This is the busiest time of summer with putting food by for the winter and planting the fall garden as summer plants are ready to remove. Hiking the hills is not often on the schedule which leaves me finding wildflowers in different places.
In the Garden
Wild plants want to grow and gardens are ideal spots. Gardens have open, rich soil. Water arrives often. Competition is minimal as vegetables get harvested regularly.
My garden hosts a variety of wild plants such as chickweed, dead nettle, dock, English plantain, wayside speedwell, two morning glories, evening primrose, chicory, bulbous buttercup and daisy fleabane. There are others and some occasional visitors such as pokeweed.
A friend asked me about a plant in her garden with lovely orange flowers. It reminds me of a marigold, but is one of the bur marigolds. There are several, but most have tiny rays people often call petals. I have pictures and will identify it later.
Other Places
Finding wildflowers is mostly a matter of watching for them. I love driving with no one following me as I can go slowly and look over the plants along the roads. Wild sunflowers are blooming now and I’m looking for new ones.
Across from my friend’s house is a large pond. Her ducks moved over to it. Around it are several clumps of pink rose mallow.
I’m sure these clumps were planted there. However rose mallow, the white ones, grow wild in several places. There are wild pink ones down toward where the witch hazel I visited in the spring, but that takes a morning to go to.
The planted pink rose mallows will do as examples of a color variant. So I traipsed across the road. The mallow wasn’t the only wildflower there.
The Yerba de Tajo was one I’d found at ShawneeMac Lakes. The yellow one was new. I very much doubt it was planted there. That adds floating primrose to my Dent County Flora.
Most of my produce I’m saving is stuffed into my freezer now along with the extra roosters. Okra and one more package of chopped peppers will finish packing the freezers.
Once the fall garden is planted, maybe I can go back to hiking the hills finding wildflowers.
