Flower for the Night Finally - Blooms 8-28-25

You may remember awhile back my night blooming cereus (Hypocereus undatus) buds (3) did not bloom.Last night the plant showed why it is always worth the wait. Recently after some cooler nights I noticed three buds getting ready. Here is one. It is fascinating how it comes off the edge of the leaf.

Last night two of the three buds started to open after dark.

And by 9:00 pm they were fully open.The insides are spectacular.

And the other source of my continued amazement is their pungent unforgettable 

scent. My parents had yearly 'opening' parties at our house in the 1940's

so they have been part of my life for a long time.

They remain open all night and close permanently when the sun comes up. 

Fortunately there is one blossom still coming. 

   Night-blooming cereus

Maybe the moon or
pieces of it, with gilded edge
to contain it. Maybe just some breath,
the desert's prayer of gratitude
for a season of
abundant rain or maybe
the sudden opening into darkness
a question,
an urgency from another
of those many things that grows
most beautiful right before it dies;
this the branding of night by
something more ephemeral, some
brief satiny blaze that
yields itself to the morning
having found what I have found
in that same mood:
the desert wind is always
whispering its indigo secrets
but it never says
the same thing twice.

Sometimes called 'Queen of the Night', the night-blooming cereus is an otherwise unassuming cactus species. But once a year it blooms spectacularly, fragrantly, for a single night; the gorgeous flower already having wilted by morning. Catching it, in its bright glory, for that brief moment in the dark — feels like a life-affirming secret, revealed…

Christari Jay

Flower for the day Rattlesnake Master 8-27-25

Rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) is the rare flower whose name is much more exciting than its flower bloom. It is a perennial herb  in the parsley family and is native to our heartland tall grass prairies. The common name  is attributed to early European pioneers erroneously believing the plant to be an antidote for rattlesnake venom based upon Native Americans' various medicinal uses of the plant.

The leaves are stiff, long and narrow with a sharp tip. They are blue-ish green, and covered in a waxy coating. On the edges are regularly spaced bristles or spines.

Ball-shaped umbels of flowers are produced at the top of each stem.  Individual flowers in the umbels are small with greenish-white petals and a faint honey-like scent. Underneath each flower is a spiny green bract, and underneath each flower cluster is a small star-like rosette of spiny bracts. 

What the Rattlesnake Said

The Moon's a little prairie-dog.

He shivers through the night.

He sits upon his hill and cries

For fear that I will bite.

The Sun's a broncho.   He's afraid

Like every other thing,

And trembles morning, noon and night

Lest I should spring and sting.

Vachel Lindsay  (1913)

Flower for the Day Brown-Eyed Susan 8-25-25

Well we took a week off for some family health imbalance. We are slowly regaining our balance. 

This time of year the weather overwhelms the gardens even more than the deer. The heat and drought

starts to turn everything brown. It is the time of year for brown-eyed susans (Rudbeckia triloba).They are also called thin-leaved coneflower. It is a native in the aster family.

 The primary stem has numerous branches, giving the plant an open, bushy appearance. The stems and branches and leaves are hairy.  The basal leaves have three lobes (hence The Latin triloba).

One or two flower heads appear at the end of individual upper stems. Each flower head has six to twelve bright yellow ray florets surrounding a purplish brown flattened cone of disk florets. The flower heads are abundant and showy, although they have little or no scent.

       MASSACRE

Brown-eyed Susan lay a'dying

Beside the bridal lace.

August's sun caressed her warmly,

But she couldn't lift her face.

Her young body was quickly withering

With love cut down in fullest bloom.

It was such a senseless massacre,

It should'a been her honeymoon.

Smells of earth still filled her senses

And as a breeze ruffled her face,

Brown-eyed Susan reached out a petal

To touch the fading Queen Anne's lace.

. . . inspired by the two wildflowers I saw dying side-by-side as I walked down the road after the county mower had trimmed the roadsides.

Jennifer Wilson 1924

Flower for the Day 8-15-25 Happy Anniversary

Sixty-four years ago I married Jan Elizabeth Feldwisch, the love of my life. 

What followed is a lifetime of adventures with more to come. The aisle of Pilgrim Congregational Church transformed into many different trails.

And we continue on the path.

We are not the same naive boy and girl but the unity forged so long ago

is surprising. No journey is without its challenges but that is only story. Our 

covenant continues to provide strength. 

Flower for the Day Monarda 8-15-25

The monarda (Monarda fistulas) has been spotty compared to previous years. It is a wild native in the mint family and is also called bee balm and wild bergamot. It grows from rhizomes and occurs in clumps.

 

Its leaves are lance-shaped, and toothed. Its compact flower clusters contain 20-50 flowers. 

Wild bergamot is considered a medicinal plant by many Native Americans. The Oneida call it "Number Six", in honor of it being "the sixth medicine given by the Creator". Other nations that use it include the Menominee, the Ojibwe, and the Winebago. It is used most commonly to treat colds and the flu, and is frequently made into a tea. 

 Humming Bird with Monarda Blossom

Hover, flick then flick, in taut midair,   Inhaling nectar from each blossom tube,   A pearly string of moments here and now.  You're motionless above Monarda and  (despite the widespread rumors you have wings)  I see two blurs of gossamer. Nothing moves   And everything hovers, for just a beat,   The whole world too, which holds its ragged breath   And stops to look. You can count on one hand   The moments like that, but when they occur  There's no question what must be done and felt:  Drop everything. Pay homage. Watch in awe. 

John Backman

Flower for the Day Surprise Lily 8-13-25

The surprise lily (Lycoris squamagera) is an extraordinary gift each year. In the spring it emerges as 

a luscious growth of leaves which die back and completely disappear. In August it sprouts from the ground. 

In only a few days its surprising blooms appear.

I have several stands that just keep on coming. Since they have no leaves at the

time of blooming they are called naked ladies.

And they are magnificent as cut flowers.

     Surprise lily

    Clothed in pink

    A silent screamer

Flower for the Day Garden Mystery 8-11-25

Well we had a mystery plant in the garden recently. 

When I looked it up it was sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). It is also called broomcorn, great millet, Indian millet, jowar, and what I call it, milo. It is a grass cultivated chiefly for its grain.  It is the world's fifth-most important cereal crop after rice, wheat, corn and barley. It has large bushy flowerhead that provide a starchy grain with up to 3,000 seeds in each flowerhead.  

Sorghum is widely used for food and animal fodder. It is also used to make alcoholic beverages. It can be made into couscous, porridge, or flatbreads such as tortillas. It can be burst in hot oil to make a popcorn, smaller than that of corn. 

Since it does not contain gluten, it can be used in gluten-free diets.

Now can you figure out how it got to my front garden?

A Rukiga farmers' song in praise of sorghum, one of their staple crops, from the Bakiga "people of the mountains", who straddle the border between northern Ruanda and southern Uganda. Sorghum is a drought-resistant and heat-tolerant grain, used for food, animal fodder, the production of alcoholic beverages, and more recently, biofuels.

Sorghum, sorghum, O sorghum,
sorghum and Kiga are one. (1)
When you have a guest
you give him sorghum beer.

Through the upturned soil
two shoots first show themselves.
During the rains
the tiny plant swells and trembles.
More shoots emerge
to peer at sun and moon.

The farmer watches keenly
this life-giving plant, mother of people,
from whose juice grows the dark blood
that nourishes young and old.

As the rains endure and weeds multiply,
he must clean his plot,
toiling through torrents,
resting only in the torrid night,
till the plant begins to flower
and a crown of berries,
irridescent green to copper,
forms its spear head (2)
over grass and pollen-grain.
The season's march brings birds, so many birds.
They soar, dive, perch and peck.
They plunder the lovely sorghum fruit.
They sing in discords and in chorus
"O happy season of harvest time".
Cuckoos, weavers, crows and partridges -
they fly, they mate, they feed.
O merry time, O sorghum!"

Then with his curved blade,
singing and whistling among the stalks,
the farmer fells the sorghum.
Fat, happy women chop off the berry, (3)
youths carry it home.
When the brew is ready
men suck the juice through tubes.
They sing, shout, groan and howl,
they stoop, dance and lie down,
they collapse under the heavy, powerful weight.
Who cares? "It's harvest time,"
sing women in the inner room, dancing in praise.

from Pulsations, an East African Anthology of Poetry,
Arthur Kemoli (ed),
(Nairobi, 1969)

---

Sorghum, sorghum, O sorghum,
sorghum and Kiga are one. (1)
When you have a guest
you give him sorghum beer.

Flower for the Day Butterfly Bush

We have several butterfly bushes (Buddleja davidii) in the meadow.  The generic name bestowed by Linnaeus posthumously honoured the Reverend Adam Buddle (1662–1715), an English botanist and rector, at the suggestion of William Houston. Houstoun sent the first plants to become known to science as buddleja (B.americana) to England from the Caribbean about 15 years after Buddle's death. 

The bushes die back in the winter and then grow to over 5 feet each year.

The leaves are lanceolate and are arranged in opposite pairs on the stems. The flowers are cymes forming small globose heads. Each individual flower is tubular and divided into four spreading lobes (petals). 

They also come in purple. 

                 Butterfly bush

I didn't plant the butterfly bush. It grew there of its own accord, 

in between the apple tree and the perennial sweet peas,

an uninvited guest spiraling skywards like an exploded party popper.

It crowded out the garden path entirely, but I had not the heart

to cut it back — I enjoyed its honey fragrance too much,

the daily cohort of butterflies which arrived to sun themselves

on its purple flowering cones; sometimes five, six, even a dozen

soft-winged creatures moving meticulously across the blooms,

 
nectar-drunk, dipping long tongues into each sweet-scented flower

in search of ambrosia. I could stand a palm's width away 

without startling them, noticing for the first time how exquisite

their wings are when seen from underneath, how they give way to hornets

but hold their own among the bees, the way they disperse

into a flurry of petals around my head if I walk past too fast. 

Now the flowers are fading, but every time I pass underneath

the butterfly bush I am reminded to move slowly, to show hospitality.

Wild and beautiful things take root in unexpected place if you let them,

and of you walk too fast you might scare away the butterflies.

  Caroline Mellor

Flower for the Day First Dahlia 8-4-25

I love my dahlias. Dahlia is a genus of bushy, tuberous, herbaceous, perennial plants native to Mexico and Central America. They are members of the Aster family. Its relatives include the sunflower, daisy, chrysanthemum, and zinnia. There are 49 species of dahlia, with flowers in almost every hue (except blue).

Dahlias were known only to the Aztecs and other southern North American peoples until the Spanish conquest, after which the plants were brought to Europe.The tubers of some varieties are of medicinal and dietary value to humans because, in common with species of Inula and many other flowering plants, they use inulin, a polymer of the fruit sugar fructose, instead of starch as a storage polysaccharide. 

This year we have purchased some new dahlias from Oregon. Here is our first dahlia.

Because of the voracious appetite of our deer I am trying some deer netting.

We shall see what happens. Looks pretty awful doesn't it?

      Dahlia Haiku

   Florid blossom

Covered with netting

  Whose Idea?

Flower for the Day Ironweed 7-31-25

This time of year the iron weed (Vernonia gigantea) shows up silently at the edge of the woods. It is a native in the aster family and can grow to over 6 feet tall.

The flowers have a striking purple color which actually draws your eyes to the plant in the grasses.

           Ironweed

There is a shade of purple in
this flower near summer's end that makes
you proud to be alive in such
a world, and thrilled to know the gift
of sight. It seems a color sent
from memory or dream. In fields,
along old trails, at pasture edge,
the ironweed bares its vivid tint,
profoundest violet, a note
from farthest star and deepest time,
the glow of sacred royalty
and timbre of eternity
right here beside a dried-up stream.

Rober Morgan