The heat is on, and the best way to combat it, if you are so inclined, is to find little pockets of coolness throughout the day. In the middle of one excruciating Chicago heatwave on the week that I first visited that fair city, I could only walk outside for limited stretches. Making my way along the Magnificent Mile and ducking into a place every few shops was how I made it through those unbearably hot days. Another way of doing that, and a very different way at that, is to dart from cool scene to cool scene – pool to air-conditioning to basement – in a literal sense, or to simply find places that look cool – such as the shaded nook of a secluded garden, where a clump of chartreuse Japanese spikenard illuminates the space, the shadows behind and beneath it lending the sought-after coolness.

The mind can overcome the matter, even when the matter is a scorching day. Setting and atmosphere can trigger tranquility. A fresh shade of the lightest green reminds of early spring, tricking the mind, bending the time, and believing it’s not quite as hot as it may actually be. 

This wild sweet pea has finally been beaten down into neglected submission. For years, it had been staking its overbearing claim to its self-seeded and self-chosen corner of the garden, where I let it climb and re-seed for a moment. How could I not allow such a marvelous color to exist, so long as I kept it on a short leash? 

It was a yearly battle, one I almost lost on occasion, as volunteers took hold around the original plant, with roots surprisingly strong and not so easily pulled despite how thin the stems were. In the end, though, I managed to keep it in check. Cutting it back by half after its first bloom prevented much of the reseeding, and also inspired a second flowering later in the season. 

This year, it seems all that hard love might finally have been a bit too harsh, as it’s made a piss-poor showing of blooms. I caught these right after a rainy night, and missed their typical magnitude. Perhaps it’s time for some potash to thank them for all their years of service. 

One of the most charming giants of the garden has been its summer show, as the cup plant is sprinkling the sky with its sunbursts of blooms. The yellow finches have returned as well, and the other morning I watched a hummingbird dart from flower to flower. The cup plant gets its common name from where the leaves attach to the sturdy square stems, forming little cups where rainwater collects and offers drinks to the birds and the bees and the butterflies. 

The blooming period of this plant has traditionally signaled the arrival of high summer. It feels a little earlier this year, which is the way the world has been headed. Faster and faster, with nary a moment to slow down. And so I make the pause, trying to stop the day, and mostly failing in the effort. As soon as something happens it is gone from the mind – only once in a while can I imprint a new memory. Maybe these aren’t days I’ll want to remember. 

It’s much earlier than usual for the second blooming of our Korean lilac, but everything has been early this year. Good gardeners feel the shift and know that climate change is real and happening right now. The reblooming of the Korean lilac is not a guaranteed event, though in the past several years it has produced at least one or two bloom clusters later in the summer. Often it comes when the nights cool down nearer the end of the season, when conditions mirror the late spring atmosphere of their first blooming period. One of the happier tricks of the garden. 

This is actually a rather robust collection of blooms for a reprise, and their perfume has brought back the earlier flush of spring, while reminding of how far along we already are in this summer. Time plays its tricks like the garden hides its scented secrets. 

In a way, these little blooms remind me that there’s always a chance to start over again, to find another season of flowers even if it’s a little different than what’s expected. They’re also a little gift, a reprieve before the sadness of summer returns.