Profusion of Purple

Purple has been my favorite color as long as I can remember—before I attended Kansas State; even before I attended school in Burlingame, KS, where the colors are purple and white. Family lore has it that even before I was five years old, whenever there was a family dinner at my paternal grandparents’ house, I requested the shiny purple aluminum drinking tumbler over the other colors in the set. 

I love purple!

Imagine my deep and utter disappointment, then, when I recently discovered “my” color is green. At least according to a highly scientific and reputable source: one of those quizzes that popped up on my Facebook timeline because one of my friends took the quiz and shared it. Even my aura is green!

But, my research into those Facebook quizzes to determine who or what I am, or was, or will be, is a subject for a future blog post.

Anyone who visits us this time of year will find a profusion of purple in our yard and garden. We have many varieties and shades of purple flowers as well as purple asparagus and a couple of salad greens that are partially or totally purple. Later in the summer, we will have eggplant.

The earliest purple flowers are usually the little violets that grow throughout the yard. I gather bouquets and display in a miniature vase in my kitchen window sill. Unfortunately, the idea for this blog post didn’t occur to me until the violets were finished blooming so I really had to hunt to find one to photograph.

The next blooms are vining vinca, a ground cover plant, then dame’s rocket, meadow sage and sweet william. Again, I almost missed the blooming season for sweet william. Earlier, our timber was full of it.

Vining Vinca

Dame's Rocket

Meadow Sage

Sweet William

No creeping phlox, you ask? How can this be? We’ve never had a good visible, sloping area for these, but now we do. Bill bought some this year and we will add more next year. 

Considered an invasive perennial by some people, our spiderwort bloomed this week. As long as it’s purple, it can invade! Larkspur also spreads readily. Ours has buds, but no blooms yet. This picture is from last year.

Spiderwort

Larkspur

Our early bulb flowers with purple blooms are hyacinths, tulips and allium. The purple tulips were history before I got pictures. To me, allium looks like dandelions gone to seed with purple fluff!  

Hyacinth

Allium

Six years ago when we moved to our current farm, I was sad to leave our gigantic snowball bush (hydrangea family) and a lilac bush that was finally about six feet tall and producing wonderfully fragrant blooms. We have a small lilac bush here, but it struggles and only produced a few blooms this year.

A couple of years ago, a friend who came out to see our iris pointed to a huge bush and asked, “Isn't that wisteria?” The bush itself wasn't wisteria, but there were cascading clumps of lavender/white flowers hanging from vines within the bush. We researched and found out they were, indeed, wisteria. I promptly named an opening in the row of bushes “Wisteria Lane,” after the street on the Sunday night television soap, “Desperate Housewives.” Does this, then, make me a “Desperate Farmwife”? Desperate for more wisteria, yes!

Last weekend, we visited friends in Meriden who host a showing of their extensive iris beds every spring. They also have other perennials. We brought home and Bill planted purple chives and columbine. The chives still have their heads; but Bill clipped off the columbine blooms, hoping the plants would survive the heat last week.

Purple Chives

Speaking of iris...

Next—Profusion of Purple Iris!