If last spring’s peak bloom season was la vie en rose, this year is planted firmly in a volume of purple prose.
Chilly clear days punctuated by dreamy stretches of drizzle and rain have kept the soil moist and the colors in the garden cool, and every where I look, I see luscious shades of lavender, violet and blue.
Tender Corsican pansies and fragrant wild violets tumble over woody sun-bleached mulch. Perennial cornflower lifts its lacy blue whorls above mounds of fuzzy dark-green foliage. Even the inky here-and-gone- again lilacs seemed to hang on a day or week longer than usual.
Velvety iris, which typically melt away before they can show their true colors, put on a breathtaking show.
The stalwarts in clear blue and grape hardly warrant a second look in the wake of great impressionistic drifts of clear indigo fading to speckled white and shades of maroon draining into golden throats.
Varieties often stunted by life in the most arid garden zones have made the most of sidewalk runoff. Once quenched, they’ve grown tall, offering enormous amethyst blooms that barely require a head nod to catch a whiff of their sensuous perfume — proof that spring’s languid roll toward summer has been worth the wait. Dana Coffield, The Denver Post
