Don's Blog Ecstasy 9-23-24

Do you remember when you first got your drivers' license? You went into your drivers test
with a combination of confidence and fear. You knew you were ready but there was that
sliver of doubt. And then you passed. There was ecstasy - the overwhelming feeling of joy
and excitement. You entered into a world of new freedom. I grew up in La Grange, Illinois
and at that time we could get our license at age fourteen and a half.

Well today more than 73 years later I experienced the same feeling. "I passed' the Missouri
drivers license test and am good for three more years - ecstasy at the other end of the age scale
but just as important for freedom.

Just a few thoughts about driving:

My mother taught me to drive on the back roads near our home. Learning to parallel park was
the most difficult. In 1949 when I got my license there were no courses in school. The written test
was easy. And I entered high school driving my folks car.

My first drive to downtown Chicago was most memorable. I was driving my mother. At one point
I found that my left two wheels were stuck in the streetcar tracks and I couldn't get them back on the road.
We were not going fast but we were headed right into an oncoming streetcar. I broke into sweaty fear.
My mind knew we were in trouble. I pulled harder on the wheel to the right and we broke free in time.
The streetcar passed and we continued east into the city, The most miraculous part of the experience was
that my mom did not say one word. I loved her before but now she also was my forever hero.

A more recent driving experience occurred in Estes Park,Colorado, I was coming down the hill from the
Fall River entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. I was going fairly slow near the Stanley Hotel
when a car started edging out from the left. I was almost beyond him when he came out to T-bone me
and I floored it. Incredulously he actually hit me near my gas tank totaling the car. He knocked me to the right
into a stop sign. The driver after checking to see if I was injured told me and the police that he had not
seen me adding that "it had happened before". His insurance company didn't even argue about fault.

That's enough for now but driving adventures are flooding into my memory. We will see which ones will
be added to this blog in the future.

Driving is an adventure and I'm sure you can understand my excitement of remaining on the road with you.

Flower for the Day Late September Blooms 9-25-24

Here are some of the late September blooms.

Celosia (Celosia spicata) is also called cocks comb.

Sweet black-eyed  Susan (Rudbeckia subtomentosa)). There are still a lot of yellow flowers

that are flourishing.

Western beggar tick (Bidens aristosa). This plant produces the two-pronged

black sticker that clings to your clothing and which can be removed only by hand.

Dahlias are still blooming.

Moon flower (Ipomea alba). These are huge, this one measure by the height 

of the front porch.

And many more fall flowers to come after three days of needed rain.

Flower for the Day Scarlet Firethorn 9-23-24

In the spring our Scarlet Firthorn (Pyrocantha coccinea) produces clusters of white flowers surrounded by shiny, dark green leaves. In the fall it produces striking red berries. This stickybush maintains its green color all year long.  It is also called Scarlet pyracantha  and red firethorn.

The berries are plentiful.

   Snagged

         

The Pyracantha thorns unseen
On reaching gnarled branch of green
Seemed resolute to catch my eye
And snagged my sleeve as I passed by

Then turning to release the hold
Of spiny hooks in cotton fold
Most skillful movements couldn't untwist
Entangled spikes around my wrist

And then I saw tucked in her care
The reason she had held me there
If not for unrelenting thorn
I wouldn't have noticed life's unborn

Protected by a prickly host
From hands that get a bit too close
And cradled deep within her breast
Three aqua jewels in downy nest

The architect had placed it such
That I could see but never touch

Cinnara

Don's Blog Monarch Returns 9-18-24

Yesterday I saw my first monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippuss) in months. I believe they have

begun their migration to Mexico. This one is a female based on color. She is on some New England aster.

I was so excited I caught it in flight.

She was very flighty so it was difficult to get an image.

She did settle down briefly.

The monarch was named by Linnaeus in 1758. That is a long time ago. Danaus, a great-grandson of Zeus, was a mythical king in Egypt who founded Argos. Plexippus, one of fifty sons of Aegyptus was the twin brother of Danaus.

An alternate name explanation is that Danaus referred to Danae who was Danaus's great-great-granddaughter, to whom Zeus came as a shower of gold. I vote for Monarch as both male and female rule in their beauty.

      a monarch

      fluttering its wings

     

      I smell their shape

       Chen Liu

Flower for the Day Moonvine 8-16-24

As I have indicated we did not put in morning glories this year but got a few anyway from the previous 

years. We did plant some moonvine (Ipomoea alba) seeds. We had huge leaves until last week when the entire 

lower four feet of the moonvine leaves around the porch post were eaten by the deer in one night - the

leaves  and not all the vine. Several evenings later we have begun to have the beautiful flowers.

Here we are early in the evening.

And here we are in pitch dark.

Ipomoea alba is known as moonvine, moonflower, and tropical white morning glory. It is a species of night blooming 

morning glory. The leaves are large and three-lobed (up to 6 inches wide). The flowers are huge (up to 6 inches in diameter). They open quickly in the evening and last through the night, remaining open until touched by the morning dew. 

Moonvine

She is a moonvine, 
Blooms in a moonlight 
Delicate like soft petals 
Making the world pleasing.

Paying no attention to her tenderness
Giving out her love to the world
She bears her wounds 
Hate being enarvated
Loneliness is her fear 
Her heart feels dejected
Trying to hold her tears
Sacrifice became her habit
She began to become undesirful
Often got lost into her world
Still keeps a warm smile
moonlight Became her hopelight

She is a moonvine, which
Blooms in a moonlight 

Kulsuma

Flower for the Day Carolina Elephant's Foot 9-9-24

Its definitely a dry time in the garden as we await fall flowers. Here is 

a new one for me - Elephant' s foot (Elephantopus Carolinians)  is growing in a weedy area 

at the edge of the woods.

Each bloom consists of many small flower heads which are arranged in compound inflorescences. 

Each individual flower head is rests upon leafy bracts and contains 2-5, tubular, pale lavender disc florets. 

They are similar in appearance to ironweed.

Here is a poem that could make you think.

As in dreams
behind high doors there is nothing,
not even emptiness.
As in dreams
behind the face that looks at us there is no one.
Obverse without a reverse,
one-sided coin, the side of things.
That pittance is the boon
tossed to us by hastening time.
We are our memory,
we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes,
that pile of broken mirrors.

Jorge Luis Borges

Flower for the Day Globe Amaranth 9-6-24

Globe amaranth (Gomphrena globosa) is an edible plant from the Amaranthaceae family.

For over thirty years I have been putting the seed heads from the previous 

years plants in a container. They have produced gorgeous little purple balls.

Who doesn't love little purple balls. The pants were beginning to get smaller 

and smaller so this year I ordered a packet of seeds ($8). It came in a small

package as what looked like a piece of small cardboard. I tore it into small 

pieces and planted them in two containers. It produced amazing tall plants. 

Within the purple flowerheads are the striking and inconspicuous true yellow flowers.

The Amaranth

Ah, in the night, all music haunts me here. . . .
Is it for naught high Heaven cracks and yawns
And the tremendous Amaranth descends
Sweet with the glory of ten thousand dawns?

Does it not mean my God would have me say: —
"Whether you will or no, O city young,
Heaven will bloom like one great flower for you,
Flash and loom greatly all your marts among?"

Friends, I will not cease hoping though you weep.
Such things I see, and some of them shall come
Though now our streets are harsh and ashen-gray,
Though our strong youths are strident now, or dumb.
Friends, that sweet torn, that wonder-town, shall rise.
Naught can delay it. Though it may not be
Just as I dream, it comes at last I know
With streets like channels of an incense-sea.

Vachel Lindsay

Flower for the Day Night-Blooming Cereus 9-4-24

Night blooming cereus (Hylocereus undatus) is a flowering ceroid cactus that blooms once a year for a single night.

It is also called Honolulu queen, princess of the night and night queen. I have had this plant all my life. My parents gave parties on the night of the bloom in La Grange,Illinois where I grew up. My present plant has not been outside for several years with resulting absence of blooms. About a month ago I took it outside with resulting buds (3) and last night the first one bloomed in total darkness.

The inside of the bloom is exquisite.

It has a pungent scent which I fully remember since childhood.

Here it is this morning,

I have always been fascinated by how the bloom comes

off the edge of the leaf.

And here is wha I am looking forward to.

Night blooming cereus

Quietly in the night

And then gone

Flower for the Day Water Mint 8-28-24

Two days over 100 degrees will wilt your plants for sure. But the water mint (Mentha aquatic) is

still flourishing. 

Water mint is a perennial in the mint family, Lamiaceae. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. 

In 2019 Plants of the World listed 87 synonyms. It hybridises with Mentha spicata (Spearmint) to produce

Mentha  x piperata (pepermint), a sterile hybrid.

It grows by the front porch and puts out a heavenly scent.

             Mint

It looked like a clump of small dusty nettles
Growing wild at the gable of the house
Beyond where we dumped our refuse and old bottles:
Unverdant ever, almost beneath notice.

But, to be fair, it also spelled promise
And newness in the back yard of our life
As if something callow yet tenacious
Sauntered in green alleys and grew rife.

The snip of scissor blades, the light of Sunday
Mornings when the mint was cut and loved:
My last things will be first things slipping from me.
Yet let all things go free that have survived.

Let the smells of mint go heady and defenceless
Like inmates liberated in that yard.
Like the disregarded ones we turned against
Because we'd failed them by our disregard.

Seamus Heaney 

Flower for the Day Morning Glory 8-26-26

We decided to do away with the morning glory (Ipomea) this year. We did plant moon vine which blooms in the evening.

They are both in the family Convovulaceae. What we got were some holdover morning glories and a very productive moon vine that has failed to flower so far.

I love the morning glory which blooms early in the morning and is closed by noon.

Morning Glory/Late Lament

Cold hearted orb that rules the night,

Removes the colours from our sight.

Red is grey and yellow white,

But we decide which is right.

And which is an illusion?

Pinprick holes in a colourless sky,

Let insipid figures of light pass by,

The mighty light of ten thousand suns,

Challenges infinity and is soon gone.

Night time, to some a brief interlude,

To others the fear of solitude.

Brave Helios wake up your steeds,

Bring the warmth the countryside needs.

//

Breathe deep the gathering gloom,

Watch lights fade from every room.

Bedsitter people look back and lament,

Another day's useless energy spent.

Impassioned lovers wrestle as one, 

Lonely man cries for love and has none.

New mother picks up and suckles her son,

Senior citizens wish they were young.

Cold hearted orb that rules the night,

Removes the colours from our sight.

Red is grey and yellow white,

But we decide which is right.

And which is an illusion?  

Graeme Edge