I wish I had a garden fitness app. You know, one that tracks the number of weeds pulled, the pounds of soil turned, the yards of mulch spread, the linear feet of shrubs trimmed or the number of branches pruned. Call it MapMyGarden, DigMyMuscles or WeedtoWin.
In spring, my charts would climb as I eagerly dive into a new growing season. The numbers would likely peak in May, when I, like so many other gardeners, work double-time to keep up with never-ending chore lists. This summer’s rains certainly made it tougher to stay ahead of the vigorous, multiplying weeds.
However, the stats this time of year would likely take a big drop when my enthusiasm wanes. As the temperatures soar and mosquitos swarm, I definitely could use a fitness app’s pep talk to stay the course and finish the season strong. And maybe a on-line coupon for repellant.
Perhaps, the app could translate all my gardening activities into calories burned or muscles built. I might even reward my efforts with an extra scoop of ice cream on a bowl of cherry crisp or not feel so bad about slathering a fresh ear of corn with a layer of butter.
App or no app, I do know the garden is a “free gym” that offers the benefits of exercise plus beautiful foliage and flowers, fresh air, a dose of the sunshine’s vitamin D and stress relief by connecting with the great outdoors. Besides, it’s in my own backyard.
Poets and gardeners lament the last rose of summer. Even the horticulturally oblivious recognize the wistful symbolism of that flower.
But what of the last flower of spring? Who weeps for it?
Probably no one. But this lack of concern has nothing to do with callousness.
When spring finally becomes summer’s kaleidoscope of color, who cares about a single flower? For that matter, who can define the last flower of spring? Each garden has a unique plant population.
Then there’s the matter of defining the end of spring, a season that pays no attention to the grid of dates on the calendar we use to conveniently, if inaccurately, pinpoint its coming and going. People also “date” spring differently. Memorial Day marks spring’s passing for me, but the start of the school system’s summer vacation or an annual fishing trip marks the end of spring for others.
The last flower of spring could be a rose. Heritage roses, those flowers of legend, romance and centuries of garden use, tend to bloom with late spring flowers.
For me, the last flower of spring is a venerable lemon lily. Perhaps the lemon-colored blooms or the citrus-like fragrance, that evokes spring in Florida’s orange country, inspired the common name.
This small day lily came from some ancestor’s garden ages past, along with peonies and garden phlox. My childhood memories have it blooming about the time of the late peonies, but memory is apparently faulty. The last peony had faded when the lemon lily began to perfume the air.
While I can’t give proper credit to its family source or common name (much less its botanical moniker), I can thank garden writer Diana Lockwood for keeping this charmer going.
She received hers as a passalong plant from my garden a few years ago. Eventually the mother plant vanished, as sometimes happens to the demure in my rather too effusive planting style. When she learned of my loss, a start was provided. This spring it produced several flowers.
Lemon lily grows in substantial shade, receiving only four hours or so of direct sun daily. Once my plant grows a bit larger, a division will be placed in a brighter spot.
Meanwhile, another year must pass before the air is perfumed with little lemon lily blooms. Fortunately, an abundance of summer and fall flowers lies ahead making this symbolic end of spring easier to bear than that of summer.
For Memorial Day weekend, we’re reposting this 2013 essay by Michael Leach. We thank those who serve and continue to serve our country.
I wonder how many people take family heirlooms to the cemetery on Memorial Day? These are blossoms from plants handed down from one generation to the next. Most gardens have such plants. Felder Rushing, a Mississippi gardener and writer, calls them pass-alongs.
Weather permitting, peonies were always among the Memorial Day bouquets for my family. At the family home place where I live, all of them came from my grandparents or great-grandparents. They readily shared these cast-iron standards along with garden phlox and iris, plants growing in my garden today.
Maybe that’s why I never feel lonely as I garden in blessed solitude. Memories return with the fragrance of the masses of sweet violets that grew so thickly around Auntie’s back door they perfumed the air and took away my breath. Dreams of tropical places enchanted me as a child, and so I was attracted to Grandpa’s yucca. I suppose the spiky leaves resembled some type of palm to a 10-year-old boy. I had to grow much taller before I could smell the sweetness of their satin white flowers, a much-anticipated annual event.
Unlike the yuccas, the peonies are slowly declining. Ever-increasing shade, a boon and bane, has nearly eliminated most of the 60 or so plants of perhaps a half-dozen varieties that graced beds and borders. I suppose no one needs that many reminders of long-gone contributors.
Besides these family treasures, my garden grows memories of other gardeners who shared columbines, brunneras, roses, wildflowers and day lilies. Even indoors heirlooms whisper old tales. My great-grandmother’s sprawling Christmas cactus blooms every year, usually starting in January. Such a lapse can be forgiven a grand dame who may be 100 or so.
Unlike funeral flowers, such plants make me smile. Perhaps because I remember the donors in their gardening years, active, yet at peace, working in their little Edens.
Bald eagles make history in borough of New York (headline in The Columbus Dispatch, Sunday April 19, 2015)
By Michael Leach
A pair of bald eagles is nesting in the Big Apple for the first time in over 200 years, according to the Associated Press story.
Rachel Carson would be so pleased with this news.
The eagles are incubating at least one egg on a treetop nest on the south shore of Staten Island, the city’s most suburban borough. Almost as amazing, bald eagles were spotted this year in the other four boroughs, which includes skyscraper-covered Manhattan.
Not bad considering the entire state had no eagles by the 1960s. Eagle populations across the country had declined so much that the national bird was declared an endangered species in 1978. Last year there were 254 nesting pairs in New York state.
AP reports the comeback is “…largely the result of environmental protections, particularly the ban of the pesticide DDT.”
Silent Spring, Carson’s 1962 book, documented DDT’s threats to eagles, other wildlife and people. I’ve always considered Carson, who died from cancer in 1964, as the silent spirit behind the first Earth Day in 1970. Her’s was hardly the only cry of alarm about what people were doing to the planet, but her passion, coupled with solid documentation, made it hard to ignore. Carson had a lonely vigil for a few years until popular thinking changed.
Our planet is still in danger from what seems a never-ending list of ills. But this report of eagles nesting in New York gives hope.
I really don’t need another hobby. Yes, my teenage kids are growing more independent, but I already have a full plate with gardening, chickens and pets. So, do I really need to take on beekeeping?
After Saturday’s beekeeping workshop, I’m convinced I should finally put to use our homemade bee box that’s sitting idle in the basement and purchase my first “nuc” or starter colony of bees. I learned beekeeping not only offers sweet honey rewards and promises of increased backyard garden pollination, but more importantly contributes to the local beekeeping community’s grassroots efforts to re-build the Midwest’s honeybee gene pool that was recently wiped out by varroa mites.
Did you know?
Bee varieties: In the United States, there are three basic types of honeybees– Italian, Caucasian and Carniolan – and many variations of each as they adapt to local conditions.
Southern vs. northern bees: Bees imported from southern states are not adapted to the Midwest and in turn are less apt to ward off troublesome mites. New beekeepers using local versus imported stock are much more likely to be successful.
Drones: Drones, the male bees responsible for mating the queen bee, are in short supply, so a boost in drones numbers will help diversity honeybees’ gene pool.
Queens: Queen honeybees mate just once in their lives, within weeks of emerging as an adult. On their maiden flight from the hive, they travel to mate with drones from another colony. They mate in mid-air, at about 20 feet above the ground, with seven to 15 drones. After mating, the drones die, and the queens return to the hive to lay eggs. Check out this interesting queen bee mating clip from the movie More Than Honey.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR7Nts42sYo&w=560&h=315]
Sex determination: A queen determines whether a particular egg is fertilized or not. Unfertilized eggs become drone honey bees, while fertilized eggs develop into female workers and queens.
Swarms: At nearby Mockingbird Meadows, this honey and herb farm takes another approach. It allows its “feral” hives to swarm and also collects swarms from the community as a way to increase bee population.
Perhaps, my fellow bloggers have the right idea. Michael Leach offers his backyard to a neighbor beekeeper who keeps a hive behind his shed (see Oct. 2013 blog post on beekeeping ). And of course, Deb Knapke creates a safe, chemical-free haven for various pollinators and offers a season-long smorgasbord of their favorite flowers for foraging.
