Adventures in the Garden - 8 July 2024

Helenium is a wildflower native to North America, called sneezeweed (according to Wikipedia) because the dried leaves were used to make snuff. Like all the plants mentioned here, this is its second year in my garden. 

To the right you can see the edge of a lamb's ear. It is a native of the Middle East. Rabbits don't like it and it likes dry weather. Mine were given to me last summer by a couple who dug up all their flowers and put down gravel. 

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Another helenium, the orange variety. 

I watered the helenium every other day during the recent dry spell. They are not drought tolerant, but they seemed to demand less frequent watering than some of my other plants. 

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Tickseed coreopsis--another native perennial--is considered easy to grow, but mine has struggled, mostly because the rabbits like to snack on it. I've begun to sprinkle, on it and around it, sour-smelling, nontoxic granules. I finally have blooms!

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The bumblebees have fallen in love with the joe-pye weed.

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​crow
watching the rain
​with dry eyes

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More and Still More 
​I’m on my knees digging holes
for new plants. The morning provides
company: the trowel unearths worms
from once poor soil; a millipede
waddles off, black trimmed in yellow
signaling danger in its dragon world:
I’m beautiful—don’t eat.

Two yellow jackets shadow me
unaggressively, though they, too,
are marked beautiful and risky
in yellow and black. They’re mesmerized
perhaps into a trance of live-and-
let-live by hands that dig and plant.
I keep them under my eye.

The blooms of the mint are buzzing
with bees. As I rise to stretch my back
and wipe the sweat from my eyes,
the sun clears the treetops.
The garden gleams. The bees’ wings
glitter among silvery leaves
that soothe the pain of a sting. 

Published by Third Wednesday, Nov. 2022