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Last week, I bought another lavender. Of course I didn't need; I already have two rather enormous specimens and have no room for more. And yet, after a trip to the Farmers Market to purchase basil plants, I somehow wound up with another lavender. In my defense, it was a white flowering variety. Pretty cool.  Spanish lavender ( L. stoechas): funny looking and proud of it. Ron's photo. My fixation with lavender is odd, because I am not the lavender type. I hate perfume, sachets, and scented soaps. I think lavender in food is an abomination, and I don't care how many trendy chefs think I'm an unsophisticated boor for saying so. Yes lavender is pretty, yes it smells nice, and yes the bees love it, but you could say that about a lot of plants. So why the obsession with lavender?  "Provence" lavender with bee. Messy but delightful.
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The pollen is here. One week ago, the greenish-yellow powder began coating everything, from my deck to my brain. Consequently, I have been in a pollen-induced fog for the past week, which makes it quite difficult to string words together in a coherent fashion.  Pansies coated with pollen dust. You may be unfamiliar with North Carolina's annual pollenfest, in which puffs of yellow powder spurt from the pine cones, form yellow dust clouds that float on the wind, and then land pretty much everywhere. Sensible people close their windows and turn on the air conditioner. In fact, many people here don't even put screens in their windows - why bother, if they are never planning to open them? But the weather is stunning in April and, with everything blooming, the air smells fantastic. We keep our windows open.  Clean me! Forgive me Earth for I have sinned. It's been, actually, never since I had a compost pile in my back yard. I love to garden. I love to cook. I love fresh fruits and vegetables. Yet I have been throwing out my kitchen scraps. I have plenty of excuses. Heat + rotting vegetables = flies, and lots of them. Plus I don't want to encourage raccoons and their ilk. Each season I vow to find the perfect enclosed compost bin: secure, easy to turn, easy to access, and aesthetically inoffensive. Somehow I never find it. But that's all behind me. I have found CompostNow.  Unusual weather we're having, ain't it?  In North Carolina, spring has been unusually late in arriving, as winter temperatures stuck around a lot longer than usual. March was unusually cold. Last winter, though, was unusually warm. And last summer was unusually hot.  With the unusually cool weather, my Edgeworthia has been blooming for an unusually long time. All photos courtesy of Ron. |
AuthorThe Galloping Horse Gardener is a native New Yorker who packed it in in 2005 to live under the radar in Cary, North Carolina. In 2014, she removed to a new secure location somewhere in Raleigh. Archives
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