latest wildflowers

Too much rain! It created: 1. mud everywhere in our driveway, which 2. washed and eroded much dirt off of the already struggling slope that edges our lawn and once which was covered with St. Augustine and now is a few straggling runners, and 3. large 6-inch deep puddles that took a day to evaporate in our dog run. Which reminded me again how much drainage trouble my hard clay has.

In spite of the problems it caused, as usual everything responds to rain like crazy. My purple passionflower vine is about to explode. There are buds everywhere, just waiting to open and the various vines grow like a foot a day, it seems. I’ve realized now I’m going to have to keep it in check if all those fire ants and caterpillars don’t get to it first.

But the rain has definitely brought out a few mystery flowers. In my odd tiny little wildflower meadow, there are more Indian Blankets, which I love but now realize I may have sown too many. An obedient plant peeped out last week. And now this mystery patch of sage-smelling plants have finally bloomed: Lemon Balm. I had forgotten I sowed this, too, in my mad wildflower sowings last fall. It started to come up in late March, smelled like lemony sage, so I thought perhaps some herb had been sown there, and despite its weedy appearance, left it in, since there were tiny blue flax seedlings there as well. (Also another wildflower which I thought hadn’t germinated.)

I wasn’t drawn to lemon balm in the first place but back in October when I ordered a ton of seeds from the Native American Seed company I was sure to include lots of annuals so that I might have some feeling of success. It’s a bit ratty looking, and sprawling, but the flowers are cute and look a little like henbit, but smell nice.