What a celebratory weekend. All due honor has been paid to our veterans, and even the tree peony has joined in those solemnities. Appropropriately, she is named (in translation) The Face of the Goddess of Compassion. This year she has nine blossoms, each about 7 inches across. Next to Guan Yin is another tree peony, planted at the same time, about 5 or 6 years ago (the relevant journal has gone missing) but she is smaller and will have…
Most of us go to the drugstore for all manner of over the counter remedies, but it wasn’t so long ago, that people turned to plants for their remedies. Even now, some of us know that poppies and foxgloves still provide us with medicines, but others are quite forgotten. Coltsfoot grows along my road. Its yellow dandelion-like flowers mean spring is here. It often grows along roadsides where the soil has been disturbed. The brilliant flowers are quite…
After my time away from home, tending my daughter with her broken ankle and her two sons, I have come back home to find the first real signs of spring. The herb bed next to the piazza in front of the house faces south and is very protected. It doesn't look like much from a distance, but if you get up close . . . Here is autumn crocus sending up leaves as early as spring crocus, but…
Some people have been showing off their crocuses, but mine are still buried under snow along with the snowdrops and scillas. The only crocus I can boast of is this autumn crocus which will only have leaves until the summer. In midsummer the leaves will wither and die. This is the time they should be divided or moved, but I never remember to do this. In the fall, flowers grow right out of the ground, needed no stem,…