After sharing that we have a new Kousa dogwood in our yard last Wednesday, I though I’d share a picture from this week with it flowering alongside the peonies.
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In the United Kingdom and parts of the United States, there is an initiative called No-Mow May, encouraging people not to mow lawns (or a portion thereof) during the month of May in order to encourage the blossoming of wildflowers which provide food for bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.
In the spirit of No-Mow May, we have limited our lawn mowing in our front yard and left most of the back yard to grow on its own. The front yard starts things off with dandelions, which we let blossom but then wind up having to mow for propriety’s sake. B leaves the lawnmower on the highest setting, though, so that the spent dandelion stems get cut while sparing the violets and white clover that follow. Even though white clover is not native, our bumblebees seem to enjoy it. It’s also helpful that we use a battery-powered mower so that the plants don’t have to contend with the heat and exhaust of burning gasoline.
Besides those, the backyard has waves of additional flowers, including wild strawberry, bluets, forget-me-nots, speedwell, buttercups, celandine, ground ivy, and fleabane. While these help our pollinators, they also provide food for other animals, including rabbits.
Besides the lawn, we have other spring-flowering plants, including bleeding hearts, PJM rhododendron, dwarf daffodils, lily-of-the-valley, brunnera, amsonia, and our heirloom rose bush.
Although not all the plants are native, our native pollinators frequently visit them, which is important to us, especially our bumblebees. When we had a landscape plan drawn up and planted in fall 2020, we requested native plants, but some of the plants that grow wild in our yard are non-native species that are now considered naturalized in our area, though not invasive. If we do find invasive species, such as garlic mustard, growing, we try to pull them out so that they don’t spread. It is also helpful that we have had wildflowers growing as part of our lawn for decades. We never use herbicides. The mix of plants and not mowing it too short also make our lawn drought-resistant. We never have to waste water by spraying it on our lawn.
We may stretch No-Mow May into early June in the backyard so that the daisies that have started to grow up but haven’t blossomed yet have a chance to do so. Perhaps, B will do what he has done in some past years and mow around the daisies until they have had a chance to flower.
Do people observe No-Mow May – or some variation better suited to your geography, like Low-Mow May or No-Mow April, where you live?
Belatedly sharing a bit more about our February visit to see our daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG.
Most of the visit was spending time with the family at our rental home in their East London neighborhood. There were games and make-believe, reading, puzzles, drawing, watching BBC children’s programs, especially Swashbuckle, eating, napping, and even a couple of sleepovers for ABC and JG.
Our nod to the girls’ being on half-term break from school was a visit to the Tower of London. Given that we had a 3- and 6-year-old in tow, it wasn’t the most comprehensive visit, but we did see the Crown Jewels, the White Tower, and more cannons and armor than I’ve seen in the rest of my life combined.
ABC and JG were not enamored of the ravens.
London winters are much milder than here in the Northeast US, so daffodils were blooming at our rental house, even though it was only mid-February.
There was the excitement of ABC losing her fifth baby tooth. Of course, the Tooth Fairy arrived on schedule!
Mostly, though, the trip was a time for me, B, and T to be Nana, Grandpa, and Auntie. Because of the distance and infrequency of visits, we aren’t sure when we will be able to see them again, so it’s nice to have a remembrance of some snuggling time.
(In the photo at the top of the post, ABC’s bear is wearing a Binghamton Rumble Ponies hat. The Rumble Ponies are the AA baseball club of the New York Mets. Bear is trying on ABC’s cap.)
My daughter T loves plants.
She loves them so much that she has a master’s degree in conservation biology of plants. One of her favorite things to do is remove invasive species so that native species can thrive. She can expound at length on the topic of relocating plant species to different elevations and latitudes to help them survive the effects of climate change.
At the moment, it’s winter here and she is recovering from shoulder surgery, so no eradicating of invasive species allowed in the near future.
She has to content herself with tending our indoor plants.
Under her care, the African violets and kalanchoe are in bloom.
*****
I shockingly used the prompt “plants” from J-Dub of J-Dub’s Grin and Bear It as part of Linda’s Just Jot It January. (It’s only shocking because I seldom use the prompts and usually meander off in my own direction.) Whether you want to use prompts or not, please join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/21/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-21st-2024/
These (very) mini-daffodils grew from bulbs we salvaged from a pot we bought at the supermarket to add some color to the kitchen winter before last.
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Daughter T and I have been preparing memorials to honor Nana and Paco (my parents) and brought them to the building in the memorial park where their cremains are inurned a couple of days ago.
The memorial for Nana is one of her favorite bud vases filled with lily-of-the-valley, which was her birth flower. She always loved them and we would pick bouquets of them every year to bring to her for Mother’s Day and her birthday. Shortly after we bought our home in the late ’80s, we dug some pips from spouse B’s and my childhood yards and transplanted them. As lily-of-the-valley spread aggressively, we now have a large patch in our backyard and they always bloom in mid-May. The flowers in Nana’s vase now have to be artificial as fresh flowers aren’t allowed but it means there will always be a reminder of May near her grave.
Paco’s memorial was created by granddaughter T. She took an empty Irish whiskey bottle and filled it with a rainbow of origami birds. Paco was not a big drinker but he was Irish and Nana used to always make him a Blarney cake which featured Irish whiskey around St. Patrick’s Day and his birthday in March. T meticulously folded 320 tiny origami birds to fill the bottle with the colors of the rainbow. It reminds me of this photo of Paco’s trip of a lifetime to Ireland, inserted into the brief window after Nana’s death but before the pandemic descended.
It was also the first time for Trinity to visit since the placement of a service medallion for Paco, a bronze replica of a triangularly folded US flag with the inscription “Veteran U.S. Navy”. Paco had served as a Navy SeaBee (Construction Battalion) in both the Second World War and the Korean Conflict. He didn’t talk about his service that much when we were young, but in retirement he often wore a SeaBees cap when he was out and about. It was touching that folks would thank him for his service all those decades later.
Yesterday would have been Paco’s 97th birthday. With spring arriving, the bulk of the estate work done, and our memorials placed, I’m beginning to feel a bit more settled and at peace than I have for a long time. Nana and Paco are eternally reunited and remembered with love, flowers, and a rainbow.
I’ve written in other years about March 17th being celebrated in my family as both St. Patrick’s Day and Evacuation Day, a commemoration of the evacuation of the British military from Boston in 1776, ending an eleven month siege and marking the first major victory for General Washington.
My father-in-law always brought flowers to my mother-in-law on March 17th, a tradition we took up after his death. Since her death in in 2016, we’ve kept up the tradition. Daughter T even sends flowers to her sister E in London, which, given the origin of the commemoration, adds an extra twist to the observance.
This year, the Evacuation Day bouquet at our house has a special message. The sunflowers represent Ukraine and our sincere wish that they will soon be celebrating their own version of Evacuation Day with the Russians, who are currently besieging so many cities and towns, evacuating back to Russia and leaving Ukraine as an intact, sovereign democracy.
May it be so very soon and may the vast majority of countries around the globe continue to support Ukraine as they fight for their nation and then face the daunting task of rebuilding after such horrific damage.
It’s spring in my hemisphere so signs of new growth are everywhere.
The lawn is growing. There are new flowers blooming in turn. We are excited to see the new landscaping we had put in last fall growing. Because most of the plants are new to us, it’s fun to see how they put out new shoots and when. Some have already flowered, along with our old standbys like bleeding hearts. We are especially pleased that the ferns that were re-located in the project are coming back strong, unfurling from their fiddlehead phase.
The most important growth we are observing this spring, though, is coming over our computer screens. As some of you may recall, we have yet to meet our granddaughter JG in person. She was born during the pandemic in the UK, so we aren’t able to travel there yet.
She is now nine months old and growing up quickly. She has three teeth in with more ready to break through. She is anxious to walk and can already manage to toddle along holding with just one hand. Soon, she will be off on her own. (She doesn’t care for the whole crawling thing.)
What is most endearing is that we can now see more of her personality coming through over our computer. She has grown enough to be curious about these figures on the screen who talk directly to her. We can engage in conversations where we react to her baby-babbles. She can lock eyes with us. We can even play peek-a-boo with her.
Her mom calls us Nana and Grandpa and Auntie T. As we look forward to that blessed but currently unknown day, we wonder if our screen visits will translate into JG “knowing” us when we see her in person for the first time.
We hope she will grow to love us, even from afar, as we love her.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “growth.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/05/14/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-15-2021/
For the recently concluded National Poetry Month, the Broome County Arts Council invited local poets to contribute a short poem about spring, hope, and/or other positive things for their POETREE.
I had hoped to make it down to the gallery to see it and take photos for this post, but I didn’t manage to do that. Instead, I have copied the poem I wrote especially for the project below:
Why We Will Never Use Weedkillers
by Joanne Corey
Every spring, we watch
the jagged-edged three-ness
of strawberry leaves emerge
from the snowmelt-soaked
lawn, the white five-petaled
blossoms attract the bees
to their sunny centers,
the green-white berries
ripen to red in June,
the squirrels feasting.
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/04/14/one-liner-wednesday-ive-been-shot/
Joanne Corey 