Columbine and the Miners

The flowers are delicate and complex.

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The seed pods resemble green jesters’ hats.

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The leaves…ugly, whitish and sickly.

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I hate leafminers.  I got so disgusted with them that I chopped down the infected plants.

No use feeding the enemy!     Leaf miners are larvae of a tiny fly.

The fly lays its eggs on the leaves.  The hatched larvae eat their way through the middle of the leaf’s layers.

The flowers are so beautiful,

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but the leaves look ravaged.

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No pesticides for this gardener,

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so chop chop chop.

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Little Lanterns Columbine, Aquilegia canadensis ‘Little Lanterns’

I’ll just take photos of the blooms this spring.

 

 

My Friends’ Magnolia

Almost thirty years ago, we were given a young Bigleaf Magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla) tree from the yard of some friends.

We admired a larger one of these trees through a sky-light in their dining room.  It looked like big green umbrellas.

Magnolia macrophylla
Magnolia macrophylla

The Cunninghams dug up a small one for us that evening.

The tree is now over twenty feet tall.

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Last year it had its first ever bloom.

This spring it has eleven.

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Worth the wait?

You tell me.

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Wait for the FLOWER.

 

My Living Memory

I went on the trip of my dreams last fall.

My family spent two weeks in beautiful Italy.

Everywhere we looked there was something new, unusual and exciting.

This flower stopped my in my tracks.

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Everything else fell away

the only two things in the world were me and this face.

Passion flower.

I posted it as a wordless Wednesday from Tuscany.

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Now,  I have this plant. It arrived last week, wrapped up in a box from Easy to Grow Bulbs.com.

Passiflora hybrid "Blue Crown"
Passiflora hybrid “Blue Crown”

Every year when it blooms,  I will pause and remember

that I got to have one of my dreams. I am so grateful.

FLOWER is fortunate!