It’s late June and the thick beds of tall flowers blooming along I-85 jump up and hold my caffeinated attention as North Carolina says, “Welcome back.”
They must be wildflowers.
Indeed, for 26 years, North Carolina has been planting beds of wildflowers along highways so motorists can enjoy the show.
What a treat – show times listed here.
These days I give things I grow. Friday afternoon we moved the luggage aside and placed a potted tomato alongside to give our weekend hostess.
Memorial Day weekend took us to New York visiting friends and family. Specifically, to Brooklyn, since we are of a certain demographic whose friends have all left the Lower East Side and are either engaged, married and/or with children and/or dogs in Park Slope and its neighboring neighborhoods.
The weekend sweltered with humid 90s and a few soaking rains. Park Slope parents pushed past with spendy strollers and Williamsburg baristas took pitty that we could possibly live more than a bike ride away. Heatwave and glances aside, we love our treks to the belly of all things awesome.
Container gardens abound and I noticed more edibles than visits past. Brooklyn spills with tiny gardens as lush and tough as its people. Street fashion gets all the buzz but street gardening makes the bigger statement.
Hopefully growing edibles sticks around longer than neon flats.
I would like to announce the roses officially make DC yards come alive right now.
The roses are everywhere and they are very pleased.
Spotted in Bloomingdale, NW DC
My birthday: The toddler and I boarded a plane for a long weekend down to Neal’s parents’ house in Atlantic Beach, Florida. We stayed over Mother’s Day weekend while Neal worked in DC.
Her gardens awe visitors. Neal says his mother’s garden at his childhood Atlanta home inspired the same lush and peaceful embrace, everything existed together as though it always was. I better understood patina my first visit to their Florida home a few years ago, everything outside settled into place and welcomed its fate, wearing with time and showing the elements.
The plants and fixtures grow into one another creating a continuous scene with nothing stopping the show. Blooms call you over, scented flowers lead you further, the Loquat canopy draws you around the corner and, wherever you are, you love it.
People pay money to go to places like this.
I grew up in Florida, about two hours southwest of Neal’s folks’ address. The smells, sounds, humidity, birds, lizards, bugs, thunderstorms, sandspurs and landscape are all familiar. The most welcoming sight is seeing how these two non-natives have adapted to it all.
April’s final day brought a cloudy chill perfect for visiting the Howard County Conservancy.
Their native plants honors garden got me thinking about plans for future gardens but “finding animals and flowers” with our two-year-old was the real highlight of our casual visit.
What makes the conservancy in Woodstock, MD, special, aside from the work they do educating the community and preserving homestead outbuildings and easements? It’s beautiful.
Its perch looks gracefully over rolling grasslands, streams and native woodlands. No gimmicky cow cutouts greet the kids. An orchard, gardens in various states of care, a pair of pygmy goats, a few chickens, stone walls, birds – all inviting you to take it in. I want to return and hike the woods and meadows. I want to sit along a stream.
A school trip of art students dispersed across the acreage. On our way out, Bunny laid on her stomach in the grass and looked down the knoll at the trees along a stream. “I’m painting, mom, you go. I’ll stay here.”
I felt the same.
Native plants are your allies. Invasives are the enemy.
My Twitter feed lit up recently with native and invasive plant posts. The morning of our little trip up to the Howard County Conservancy with Neal (the husband), the fantastic Mid-Atlantic Invasive and their Native Look-alikes guide came my way. It’s 68 pages of pdf joy with snappy graphics and stunning resolution – it looks great on my iPhone. (It does not load well on my glitchy computer, but check it out for yourself).
I proclaim no expert knowledge of our local (DC, Maryland and Virginia) native plants. But, I grew up in Florida watching all manor of natural setting get razed and replanted with subdivisions, strip malls, sod, exotic plants and colored mulch. The hammock I grew up in and knew like the back of my hand with its passion fruit and wild berries is slowly disappearing, one 12-acre plot at a time.
Never tired of native plant gardens, whether around DC or afar, the Honors Garden native plants and native plant cultivars pulled me in for some gardenspotting. The short photoset reveals my shallow Maryland native plant knowledge. Once home, I compared my photos with online resources and only included plants who matched their markers. I snapped many more but I lined up the wrong name for the frame.
So, instead of this post being wildly informative, let it inspire you to explore the Howard County Conservancy farmstead, woodland hikes, meadowland hikes and native plant Honors Garden. For those living beyond DC and Baltimore, seek native species gardens and conservancies near you. Nothing beats seeing plants in person.
Even if you have no interest in growing native species in your garden, familiar knowledge helps you decide perhaps to leave a patch of natives growing as you find them around your house. Knowing invasives makes impulse buys at the garden center smarter for your garden and surrounding habitats.
A Few Maryland and Virginia Native Plant Resources:
- The University of Maryland Extension Native Plants brochure is wonderfully detailed and provides written descriptions but does not include specific plant images.
- Maryland Native Plant Society maintains a Native Plant Sources page, including upcoming plant sales.
- Virginia Native Plant Society lists upcoming native plant sales and swaps, more detailed plant information resides within the regional chapter pages (pull down menu under the “Chapters” tab).
A National Resource:
- Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin, you can view recommended species by state or province and search by light requirements, soil moisture, bloom time, bloom color, height and more.
New Jersey may be the Garden State but Washington, DC, shines with its shoulder-to-shoulder small front yards and block after block of tree boxes. You could take daily photos and create a who’s who bloom calendar for the mid-Atlantic spring through fall.
Thursday brought perfectly curated sunshine and a new crop of flowers after a slight (but very seasonal) cool spell.
I loaded up the toddler wagon with Bunny & Mr. O and we headed over to Bloomingdale. Bunny smelled a Lilly of the Valley and looked at me, “That smells really good.”
Indeed, those tiny pea-sized bells do smell really good.
I love how the dogwoods wait until the cherry trees are done stealing the spotlight.
We also spotted some little orange flowers that were worthy gardenmates to a lovely dogwood.
The dogwood flowers are nice and sturdy, great for holding tight in these blustery April days of late.
Out on a walk in Atlantic Beach, Florida.
It’s near Jacksonville along the beach.
Dupont Circle begs me to hang out and people watch under its huge tree canopy.
No matter how long I live in DC, I suspect the years I lived in Dupont will hold my favorite walking memories.
“Whassup, daffodils!”
B giggles this to daffodils as we pass.
DC’s small front yards make walking the sidewalks an endless treat in spring.
Does anything beat velvety tulips peaking down the sidewalk through their wrought iron fence?
I can’t get enough of this tulip sea bed.
Photos with Hipstamatic.
Winter has been a bad boyfriend this year – not around when he’s supposed to be, shows up unannounced for a night only to leave before breakfast.
Winter was here for a few hours last night. I covered the cold frame and root veggie pots with due diligence given the wind and the freeze warning.
By noon today it was a fabulously warm 50 degrees with the clearest, most brilliant, sunshine.
I stopped in my tracks when I spotted my favorite yard-o-tulips completely awash in 1000 watts of tulip shine.
Winter – I’ve blocked your number. Don’t come around here again.
Photos via Pop Camera app.
I put our kid and the neighbor’s kid in the wagon and set out on tulip patrol this morning.
All of my tulip pictures from last year are dated April.
Looks like all of this year’s will be dated March.
More tulips (and other delights) are at The Soil Toil tumblr.
Last Saturday I gathered all the cut pieces I had hastily cut and proceeded to hastily put them together.
This whole thing is based on me looking at a few online plans and sketching it out super quick.
Because I have a toddler.
It went well considering I used screws that were too long to put it together too fast from plans not well planned out.
Post Publishing Note:
This is 3 of a 6-part series -
DIY – The Beginnings of a Cold Frame (Part 1 of __ )
DIY – The Ends of a Cold Frame (Part 2 of __ )
DIY – The Assembly of a Coldframe (Part 3 of __ )
DIY – Painting the Cold Frame (Part 4 of __ )
DIY – Window Hacker (5 of __ )
DIY – Cold Frame – Fixing the Flaws (Part 6 of 6!)
