Summer Flowers

I'm not sure who it is in the Suzhou City government that is responsible for landscaping.  But they deserve a lot of credit.  And they must have a pretty healthy budget.

It seems like every two or three weeks there is something new that is blooming.  It has been that way since March.  It started with the plum blossoms.  About the time they died out the magnolias started to pop.  And so on and so on.  Every time the colors start to fade on one species, another seemingly innocent tree or bush  explodes into bloom to take its place.

 In addition to the perennial stuff - the trees and shrubs - the city also plants seasonal flowers in various flower beds and especially in the medians of the roads.  These get changed out about once a month also.

One of the more exotic things they do, at least exotic to me, is plant lotus flowers.  The park across the corner has some features which, back in February, looked like open running drainage ditches.  Really big ditches.  I figured this was due to neglect or lack of funding or some other benign incompetence that comes with city management.   Then back in May, during the rainy season, they let the ditches fill up with water.  Then they planted the lotus flowers.

The lotus is one of the "big" flowers in Chinese tradition.  It is the flower of summer.  Every lake, pond, or puddle of water is likely to have lotus planted in it.  The plants started blooming in mid-July and held their blooms right up to the end of August.  They are starting to fade now.  And the vegetable markets are full of the seed pods the form when the blossoms mature.  (You don't eat the seeds....you peel the pod and eat the celery-like flesh that surrounds the seeds.)

Now for me, the thought of flowers all through the summer seems a little exotic.  After all, in Indiana things will go dry about the middle of June and then stay brown until September.  Suzhou benefits from more frequent summer rains.  (Good for the flowers, though the humidity that comes with that can be brutal.).  And if the rains get scarce, they just round up some water tankers, fill them up at the nearest canal, and then use that for watering.