Honeysuckle

Day 237: Fond childhood memories of slurping nectar from honeysuckle blossoms meant that it was on my list of "must-have" plants for my yard. You have to understand that when I moved in here, the only "landscaping" was Big Doug (already over 100 feet tall and firmly established), the yew hedge out front, a weedy lilac and the Whatzit Tree, a flowering somethingoranother, identification of which even eluded the Master Gardener I went to for help in figuring out what it was. That was it. I immediately set about creating habitat for birds and pollinators, each year adding as many new plants as my limited budget would allow. Of course, the contorted filbert was one of the first things on the list, and the tree which is now 12 feet tall and about 15 feet wide began its life here as a single twig a foot and a half long. The Japanese maple now towering 20 feet above my driveway arrived in a one-gallon pot. You'd never recognize the yard now from what it was 35 years ago, now shadier and cooler and full of little chirpy birds, a happy haven for butterflies and bees. The hummers love the honeysuckle, so I leave it for them, although I have to admit that sometimes I'm tempted to nectar at its bright orange flowers myself.

Nature Photography Day

Day 246: It seems like every day has some special significance attached to it now, perhaps with a dozen or more occasions being recognized. I do try to remember Towel Day and International Talk Like a Pirate Day, but I always miss things like World Cat Day, National Coffee Day, etc. Apparently all it takes to have a special "national" day is to register it with the "National Day Calendar." Seems kinda stupid to me to have a "National Foam Party Day" (also today), but there ya go. Why not? Or equally, why? I stumbled across the fact (a term I use loosely in this context) that today is Nature Photography Day. Now that's a concept I can get behind! And since my time is now almost exclusively devoted to making sure one special kitten is comfortable in his forever home, I escaped out the back door while he was napping, snapped a picture of the first blooming thing I saw in my yard, and managed to get back inside the house before he discovered I was gone. Although I didn't register it as a national day, Happy Honeysuckle!

Grand Finale

Day 249: The flower beds are winding up in a grand finale, with a last, lavish display of colour from the columbines, honeysuckle and delphinium, and will soon yield the stage to the lesser players of volunteer snapdragons, Nigella and the rest of the supporting cast. I have never been one for putting in bedding plants, although every year I give the thought a brief moment of consideration. It seems so wasteful to plant something, only to have it wither in the hot summer spotlights. Let the stage crew have its day in green workman's overalls. Foliage! Without it, the show could not go on.

Honeysuckle, Lonicera Sp.

Day 259: If I'd taken a minute to think about it, I would have realized why the nectar level in the hummingbird feeders wasn't dropping as rapidly as it was two weeks ago. The Honeysuckle (Lonicera) had come into bloom! My plant climbs up one corner of the garage where it generally goes unnoticed until some point when I step out in the back yard and am assailed with a waft of sweet scent. It's leggy and ragged, but then, I knew it would be like that when I planted it, and it should be noted that I did not plant it for myself; I planted it for the hummers. My "landscaping" (a term which is laughably inappropriate when discussing my yard) is like that: tatty, not structured in the least, floriferous but undisciplined, yet purposeful in its chaos. Call it my botanical "junk drawer," filled with useful things all tangled up with one another: cabled shrubby habitat, nuts-and-bolts nectar producers, twist-tie pollinator attractors and the occasional "why did I save this" item which never seems to get tossed. There's probably something in it which would suffice to patch a leak, connect two parts, fill a gap, take care of any except the most major repair. And there are even some things in it which improve on the existing measures...like Honeysuckle, drawing the hummers away from the sugar water in the feeders.

Broom Berries, Yeah, Right...

Day 350: "Well, that's bloody weird," I said aloud when I spotted a tight cluster of orangey-red berries on a sprangly plant. "I've never seen huckleberries do that before!" And then I took a closer look at the plant. It wasn't a huckleberry bush. It was Scotch Broom (Cytisus scoparius) which, as a legume, makes pea pods filled with little black seeds, not bunches of brilliant berries. "What the heck? Waitaminit, that's on a different stem." I followed the vine downward (and it was clearly a vine once I really started analyzing), and eventually arrived at a few sickly leaves about a foot from the ground. "Oh, dumb me!" I said, laughing at myself. "It's a freaking honeysuckle!" Sure enough, once I pushed the tangle of blackberry thorns away from the base, I could see where the honeysuckle vine (Lonicera ciliosa) had come up right beside the main stem of the Scotch Broom, and had taken advantage of the natural trellis. Satisfied that I had laid a major botanical mystery to rest, I moved on. Sometimes Ma likes to play jokes, and she got me good with this one.

Honeysuckle Vine

Day 251: While we're waiting for an expert's analysis of the latest botanical mystery (and trust me, it's a doozy!), let's stop to smell the roses...or in this case, the Honeysuckle. This showy cultivar got off to a bad start. Its first full summer at the corner of my garage was droughty and dry, and although it suffered under my customary lax husbandry, it survived. The following year, it was plagued with aphids (not an uncommon affliction in honeysuckles) and lost all its new growth to their predation. Its recovery was slow, but for several years, it only bore a few flowers. This year, it's gone mad under our early unseasonably moist and cool conditions, spilling from the top of its trellis in a cascade of brilliant orange panicles, inviting hummingbirds and scenting the air with sweetness now that the temperatures have risen.

Honeysuckle

Day 256: It's taken a decade for a commercially-grown Honeysuckle vine to establish at the corner of my garage, a fact I can only attribute to poor soil, although I've seen the wild version root in some pretty unlikely locations. I had visions of a paradise for hummingbirds when I planted it, but in its first few years, it put on only a few blossoms and fell prey to some critter which mined the leaves. I was on the verge of pulling it out, possibly moving it to a new location until it surprised me this year by putting on a spectacular show of bright orange blooms. Nothing says "summer" quite like Honeysuckle after a rain shower!