Bee Balm, Year Two
Last summer I decided to attempt a thing I rarely do–garden. For a person who is obsessed with plants, I have the very antithesis of a green thumb. If my family had to live on the proceeds of my vegetable garden, we’d all lose a lot of weight. This year I have harvested to date exactly eleven string beans, a summer squash, and one tomato the size (and taste) of a golf ball. I’m the only person I know who can kill zucchini. It’s no better in the flower garden. I routinely murder rose bushes, assassinate peonies, and cause tulips and begonias to commit suicide. This is...
Read MoreFern Seed
Once upon a time there was a farmer who had lost a foal, and so he went out on Midsummer’s Eve to search for it. He chanced to pass through a cluster of ferns, and some of the fern seed fell into his shoes. He found his missing animal, and went joyfully home, but when he walked in the door, neither his wife nor his children looked at him or paid any heed to him. When he said “I have found the foal!” they screamed and ran from the room in fear. At first the famer was bewildered. Then he remembered walking through the ferns, and realized what had happened. He took off his...
Read MoreDaisy Fleabane: Does It Get Rid of Fleas?
Well, no. Unfortunately this is a classic case of false advertising. This plant, called daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus), is neither a daisy nor the bane of fleas. It’s a nice little meadow flower–one of the few native plants that can elbow its way in between more aggressive non-native clovers and daylilies along roads and byways. It isn’t the same as a daisy, and it isn’t an aster, although they’re all related–all those plants with a fringe of white rays around a yellow center are cousins in the enormous Aster family. Regular daisies (ox-eye daisies, as...
Read MoreFourth of July
Some floral fireworks for Independence Day. The slow explosion of day lilies opening, unfurling petals and fading away, each flower having a 12-hour lifespan. Day lily. Hemerocallis, which comes from ancient Greek words meaning beautiful day. Day lilies are suddenly all over the place in early July. They start to line the roadsides as though waiting for the Fourth of July parades. Why the name day lily? If you look on any day lily stalk, you’ll see half-a-dozen buds, each one slightly bigger than the next. With a punctuality that’s pretty amazing, they will open precisely 24 hours apart. So...
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