Yellow Cheers!

Miraculously, we returned to an Evanston of cooler temps and real rain! I heard on the radio that the drought is still predicted to last through November, but you can see a noticeable difference on some plants. I was reminded of our recent trip to Sweden, with their coolest, rainiest summer in two decades. There the gray sky was enlivened by yellow flowers such as the four Mullein (Verbascium) above in a community-accessable garden near Stockholm (zone 6). This is a plant I love for its architect and contrasting gray leaf and yellow bloom, but even though it is hardy here in zone 5, it's been my experience that it does better in zone 6.

So yesterday I was delighted to find these towers of yellow in the client's garden below. She is really into native plants and most of the plants in this photo were here before we added some shrubs this spring. Her watering regime during this brutally hot & dry year was heroic, so the plants are not exhibiting much sign of drought. I did hear however, again on the radio from a meteorologist whose name I forget, that one consequence of temps above the mid-90s is that the plants stop photosynthesizing. The yellow wildflower is Cup Plant and it shares ground with common Milkweed (in the foreground) and Joe Pye Weed (purple mop-heads), all very attractant of butterflies and bees. The purple-leaved shrub in the middle is Ninebark and it is one of the plants which I noticed around that actually fared quite well during this year's drought.