Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No. Just as one can never learn how to paint. ~Picasso
The garden of circles is in its most colorful garb of the year and changes its appearance throughout the day as the light shifts and turns. 
Morning light brings an inner glow to new blooms, a luminescence seen at no other time of day and ephemeral in its passing. 
Evening lights up the hillside and creates shadows around the arbor gateway. 
People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and its ends, but to me it’s quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colors. Waxy yellows, cloud-spat blues. Murky darknesses. ~ Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
I’ve been experimenting with color themes for all of my years as a gardener, laying one color against another to create a gentle moment or a raucous party. July is the month of daylily bloom and the endless choice of flower color, patterns and shapes of the hemerocallis clan provides an opportunity to make visual music in the garden.
Sometimes the colors between two flowers are tender and lyrical, creating an evocative melody. (click on any image in the mosaic to see a full size photo)
Sometimes the darker tones rule, dramatic, mysterioso. “Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” ~Claude Monet
I drink purple in the morning and read on lime green. I sleep in smoky blues beneath burnt orange, and I eat in a yellow afterglow. My home is filled with the conversations of color. . . ~Ketzel Levine
What happens when purple meets yellow? Zing! or perhaps Sing! The grape and lemonade bed is in full chorus.
Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow. ~Kahlil Gibran
The peach and blue bed
Peach has always seemed to me as sweet as pink but with a little more attitude. Combine it with blue for even more pizazz, a romantic pas de deux.
The new rock walls on the hillside are filling in nicely. 
Plants displaced during its construction have settled in and are making lovely warm color combinations that subtly change each morning as the daylily blooms reconfigure themselves.
Each evening, Angel and I tour the garden, then go up the steps to the house for one more look. 
The view from the upper deck reveals the theme of circles in the garden, a visual rondo.
May your summer sing with the sounds and sights of joyful color.
Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul. ~Kandinsky
Each morning this week began with a walk through an ever-changing garden. Spring is building up to an astonishing crescendo of color and texture and growth, all laid against a ground of fresh green. The early dawn chorus of birdsong masks the ordinary noises of the world – robins, bluejays, cardinals, and red-tailed hawks zoom through the woods as they raise new families, argue over territory, and search for food. As I wander through the garden every day, the same song comes to mind. “Morning has broken like the first morning; blackbird has spoken like the first word.” Yes, each morning this week feels like the first morning, fresh, new, full of life.
Spring has arrived with great hesitation, or perhaps I only greet it this way. Warm days abruptly end in snow or frost, pouring rain soaks the ground and triggers green growth which is then stopped short by another deep freeze. I’ve never witnessed such extreme disruption in the garden. Although many of the early daffodil blooms hang to the ground in surrender, other growing things, especially ones native to this area, are coping with the dramatic and abrupt changes and reveal their beauty to the eye. I must admit to a deep uneasiness – will this scenario continue in the future as we grapple with climate change? How will the creatures who depend on pollen and other garden foods at crucial times cope or even survive? Here’s what the National Wildlife Federation has to say about 
Nevertheless, each day brings new growth and beauty. The hellebores continue to spring back after the worst conditions and a few sleepyheads are just beginning to bloom now. Bird song is a constant soundtrack to my journeys through the garden and a pair of robins follow me around as I expose the earth while digging up dandelion roots. The first blooms on the weeping cherry that survived sudden sub-zero temperatures are nuzzled by a native bee desperate for spring pollen. Tiny wind anemones and grape hyacinth bloom amid the warm rock walls. Foliage in shades of green and red rises up from the ground, displacing the last of the fallen oak leaves that blanketed the beds all winter. Now is the time for cleaning up the garden, trimming roses and shrubs, and planting seeds indoors in anticipation of summer. Prolific rains have created vernal pools and streams through the woods and spring peepers have been singing their high chweeps of courtship on warmer evenings.
The garden in August is as much a garden of creatures and sound as it is of flowers. As the flowering season comes to a crescendo, the garden becomes a “last chance buffet” for every creature gathering food stores for winter or for migration. The cicadas buzz in the woods throughout the day; in the evening, the frog chorus breaks out into pulsing serenades of courting. Bees of every size and shape buzz around the richest sources of pollen, butterflies flitter and float through the air and compete with the bees for flower landing space, hummingbirds visit every tubular flower for nectar. This is the time of the year that the gardener needs to step aside and enjoy a ringside seat to the panorama of life in the garden. Here’s a sample of the frog chorus at night. (Audio recorded and edited by Bill Purse)
Every garden is a work in progress and changes over time. I have been gently steering my garden toward one that supports winged life – this year it was certified as a Pollinator Friendly Garden through the 
composerinthegarden 