Prospect Of Shade

Shade, we love it. It is cooling and pleasant to stand beneath the transpirating canopy, but it also completely changes the world beneath it. The Russian Zelkova trees planted by the city four years ago (has it been that long?) are fast growing and have forced the plants formerly in full sun to be on the move or die trying. Some, like the Phlox seem to relocate their young each year to the east, toward the gap in the trees. Others offer a slow decline, like the yarrow and some asters, where others reach, reach, reeaach as the lily, and some simply disappear like our perennial ageratum. We've moved what we can, having only so much sunny space in the side yard.

Not long ago this area baked under full sun in all four seasons.

New Dawn is known to tolerate some shade, but even our hardy specimen has less leaves than in previous years. It has bloomed, although less vigorously, but will need to be moved to a sunnier district in the Autumn. That will be a tough move for a plant with a thorny trunk the size of my arm.

Underneath the New Dawn, the Spirea. It too will need to move on.

Tickseed, Coreopsis, likes the sun and gets some, a couple of hours worth, as it resides in the shrinking gap between two Zelkovas.

As does my grandmother's tea, which has bloomed more than ever before, a feat for a plant in declining sun and over fifty years old.

And we couldn't live without its scent, which is bested only by the iris and maybe our lilies. But we've no place to relocate it for the next season and may just have to relocate ourselves so it may live on.