Nature Connection: Savoring Summer Flowers

Mornings are quieter these days, and even the sun is reluctant to rise as early as it did just a few short weeks ago. When it does, it is sometimes spectacular and sometimes rather calm and discrete.

The birds sing less, but the flowers are making up for the absence of song with their bountiful, beautiful blooms. Everywhere I turn I see masses of colors that make me swoon.

Flowers, like so many things in our lives, are sweet and fragile. They are here only briefly, and it is good to stop and appreciate them while we can. Although some bloom most of the summer, many only blossom for a fortnight or so. Like the bees and the hummingbirds, we must take them in while we can.

For many of us, flowers have specific memories or thoughts attached. Roses may delight us but also bring poignant remembrances. Phlox may bring back our grandmother’s voice while Queen Anne’s lace may solicit feelings of warmth and old-fashioned summer afternoons sitting on a porch shelling peas or snapping beans.

Back in the day, flowers were not only admired for their beauty but collected for other uses as well. Some were dried in bunches hanging in a cool place while others were cooked and strained to make tinctures and syrups to help soothe sore throats and subdue coughs as winter set in.

Flowers come before seeds, fruit, nuts or vegetables, being the reproductive organs of plants. If you want beach plums in late August, you hope for decent spring weather so the bees can do their part pollinating the flowers that bloom in May. The same is true in our vegetable gardens, whether we grow tomatoes, beans or corn.

Many flowers have whimsical, even mythical names. Queen Anne’s lace is supposedly called that because of the dark reddish dot in the middle of the blossom which is said to represent a drop of the queen’s blood when she was tatting the lace that made up the flower. Hens and chicks, a succulent that grows low to the ground and seems surrounded by its own young, is another fun plant. Black-eyed Susans got their common name from an old romantic ballad written to the poet’s beloved Susan with guess-what-colored eyes. 

There are bouncing Bets, star-like asters, and several plants that have breeches in their name due to their unusual appearance. There’s Jack-in-the-pulpit and honeysuckle and milkweed with its milky white sap.

Some names, especially those often associated with women, come from flowers. Perhaps you had a grandmother, aunt, or mother named Rose or Violet or Lily. There is Iris and Daisy and Camelia, too. I’m sure you can think of others.

Flowers have captured the human imagination throughout time, and it’s easy to see why. They are beautiful, mysterious and ethereal, blooming for only a week or two. Flowers were among the first plants that were brought into the home and home gardens for both their beauty and their various uses in teas, tinctures and medicines. 

Beyond their practical uses, flowers have been brought into homes for centuries just because they were lovely to look at. They also helped spaces smell better, especially before regular bathing and deodorant were common.

If you live near a meadow, now is the time to take a walk and enjoy the richness of our summer flowers. Fields are alive with flowers and pollinators. I know everyone is wary of ticks, and of course these areas can harbor ticks as well as a multitude of insects and spiders. Just be smart: wear long pants and sleeves, socks and shoes. Spray insect repellent before going into the field. That which kills ticks and mosquitoes also kills butterflies, beetles, ants and spiders, so please don’t spray standing next to a bunch of flowers. You want to keep them off you, not kill everything within spitting distance.

With August come the goldenrods and asters. Acorns and nuts will be growing, beach plums and rosa rugosa hips will be maturing, and grasses and sedges will be spreading their seeds along with our spring and early summer bloomers. 

Like many things in nature and in life, flowers don’t last for long. They are a great reminder to enjoy the little things each and every day, to literally stop and smell the roses while you can.

Flowers should be buzzing with insect activity right now, and if your flowers are not, you may want to figure out why. Did you spray pesticides or herbicides? Did your neighbor? Did you buy plants from big box stores that were pretreated with pesticides? Did you buy plants that have no local pollinators because they are cultivars, not native or local plants?

Many of us have cultivated annuals in our gardens as well as, hopefully, some native plants. Some of these do feed insects but are said to be more like junk food for them, not truly nutritious, so if we can slowly turn our gardens into more locally friendly flowers, that would be great for the environment and our pollinators.

In the meantime, just get outside and enjoy the many colors of the late July and early August landscape. It’s lovely and sweet and a way to connect with a huge swath of nature. Watch for butterflies, moths, dragonflies, damselflies, hummingbirds and even small birds like goldfinches which will visit many flowers looking for their seedheads.

Enjoy the flowers while we can. They’ll fade away soon enough.