I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music. ~Joan Miró 

The garden was lush and green in July and overflowing with colorful plants. Cool foggy mornings are a special joy, wrapping the garden in quiet. They create rich moments of saturated color that enspell me and often make me late for appointments, as I cannot bear to leave such a gift of beauty.

Color fills my sight at every step through the garden and I revel in it. Miró was right about color and music and poetry. Tone poems are the stuff of musical artistry and if I get it right, the whole garden becomes a tone poem, an artistic romance realized in the color and texture and juxtaposition of plants. And the fireflies add an extra magical note. Here’s a cinematic look at the garden in July, beginning with flowers and ending with fireflies.

Of course, poems and paintings and written music don’t really change over time, but the garden certainly does. It is more like a dance than a painting, perhaps starting awkwardly like a preadolescent but then coming into its own moment of time. I am constantly amazed how it can change overnight – new color, shifting light, some plants finishing their solos while others step forward.

Copper corner

Daylily ‘El Desperado’

Daylily ‘Persian Ruby’

The sounds of summer have changed as well. The birds are done raising their broods and their songs have given way to the constant hum of cicadas during the August days and the pulsing rhythms of katydids at night. The katydid songs in my midnight woods are captured in the audio clip below. 

I’ve been spending mornings on my upper deck lately. As the larger gardens gather their strength after a late summer haircut, I find joy in the color that is more constant in this little retreat tucked among the treetops. The winged ones find their way to this garden in the sky and the cherry tomatoes that thrive there are a delicious surprise at happy hour.

In spite of heat, drought, wild thunderstorms, and fog, this summer’s garden has been a joyful place to be. How is summer treating you?

All text, photos, and videos ©2025 Lynn Purse, All Rights Reserved except where noted