Hardy cyclamen

My first experience with a cyclamen was an indoor potted plant that was given to me.  I was enchanted by the pink blooms.  I tried to keep it alive in our dark apartment, but I failed.  Years later when I had the opportunity to plant some hardy cyclamen outdoors, I was eager to try again.  I mail ordered some tubers, and, being a good neighbor, I shared some with the lady across the street.  As has happened on more than one occasion, her thumb proved greener than mine.  After one or two seasons, my tubers were either eaten by critters or rotted.  Meanwhile, hers thrived.  However, hope springs eternal.  A seed must have dropped from one of the blooms I had because after a few years of nothing at all growing there, a tiny leaf appeared.  I was thrilled.
Once again, I have a cyclamen, and I do love a touch of pink in the autumn landscape!

Yellow ditches

I love the profusion of yellow flowers that appear in the ditches and along the roadsides in late August and early September.  I marvel at how color can affect my emotions, and I always feel a warm delight akin to nostalgia when I see these flowers.  Many of the ones I see are of the bidens genus.  I think that was yet another thing my older sister taught me from her little Golden Guide to Wildflowers.
It is interesting to me that the word bidens comes from Latin meaning two (bi) teeth (dens).  If you notice the seeds, they sure enough have two little teeth that cause them to stick to your clothes like Velcro.  Because of this characteristic of hitching a ride on your clothes and clinging tightly, the flowers have earned the common name "tickseed" or "beggarticks".  ("Spanish needles" are in the same genus.)  Here are some pictures we took last September.  I think my son took the good shots, so probably most or all of these are his.  I think these may be bidens aristosa, which is listed in the NC DOT wildflower program info.

 

Do you notice the flowers along the roadside?  (Don't let them distract your driving.)

Hurricane lily in bloom

Yesterday, the bloom on the spider lily, aka hurricane lily, had bloomed.
From a bud on the Sept. 2 to a bloom on Sept. 5:

 

 

 

Such a striking plant!

Victory Garden still a good deal

Yesterday, I bought some turnip seeds.  I suspect my grand total of $0.49 did not even pay the labor for the nice young lady who measured out the seeds and rang up the transaction.  I bemoan the high price of gas and the high price of milk, but I can't believe turnip seeds can be so cheap!  (But I also wonder if I'm supposed to be paying 6.75% tax on SEEDS?!!)

 

Hopefully in a day or two, I will get a little turnip patch in.  Here is what I wrote a few years back about my turnip patch.

I also have a tiny turnip patch. It's a tradition with me. I remember going to visit Grandpa and Granny on Sunday afternoons. I always liked to hang around the menfolk - their stories seemed more interesting. In the fall Daddy and Grandpa would walk out to the turnip patch and each peel a turnip with his pocketknife. Daddy would peel one for each youngun that wanted one. That was so good! So after being cooped up in an apartment in Raleigh for 10 years, the first thing I wanted to do when we bought this house in '94 was dig in my own dirt. I remember digging up some blueberry plants from Mom's to transplant here, and Mom explaining to Caleb who was just a toddler, "Your Mama's got her a little piece of dirt to dig in now." The implication was that my excitement was to be overlooked or perhaps even indulged because we all knew it couldn't be helped. Daddy drove the 2 hours and 20 minutes to come help me put in my first turnip patch. So I've put in a turnip patch every year since then. As a matter of fact, I had been out changing the oil in my tiller on 9/11/01 in preparation for putting in my turnip patch when a friend called to tell me about the bombings. My immediate preparations for the unknown included putting gas in the car, putting some drinking water aside, and buying chocolate (who knew if the borders would be closed!), but within a day or so I got that little Victory Garden turnip patch in. So now every year when I put that turnip patch in, in my mind I call it my Victory Garden turnip patch. I try to eat some greens from it, but the big deal is eating a raw turnip now and then and reminiscing about the good ole days.

 

Mystery plant solved (poisonous)

I had a mystery plant on my property this year.  I didn't recall having seen it before.  Right away, it looked to me like something in the nightshade family because it reminded me a bit of pepper plants or horse nettle plants, just considerably smaller.  There were tiny white blooms that were followed by tiny round green fruits.  Just now, when I went out to get a picture, I noticed the fruits had ripened to black. (The fruits are about 1/4" in diameter.)  Here's the part where I love the internet.  I did a search for "nettle-like plant with small black berries," and the first page I saw had an image of black nightshade.  There you go!  It's poisonous (even though folks eat certain strains of it).  I won't be taking any chances on this one.

 

 

 

 

Are you familiar with black nightshade?

Hurricane lilies

I have a red spider lily that is a wonderful plant. The foliage appears in fall and persists over winter. After the foliage dies back, nothing seems to be happening. Suddenly in late summer, a flower stem emerges and the flowers bloom. Sometimes the flowers respond to the rains of late summer hurricanes, and are thus called hurricane lilies. I rather like the name hurricane lily. It reminds me of a strong Southern woman who may go through storms and trials, but comes out with strength and beauty on the other side. My lilies were constantly getting encroached upon by the raspberries, poison ivy, etc., so I moved one little bulb to a spot under the crepe myrtle. It had been there a few years, but had not bloomed. Just a few days ago, I noticed a flower stem and bud. I was quite taken by the pleasant surprise.

 

 

There are some other things in bloom as we start another month.  My sweet potato vine and Wandering Jew are getting along swimmingly.

 

In the planters I'm caring for at church, a few seeds that fell from last year's petunias germinated.  I brought one home, and it is gracing a little pot with a lavender pink.

 

And the angel wing begonia is still full of blooms (just needing a wee bit more nitrogen).

 

 

As you go through life's storms, may you have the grace of the hurricane lily.





 

 

Talc

I had the misfortune the other day of having to take an unmarked detour.  A detour when you're on a schedule can be very annoying.  Unmarked detours are worse.  But there are interesting things to notice even on a detour.  We were detoured right by the talc mine in Robbins, NC.  When I see a road sign with the word "Mine" in it or "Mill" in it, I figure it is often a holdover from a bygone era, but we could see truck tracks on the highway made through a coating of white powder, and that let me know the mine on Talc Mine Road is still in operation.
"What is talc used for?" my son asked.
Of course the first thing I thought of was baby powder or talcum powder.  If I recall correctly April Showers was a popular powder in my grandmother's day.  I don't remember if it was discontinued or if the company changed the fragrance formula, but I remember the lament of not being able to have that same powder.

I'm sure that in the days before air conditioning, talcum powder was a highly valued toiletry.  Talc is still used in body, foot, and first aid powders as well as cosmetics, but that accounts for only 7% of the talc used in the USA.  I found it interesting that 75% of the talc used in the USA is for plastics, ceramics, paint and paper.
http://geology.com/minerals/talc.shtml
In looking at Google maps (to see where on earth we had gone while we blindly followed the Sedberry Construction truck in front of us on the detour!), I noticed how highly visible the satellite image of the talc mine is.  It shows up as a large creamy white area in a sea of green.  I thought that was cool.
Talc--the world's softest mineral.