It’s so wonderful to just walk around the garden and observe, and even more so when I have a camera in my hand. Somehow the camera gets me to stop and look more closely and appreciate the beauty of my native plants in a new way. So, I thought I would show you some of my favorites from late June.

This is the Virginia sweetspire (Itea virginiana) that I was worried about in April because it wasn’t showing any leaf buds yet. I guess I was impatient, as it came through beautifully. I took this picture through a stand of volunteer wild daisies that grew two feet in just 10 days.

Not everything that is beautiful is a flower! This is the new growth of a red maple sapling (Acer rubrum), taken the morning after one of our happily frequent rains. In just a few years, the stems on those tiny red leaves will be two of the main branches of the tree. You can see another bud forming between the small leaves – that will continue the main stem.

That same morning, another woody plant with reddish new growth. This is the native witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), which unlike most other witch hazels, blooms in November.

A gardening friend once saw this plant and told me that he always called it a “firecracker plant”, and ever since that is what I think when I see this bloom. It is actually a goatsbeard (Asarum canadense). I’m trying to grow a stand of them in a shady corner, and the stand is coming along, but this bloom is the best.

I can’t say I’ve ever paid much attention to the flowers of the inkberry (Ilex glabra ‘Densa”), but aren’t they precious when you get up close? Later this summer there will be dark blue-black berries until the birds swoop in.

Care to guess what this one is? Hint: It’s the signature plant we grow at the Mayo House in downtown Chatham. These are the flower buds of the butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), caught just as they are getting ready to open up. Such interesting sculptural shapes. Next week the meadow will be covered in orange!