late summer

The late summer in our front yard can look a bit bleak. The iris leaves are getting brown and wilty (I think I need to dig up a good number of them and space them out- we've got an iris forest forming). The lupines didn't flower this year (apparently they sometimes don't once they've been at it for a few years?) so they are still relatively short and just look like foliage to the untrained lupine-loving eye. Nothing is flowering and everything looks tired. With one massive exception...

The previous owners of our home left a good number of unwanted gifts behind: 3 kitchen sinks and hundreds of pounds of scrap metal hidden in the backyard jungle, walls and ceilings seemingly tacked together, a large painting of someone wearing a headdress (which is still hanging in the barn). They also left behind this glorious hibiscus plant, that blooms without fail every August.

FLOWERS THE SIZE OF YOUR FACE. Bigger than your face, in fact, when you're a toddler.

Alice points and squeals every time we walk out the front door and she sees them.