As the spring season continues to unfold, not only are the birds nesting and preparing for the breeding season and the insects returning, but wildflowers are bursting forth with fresh, new color all over the place. Everything is still so clean and brilliant, and more and more flowers are popping up every day. It started with a few Carolina jessamines not long ago and now there are growing patches of Drummond’s phlox, redbuds, dogwoods, and Asian pear flowers, just to mention a few. I was also pleasantly surprised to a few of these twiggy mulliens (Verbascum virgatum) starting to produce flowers. Although it is considered a weed, I find these multicolored, intricate flowers to be very attractive (so do the pollinators, by the way). The other nice thing about them is that they usually start flowering in the early spring and continue producing flowers until late fall. That’s great for the pollinators, but it also means that if you can’t find anything else really colorful out there, you can always count on the mullien. It even tends to do okay when things get dry.