Monday morning garden stroll #8

If there’s a theme to today’s garden stroll, it’s this: Early morning sunlight on late night raindrops. A small but intense thunder-boomer skirted my neighborhood around midnight last night. Most of the rain passed to the north of me, but about a tenth-an-inch fell on the garden. Not much, but every little bit helps. And, this morning, those raindrops combined with dew to create a lovely show as the sun rose over the garden. Here’s how it all looked:

Beautiful, right? I just can’t get enough of how the early morning sunlight dusts everything with this magical golden light. Lovely.

It even makes the aphids on the gaura look like something desirable (they aren’t, but oh well):

Last year’s parsley might be my favorite, though. The plants are already golden-hued, because they are just about ready to expire (which means I’ll be harvesting parsley seed soon — yay!). Add the golden light of morning to the golden hue of aging parsley plants, and you get something that’s awfully close to magical:

The Culver’s root doesn’t disappoint:

Nor does the rosemary:

The ripening blueberries look like jewels in the early morning light:

I’m always especially taken with the asparagus in the morning. This wispy fronds hold the most delicate drops of dew, and the whole plant shimmers with a green-silver light. Wherever fairies live, I imagine this is what all their plants look like:

And, I know I shared some photos of the red cabbage and bloody dock last week. But, here they are again, below a dew-enhanced leaf on the leek plant:

Finally, there’s the purple coneflower. These are all one-year-old plants that I started from seed last spring. They didn’t do much last year, but they seem determined to make up for it now:

Oh, and that last photo? The one that’s looking straight down on the coneflower? Do you see how the little florets seem to radiate around in two spirals? How it looks like there’s a bit of a pattern there. Well, there’s a reason for that. There really is a pattern there: Coneflowers (and many other daisy-like blossoms) provide some of the best examples of the Fibonacci Sequence in nature. And, this is a great segue to today’s final announcement: In addition to this morning’s garden stroll, you’ll also find an Outlaw Garden post over at Math for Grownups today, where I’m the guest blogger for the day. Today’s Math for Grownups post is all about math in the garden, from geometry to Fibonacci. I hope you’ll check it out! And, don’t worry, there won’t be a quiz at the end.

And, that’s it for the week. How is your garden growing?

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Tagged as: monday morning, photo tour