Nature Friday ~ June 17, 2022

Greetings, nature lovers! Elsa here with this week’s gander at some of what nature dished out this week. We’re joining those Land of Enchantment cuties, Rosy, Sunny and Jakey from LLB in Our Backyard with their weekly Nature Friday blog hop. Don’t forget to click on the link to see spots of nature from around Blogville.

Like many places across the country, the weather has been hot, hot, hot. As a pup gardener with a black coat, it’s been brutal. Mum has to walk us at the crack of dawn so me and my dolt of a brother don’t melt. He’s not a fan of the heat either and both of us suffered until mum could find someone to start up her rooftop evaporative cooler. We’re finally online now enjoying pleasant conditions indoors. Whew…those triple digits we’ve had were brutal. But apparently the garden seems to enjoy them which proves there’s no accounting for taste.

The most notable plant we encountered this week is the Mock Orange shrub. Mum goes nuts when this shrub starts blooming with its white flowers and their sweet, citrusy fragrance. Once it blooms it’s pretty unremarkable as shrubs go. Still, Norman is compelled to try and treat it like it’s a bulletin board by attempting to leave ‘messages’ to every 4-legged passerby in the ‘Hood. Mock orange has a soft texture not usually found in xeric shrubs with it’s oval-shaped leaves and billowy vase-shaped growth. It looks great in a perennial border in a naturalistic landscape and tolerates Colorado’s poor, heavy soil. It will even thrive in dry shade locations.

Next up on this week’s photo roll are the Smoke Bush shrubs that we see along our walking route in several spots. A deciduous shrub/small tree, it has beautiful purple-pink ‘smokey’ plumes with purplish leaves which turn a gorgeous shade of mahogany in the autumn.

A closeup below shows the trademark, flowering hairy clusters which bloom white flowers resembling smoke drifting in a breeze.

Smoke bush has an upright, multi-stemmed form that reaches about 12 ft. tall with either waxy green or purplish leaves. It is a moderately xeric shrub and prefers well draining soil.

Ice Plants throughout the neighborhood are exploding with color. I may be a scrappy Ninja but I still prefer the girlish, hot pink color. Check out this one that I see every day.

Closer to home, the cherry tomato mum planted just a couple of weeks ago is already beginning to produce even though it didn’t have a lot of flowers formed when she planted it. She hadn’t expected seeing tomatoes for another couple of weeks but they seem to love hot days and cool nights. She actually squealed out loud when she saw this little puppy. Mums can be so doggone embarrassing.

I certainly won’t eat any (blech on veggies other than green beans or broccoli) but it seems to make mum happy and as long as those hoodlum tree rats don’t try to filch any, I’m happy for her.

So what’s going on in your garden? Doing anything exciting this weekend? I’m taking a vacation from the brother where I can lounge around with all the toys while he and mum go visit her dad in southern Colorado for Father’s Day. Which reminds me, I hope all the dog daddies out there have a ‘pawsome’ Sunday with their families this weekend and hope a spot of nature is part of the celebration.

That’s it for me. This girl’s gotta go take a nap to digest breakfast. Make it a ‘wagnificent’ weekend. Signing out…your favorite neighborhood Ninja.

Live, love, bark! 🐾