are the state flower of Colorado, and I was happy to find them growing in this garden
In addition to the columbine, there are a few additional plants. My wife made me get rid of what she called weeds (everyone here knows that weeds are just plants growing in the wrong place, right?). One plant she has let me keep is a rhubarb. My sister will be visiting shortly and we’ll see what we can make from that.
There are a couple of additional flowering plants
as well as some Hen and Chicks that are growing on the outside of the walled sanctum.
Out there “in the wild” some of my neighbors have beautiful flowering gardens, a couple have lawns, but most leave the majority of the plant choice and placement to Mother Nature. Here, mostly without identification because I simply haven’t made the effort, are a variety of the wildflowers I (as well as the critters) have been enjoying:
I realize this wasn’t a diary with lots of words or thoughtful poetry, but if a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe these will suffice. Please feel free to share your thoughts and travel plans to Colorado and Estes Park so that I might properly greet you and maybe have the spare room made up.