Thank Goodness for the Rain!

The garden, while full of spring greens, early flowers and new leaves, was starting to get a bit parched. We've had a week of no precipitation combined with very high UV levels. I was really surprised to see that some new varieties of Heuchera have shrivelled to bits of nothing.

The plant pictured here is a variegated Solomon's seal - Polygonatum odoratum 'Variegatum'. The nice thing about this plant is that it really does take heat and dry shade - I have photos taken in the worst part of the drought last year and it looked almost identical to this photo I took this a.m. It spreads much slower than its plain green cousin - and after 12 years, my patch is about a meter wide. It definitely would be one of my top ten dry shade perennials.