My backyard this year has been an unending source of delight.

I’m not an avid gardener, far from it, so everything in my backyard has to do well by itself. I think of it as a form of tough love. What this translates into is many natives, a few that we’ve planted and many that find their way in.

We do have a few landscape plantings and a particularly beautiful specimen of Mexican Buckeye (Ungnadia speciosa) just outside our bedroom window. The plant is about 6 feet tall and about 4 feet in diameter. It’s got a great round form. Right now it’s covered in green foliage but earlier this year, before it leafed out, it was covered in many pink flowers. The flowers have four petals but they’re not evenly distributed. The long filaments seem to arc toward the ground before turning back up, topped by a shiny little red or black knob. I think they look amazing.

Mexican Buckeye Flowers

Here’s an example of a native plant that just moved in to the backyard, or perhaps it’s always been there. It’s a Wild Garlic (Allium canadense), or that’s my best guess. The plants grow in fairly thick bunches and have tiny pink or white flowers. These are covered in tiny raindrops.

Wild Garlic

Finally, here’s a photo of something. I have no idea what it is. It’s a low-growing ground cover and by anyone’s definition, it’s just a weed, but I think it looked beautiful in the rain and that it would look very nice in black and white. What do you think?

Just Weeds