Bee Balm: Hummingbird Heaven
Hummingbirds are attracted to the color red. And bee balm is red. Red, red. Fire engine red. Bee balm is a member of the mint family, as can be seen by its squared-off stems and paired leaves; like most mints, it’s hardy, and spreads readily–pretty easy to grow. My kind of plant. It’s a native wildflower–at least it was originally a wildflower, though I’ve never seen it growing in the wild–what I’ve got in my garden is a nursery-bred variety of the original wild plant. And it’s red. Blood red. Hummingbirds, which have keen color vision, are...
Read MoreBee 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 MoreBee Balm: A Good Bet
I admit it. It’s an addiction. The first step is admitting it, right? Much as I love nature and wild things, I just can’t pass up a greenhouse. There’s something about all those plants, spread out in a wild crazy quilt of color. The sheer gorgeousness of the exotic blooms. This is Gade Farm on Route 20 in Guilderland. I park the car and walk inside, vowing not to buy one more plant. Usually, in twenty minutes I’m staggering back to my car loaded down with petunias or what-have-you. But this year I drifted away from the magenta and purple and scarlet of the annuals, and checked out the...
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