What's Blooming Now

It's a rainy day today, an unusual occurrence in the desert, but it does happen. Temperatures fall, smells come alive, flower colors are richer, and plants get weighted by moisture. It's a nice treat.

Ceanothus 'Gloire de Versaille' opened a few puffs of flowers, but I'm not impressed. The flowers are such a pale faded blue that they don't show well. Perhaps in a wetter climate where the plants will have a green background and the light is softer, the color would be better. I think that for a blue flowered shrub I'd rather have a Caryopteris. We'll see if it survives the winter, then how it blooms next year.

For contrast, the C. caeruleus seedling is still blooming, even setting seeds. The flowers are a much brighter blue, and the leaves are a nice glossy green.

This is a self sown seedling of agastache, and although one of the parents is A. cana, the other parent is likely to be A. 'Firebird'. Although I complained that it faded in the July/August sun, now that September is here, the colors are brighter. The rain makes it droop.

Here is Salvia pitcheri with a background of Agastache 'Ava' (the one that survived). Although most of August had a lackluster showing by Ava, it is starting to shine.

An agastache seedling came up in front of 'Ava' (A. cana x A. baberi) this year. I'm assuming that 'Ava' is the parent. It has a bit more orange to the flowers. In the photo, you see it as a single spike in front of 'Ava'.

This dianthus was sold to me as 'Firewitch' but the flowers are not the vibrant magenta that 'Firewitch' is known for. Could it be the sun? Or was it mislabeled? More likely mislabeled, since the other 'Firewitch' in my planting has put out a single flower which is of the expected color. Whichever it is, it is blooming right now, which is more than I can say about the other dianthus in my collection.