Summer 2017 flitted by in the garden like a corsage carousel. I tried to catch it once a day. Off it flew, a magic act in a cloud of pixie dust. (The photos that follow were taken with a Nikon D50 and 18-55mm lens.)

“Quite honestly, the law should be: if it gets out of your property, then you are responsible legally and financially for removing it,” said bamboo enthusiast Anna Foleen. “If people would just pass that law, life would be a lot easier.”

A ribbon of community garden at Hardy Park in Washington, D.C., has steadily worked its way along the fences of the ball courts and play areas, as longtime neighborhood residents and newcomers pursue the will of their green thumbs. But community gardening can be a thorny proposition.

The blade of a J.D. Napier hoe is longer across the bottom than the top. The Kentucky blacksmith makes the hoes from old saw blades and coal mine roof bolts.

In southeastern Kentucky, coal mining and its artifacts are never far out of sight. And, tough as the terrain is, nor are gardens.

Spanish garden and landscape designer Javier Mariátegui passed through Washington, D.C., in March 2017, on a U.S. tour of talks and discussion of his 2016 book, “Gardens for the Senses.” Here, he offers images and commentary about his home garden in Guadalajara.

A milkweed giveaway at the DuPont Circle Farmers Market on Sunday May 28, 2017 went by in a hurry, with people seeking the plant to support monarch butterflies.

I wasn’t really thinking about a home brew when my relationship with a coffee tree began in the late 1990s.

When lilacs new in the dooryard bloom.