May Day 'Quet

Day 201: There are only a few occasions when I cut flowers from my garden to bring indoors, and May Day is one of them. When I was in elementary school, the custom of leaving May baskets on friends' and neighbours' porches was still in common practice. We usually made the baskets at school, sometimes simply making cones, other times weaving paper strips together. We'd fill them with whatever we could purloin, ostensibly from our parents' gardens, but often as not, they included things we'd snitched elsewhere, and nearly always, the baskets were augmented by dandelions or other flowering weeds. The idea was that you would hang the basket on your neighbour's front doorknob, ring or knock, and then run away to hide behind a bush or the corner of the house. The neighbour was always expected to exclaim, "Oh, someone has left us flowers!" or other appropriate phrase, as if they had forgotten the day entirely. It was such a simple gesture of thoughtfulness and friendly remembrance, but somehow the practice has faded into near-oblivion today. So, because I cannot knock on your door, my May basket for you comes as a photograph. Happy May Day!

A Glad, Good September Morn

Day 323: A Glad, Good September Morn to you, my friends! As many (but not all) of you know, this is my personal "holiday," second only to Christmas on my calendar. Traditionally, it is celebrated with a swim (or at least a dunk) in a chilly alpine tarn somewhere, but with this being Labor Day weekend, the celebration will have to be put on hold until it can be performed without the chance of being seen. Instead, I have chosen to bring you the beauty of my garden, just a small bouquet which includes no more than three stems of any given plant species. Believe me, the sacrifice was negligible! Included are two types of Coneflower (Rudbeckia), two Cosmos, Nasturtiums, Lavender, Delphinium, hardy Fuchsia, Snapdragons, Nigella, tall Phlox and a few California Poppies which were in a "wildflower" mix. May your coming year be as bright and festive as these flowers, and may you find joy in the Beautiful Month.

Nasty Bits

Day 303: Despite the fact that I grow flowers, I very seldom pick a bouquet. After all, they last much longer on the plant, and I can see them by simply looking out the window. There are exceptions to that rule, of course: the spring spate of Siberian irises along the back fence produces so prodigiously that a missing dozen is not even noticeable, daffodils likewise, or the occasional wind-fractured stem of delphinium. That said, I have always loved nasturtiums, and this year's crop has utterly blanketed one end of the flowerbed to a much greater degree than ever before. Their trailing stems spill out over the sidewalk, threatening to grab my ankles as I pass by to go to the mailbox, and occasionally have to be re-trained to go that way rather than this. It's a friendly dispute, their persistent enthusiasm brightening my every visit to the garden. View of many of the blossoms is blocked by other plants, overhung with hellebore or spicebush or shielded by delphinium foliage, so I thought I'd bring a few nasty bits indoors.