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When I was little, I watched the Perry Como Show on our tiny new black and white television set. His sponsors offered his audience a live palm tree, and I had to have it. I was only 8 years old, but that was the beginning of my love affair with Perry and his palm tree.
I am the world's worst patient, and I am at my worst when I have a cold. Common colds seem to grab me at the most inopportune times, when the sun is shining and it's warm, when it's holiday time and company is coming, or when I have to make a presentation to a hundred people. Ahhhh, but I have some secrets about cold remedies, thanks to my great Aunt Bett, and truly they work!
I must be a creature of habit. I take my houseplants outside the first week in May, and I bring them back inside the middle of October. I have repeated this activity for at least the last fifteen years. The problem is, I really don't like houseplants.
One of the few trees that did not live in my childhood environment in southeast Kentucky was the bald cypress. Now isn’t that a strange name for such a lovely tree? This is the story of a tiny seedling that I knew nothing about, one that was guaranteed not to grow here in the flatlands of western Kentucky.
Some trees will stop erosion, and will give us much needed shade. The white pine was one of those trees, but I don't think my dad knew that 100 white pine trees was about 50 too many.
When I was growing up, I identified with the wallflower. It had a habit of clinging to walls and I had a habit of clinging to the sidelines of certain social events. I quickly outgrew that habit, but the wallflower still clings to rock walls.
It wasn't until I was in college that I realized my food preferences were not normal. We had a really good cafeteria located on campus that offered vegetable plates, with lots of food choices. Sometimes I asked for foods that brought strange looks to the faces of those ladies who worked in the cafeteria. You should have seen them when I asked for pickled corn.
My neighbor has a sweet gum tree in her back yard. My house sits on a diagonal downhill slope from hers, and I have the most glorious view of the tree in the fall. Of course, that means I get her sweet gum balls that roll downhill into my yard, too. And yes, it is truly worth it.
Every spring I swear I am going to get rid of that tansy. It is contained within a rockwall beside my driveway. It doesn't know it is contained, though, because every spring it escapes through the rockwall and below the rockwall, then makes its way across the side yard.
Do you remember the phrase: Best laid plans? Well, I can truly tell you, they don't happen. I spent hours last week planning a nature craft project for kids. My 5 year old grandson came, and in about 5 minutes, my plans were in the trash. It sure was a lot of fun and I thought you might enjoy the story.
I could sample the fruits of Black Haw, without worrying that later in the evening it would be stirred into a brew that I would be forced to drink as a remedy for some ailment or other. And the sweet berries were good to nibble as I trailed around in the mountains.
I loved making hominy and I loved to eat it. There was a time when I could have eaten it for every meal, and probably did. Little did I know that it was good for me.
I gathered all the acorns I could find and put them in my pockets. I talked my dad into drilling tiny holes through them, then I strung them all together on a long piece of crochet thread, put them around my neck, and wore them to town.
When babies are sick, life can be very scary. It seemed that every time a young mother brought a crying baby to Aunt Bett's front door, the baby and the mom went away with smiles. I thought Aunt Bett was magic. I think the mothers thought so, too.
Morning glories gaze down upon the faces of children and bring smiles of beauty. They also glare at us from their choking hold around the neck of our prized daylily and bring frowns of despair. And there is another even uglier hidden side to this pretty flower. Let me tell you about it.
The memory of my great grandmother's home sits hazy in my mind. The edges are fuzzy, but the scent of love and the beauty of providing will always be crystal clear.
Goldenseal became a part of early colonial medicinal care with the birth of our country. Those European settlers learned of it from the Iroquois and other tribes. It has not lost its antibiotic qualities, but I wonder if we have lost the ability to properly use them. This is an Aunt Bett story from years ago.
Persimmons and mimosas can provide a very sticky nasty ground cover when they grow side by side. They also provide a slippery slide and blossoms for a little girl's hair when she has a vivid imagination.
Ahhh, the lure of the soft white flowerheads that bring to mind a kitten's soft, delicate paws. We think such a sweet name would be given to a delicate plant, but no, pussytoes are strong and persistent. Maybe that's why I love them.
I spent ten glorious days in June wandering around the mountains of Seward, Alaska, living with friends and studying the flora and fauna of the land. I barely slept during the time of the Midnight Sun, but with eyes wide open, I made the acquaintance of new plants, and said hello to some I remember from my childhood.
Garden trends come and go, some leaving behind anger and frustration, and others teasing us with their promises. I am withholding opinion about the Topsy Turvy® planter until those little peppers and tomatoes make their way onto my dinner plate. But so far, it's looking very good.
The ancient white ash tree was leaning precariously close to our house. The rains kept coming, and the tree held for one more year. The next spring, I held my breath, but the rains came again.
What is an eyesore to some could easily become a treasure to others if you put a little thought in it. This is the story of broken garden furniture, the damage of an ice storm, a little duct tape, E6000 adhesive, a can of cobalt blue spray paint, and how they all came together to create my Blue Garden.
Did you ever notice how some words don't always live up to their names? Take hart's-tongue fern, for example. That plant neither looks like a heart, nor a tongue, nor a fern. And I truly thought it grew out of the rocks in the cave.
It never seemed to matter what the question was, the three women in my childhood would give me the same answer, "There's always a reason". Sometimes that reason was because they said so, but most of the time Mom, Granny Ninna or Aunt Bett would go ahead and explain their answers to my questions. All these many years later their knowledge is my treasure.
This little known plant is hardly significant anymore. Little is said about it, very little is written about it, and no one even remembers it. Like a lot of other things, its heyday was long ago and far away.
I was going to tell you that everything you ever wanted to know about Wild Strawberries and the Ojibway Indians would be in this article. Not really, but you know how things can be exaggerated in the mind of a child.
I really hate to make mistakes that last for decades and simply cannot be corrected. I have made a few in my lifetime, and the one that I am going to relate to you might never be resolved. I guess I will just have to live with it.
Foxglove is among the loveliest, most famous, most important, and most dangerous medicinal plants. It is also as necessary in the field of medicine today as it was hundreds of years ago. Very few of the other early medicinal plants have survived the tests of time or science.
With a name like "turtlehead" a plant must have something positive going for it. Here is the story about a little-known wildflower whose medicinal uses are much older than we are. It is the one plant that is almost exclusively relied upon by the caterpillars of the Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly.
I thought the Chinese Lanterns should glow in the dark, just like the lightning bugs that flitted around them. I opened up the dried lantern and placed a glowing bug right inside. It was beautiful, and so I did it again, and again.
It grew on the rock wall in front of my grandmother's yard. Behind it lived the mysterious faeries and gnomes who flavored my bedtime stories. I learned early that it was called Ivy, and my aunt had been named for it. I left treasures as gifts for the little people who lived there, the feather of a blue bird, a tiny marble of red glass, and an occasional cookie. I watched closely for any signs of movement.
Nature and I got along very well. I was taught to have a great deal of respect for all the freely given things of nature, and I did. My mother was a different story. I didn't think she would mind at all if I used her newly blooming sweet violets for my princess crown, but I was so wrong.
It was a simple elementary school science project and I refused to do it. Nobody was going to make me kill bugs and stick them on a board with pins. That was the year I was ready to become a fourth grade drop out.
There is nothing prettier than a cluster of Mountain Laurel blossoms. I wore them in my hair, I tucked them into the pockets of my overalls, and I tied them on my wrists when I played dress up. They refuse to grow for me here in the flatlands of western Kentucky, but in my memories they are always in bloom.
They were small strange blooms, looking very much like ballet shoes to me. We didn't gather many of them, and never the flower. We waited until it had bloomed and the plant was dying down before we gathered the root. It was to be made into a liquid that would ease the pain of a toothache.
According to those who know, a tea party is an afternoon social gathering at which tea and light refreshments are served. I'll make the tea, and you bring refreshments, won't that be fun?
It was years before I knew the plant was called Bearberry. I always though it was named for a bird chirping: ka-nik ka-nik, ka-nik ka-nik, and went through half my life spelling it in just that way. It was another of my southeast Kentucky mountain language barriers that brings a smile to me now.
