As I was racing down the winding country road to meet up with Squire at the truckstop to bring him forgotten items for his week (he always leaves or forgets something ) I was looking at all the flowers that lined the roads as I drove past them and started "picking" them just to see what the bouquet would have in it. Here's the box of crayons bouquet I came up with. Get a gallon Mason jar and put some water and an aspirin and a teaspoon of sugar in the water with a spoon of bleach and put them in as I hand them to you................
Queen Anne's lace. (there's the white crayon) Ditch daylilies (there's one orange) in tight stances against the sides of the ditches peering up at the cars passing them Butterfly weed in puddles (there's red-orange) that made me want to come to a screeching stop and dig them up.....they NEVER dig up!!!
Chicory (there's the blue crayon) in ridiculous bushes just packed with flowers because they'd been mowed a few weeks back and were now up to two foot from the nourishing rains and lightening over the last two weeks. Black-eyed Susan's (there's the yellow orange) in groups like high school girls in a mall, tittering and giggling and whispering about the boys A soft lavender pom pom like wildflower that is all ferny and fuzzy leafed that I adore and know not what it's name, so I've dubbed it roadside dingleballs (there's lavender)
Wild sweet peas (there's the pink, purple and soft white) that waif the fragrances of older strains that have seeded wild from generations of being left alone.
White daisies with yellow eyes (there's another white with a hint of yellow) a new flush of them everywhere from early blooming parents that seeded and with the heat and rain, grew like fast forward on a movie. Yellow cinquefoil (there's a butter yellow) like sleepy little drops of moon in the daytime.
Roadside poppies (there's the red) tattered and brown parents, there are stragglers come up far away from the medians when the winds flung the fine seeds as far as it could and they sprung up along the sides of the asphalt and are blooming now unlike their parents who bloomed a few weeks back.
We've got quite a large bouquet there, so it might take another gallon Mason jar to hold them all. That looks pretty nice, doncha think? For green we'll use the ferny stalks of the Swamp sunflower that are just now about three foot tall or so. And for filler, we'll tuck in some Johnson grass that is already tasseling from the mound of dumped soil near the interstate.
Ooops, there's a golden coreopsis I missed before, quick, get the knife back out and cut a few of those. That makes a nice warm, yellow to add to the bouquet. Be sure to leave some blossoms so they'll reseed for next year as they're volunteers from the sowings of the wildflowers in the medians.
Now doesn't that look like an early Summer bouquet? With exception to brown and black, I think we gathered that box of crayon's bouquet pretty good for a quick run to cover Squire and his forgotten stuff. The trip shouldn't have been a total loss, eh?
madgardener, up on the ridge, back in Fairy Holler, overlooking English Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36