On vacation, I went down to my brother's home to do some laundry. It's a quick and efficient operation there because there are clotheslines to hang the laundry to dry. When we got there in the late afternoon, it was 90° and the humidity was very low. In each load, the first clothes that I hung were dry by the time I was finished hanging the last. And the smell of fresh air in them is so nice.
Enough about mundane chores. I'm always excited to see what is thriving in Alan's garden. It's different every time, depending on the weather, frequency of irrigation, and temperatures. The basket of gold, Centaurea macrocephala, was a clear winner this time. A wide variety of wasps and bees were relishing the pollen and nectar, rare in this very dry year.
When the golden florets are gone, the ornate bracts surrounding the flower head remain. They really do look like baskets. I remember growing these in trial cut flower plots when I was working on my masters. I don't remember that they were all that popular, I think because we all tend to want to look at refreshing blues and crisp whites when confronted with summer heat. But these do have a clean yellow appeal.
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