Phlox grow along a fence in my backyard. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.
THE SWEET PERFUME of purple phlox drifts through the open window, scenting my office with summer. I glance outside, where the phlox sway in a wisp of an afternoon breeze above clusters of snowball hydrangea.
My flower gardens are a rangy mess of overgrown plants. Tangle of leaves and flowers and stems. Nothing neat about them. I like it that way.
Flower gardens have always been a part of who I am. Not that I am a master gardener. But I have always been an appreciator and grower of flowers, a love learned early on when every visit to my maternal great grandmother’s or paternal grandma’s houses started, in the summer, with a tour of the gardens. Flower and vegetable.
To this day, when I arrive at the home of a family member or a friend who gardens, I self-start a tour. I admire the blooms, dip my head toward scented petals, appreciate the sweeps of color, delight in the beauty that unfolds before me.
I shall always love flowers. They are memories, art which springs from the earth, bold bursts of color in a subdued landscape and the gift I give myself.
BONUS PHOTOS:
FYI: All of the flowers and plants, except the phlox, were photographed at my brother Brian and sister-in-law Vicki’s rural Lamberton, Minnesota, acreage in mid-summer.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
Love.
Thank you. I’m not surprised.
Do you know which ones of these are my favorites? I will give you one try. 🙂 Chris and I photographed a bunch of flowers yesterday in Pigsah National Forest and we are trying to plan what we are going to eventually do with landscaping at our new place. We want a bunch of native flowers but we are having a hard time figuring out what those yellow ones were we liked. There are a billion yellow flowers here it seems. Lovely post. Great start to my day. Thank you.
It’s always a good idea to plant native flowers as those are the ones that thrive. Here in Minnesota, coneflowers and black-eyed Susans are native flowers that I have planted and that do well. Good luck with your project.
Loving the Pops of Color and those planters are so COOL 🙂 Thanks for sharing and making my day – Happy Week – Enjoy!!!
Happy to start everyone’s morning off in a colorful way.
Beautiful flower pictures.
Thank you.
The colors – amazing!
Aren’t they? Maybe I should have saved these photos for late January.
Goooooooooorgeous!
Only if we could have them all. year. long! xx
Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
The flowers are just beautiful and how wonderful all of these flowers come from the one property. They really do look like summer has arrived xx
These photos were taken July Fourth weekend. Two months later and flowers are beginning to fade as autumn approaches.
Such a lovely bunch of flowers! My favorite… the 4th from the bottom. 🙂 I too love flowers my favorite being Zinnia’s. I usually have a vase with the fresh cut beauties every week.
Zinnias are my favorite also. I so wish I had planted them this year. But everything outside was basically neglected this summer, except for mowing the lawn.
There’s always next year, right 🙂
Absolutely. My main problem is having a sunny place to plant zinnias. Our single backyard tree and the adjoining woods shade my flower beds.
I always love your flower photos. The poppy especially!
Thank you, Gretchen.
Until I saw your note at the end, I was thinking, “wow, all those are still blooming in Minnesota?” We’re definitely on the downhill slide in terms of flowers here. Mums and asters are around the corner. In fact, my (new!) asters are already blooming.
Yes, I thought I better add that postscript lest anyone think we have an everlasting summer here in Minnesota. I should have published this a long time ago. But I have so much to write about that it got lost in the collection.