Color

Talking of the depressingly drap desert colors we have now makes me want to try and hurry spring along. We had a couple of days of 55 and 60 degree weather that always makes me want to get out and start the gardening. In my back yard, away from the horses where they can't eat them, I always grow lots of easy to care for flowers and a few tomatoes each summer. This photo is of our wild four-o-clock. I have put so many mundane photos on with no bright colors lately, I though it was time to do so. These are native here and, although hard to transplant, if you can get one going it will take the place. They are usually only about a foot tall but will spread out and cover as much as 12 square feet in a summer. Then they die back in the fall and you can't even be sure where the plant was after you get rid of the dead vine and leaves. All summer, from late June until the first hard freeze, each evening, as the sun desends toward the west at about four-o-clock, (that is why it is named that) the plant opens its hundreds of purple flowers and purfumes the air with a wonderful sent.