This appears to be the year of the rhododendron as all of ours are spectacularly full of flowers. This one, adjacent to the driveway, has hundreds of blossoms hosting a similar number of pollinators that leap from flower to flower.
Flowers galore
Waning wildflowers
This pocket guide of “common” Connecticut wildflowers published over 55 years ago is a good indication of how “uncommon” many plants have become. In skimming through its pages, over half of its entries I have never seen. Some like coltsfoot, fleabane, daisies, mullein, pokeweed, skunk cabbage and wild strawberries are plentiful and in plain sight. […]
Wildflower weekend
Taking a short bike ride along the East Branch Reservoir in Brewster, NY, Juana and I hit the jackpot of wildflowers over a short 3.5 mile stretch of bike path. They are lovely but many, unfortunately, quite invasive. I also needed to reach well into my reference material as nearly half were unknown to me […]
Blowin in the wind
Olivia has learned the fine art of dandelion propagation ensuring that there will be flowers for muffins in the year to come.
Sarah’s rose
When we bought our house over 30 years ago, there was a scraggly rose bush on the corner of the property that the deer never bothered. And magically it always explodes with lovely flowers right around my daughter Sarah’s birthday in mid-May. This heirloom bush with its sweetly fragrant blooms, has apparently always been part […]
My mom’s favorite flower
Lilacs were my mother’s favorite flower. During their all too brief flowering period, I would bring a bouquet to her when I visited. She would exclaim surprised joy upon seeing them, burying her nose within the tiny florets, absorbing their scent. Removing her face, she lit up with a great big smile and then went […]
Woodland flowers
The white trilliums that I planted from rhizomes a few years back are finally in full bloom. Every year I plant new native wildflowers in the back wooded area hoping to recolonize the space. And now that we have extended the deer fencing further back, there is even more ground to cover.
Flowering frenzy!
Water and heat. Those two elements have caused an explosion of simultaneous blooms on bushes and trees alike. Everything is alive at once. The redbud is full of lovely and tasty flowers. We have already started to harvest some blooms with their green-bean like taste as a topping for salads. Its neighbor, a crabapple, is […]
Flower pounding
Right now pansies and violas are pretty much all you can find at garden centers and they are the best plants for flower pounding. This exercise takes a flower and through the use of brute force (and a hammer) transfers the image of a flower to paper or cloth. We are back to in-person, unmasked […]
Flower Friday
It’s the first flower Friday of the season. Like many prior Springs, all of the bulbs are not coming up when they should.. . .everything is coming up now. Two of the few bulbs yet to flower are the tulips and hyacinths being followed by most of the perennials. Another strange season. Lesser celandine: An […]