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 MoreIs Poison Ivy Shiny?
True or false? You can always spot poison ivy because it’s shiny. True, sometimes, especially in spring. False, most of the time.
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Good Lawn/Bad Lawn
I saw a sight this morning that froze my blood. There was a toddler, a hapless infant, sitting on a lawn. Not even a blanket underneath him, mind you—the poor child was sitting right on the grass. Made my blood run cold. Why? Because it was a bad lawn. It was nothing but blades of grass. Close-cropped and bristly as a Marine’s haircut. Not a weed to be seen, not a leaf of clover, not a dandelion, not a plantain leaf. Nothing but grass. So what? That’s what a lawn is supposed to be, right? Yes. But it doesn’t stay that way naturally. Weeds like dandelion, clover and plantain are highly...
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