Fickle

Last week I was all about daffodils; this week it's viburnum, specifically the ones just outside our front door. My affection has turned from jonquils to juddi (Viburnum x juddi). 

Twenty-one chest-high bushes line our drive out front. The pinky-white snowball blossoms emit the loveliest fragrance. I can smell them from inside the house when the screen door is open. I don't think the blooms will last long, and when they go, so too might my affections – on to the next flower that blooms at Farm Dover.

A host of golden daffodils

Remember when I wrote about discovering all the kinds of oak trees that Ed and I found growing around our farm? Well, the same thing has happened with this spring's daffodils. I never paid much attention to the variety of narcissus that pop up every spring.

Silly me. I had no idea that there are between 40 and 200 different daffodil species, subspecies or varieties of species and more than 25,000 registered cultivars.

When I saw that more rain was expected for today, I went out yesterday and picked

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Most were ones that the kids helped me plant even before the house was built. Five years ago, I ordered 200 bulbs from White Flower Farm, but didn't think to save the order form, so I don't really know the names of what I have.

Once back in my kitchen, I separated my bouquet by type.

And then I put them into vases and lined them up, according to height. This pleased me greatly.

Then I checked the White Flower Farm website and tried to figure out the names of each flower. I suspect that some of the ones I purchased five years ago are no longer listed. So I'm not 100 percent sure that I've named them properly. But here's my best guesses...

Narcissus Delnashaugh (double daffodil)

Narcissus English Style (double daffodil)

Narcissus Acropolis (double daffodil)

Narcissus Minnow (tazetta daffodil)

Minature White Tete-a-Tete

Narcissus British Gamble (trumpet daffodil)

Narcissus Sir Winston Churchill (double daffodil)

I'm hoping my gardening friends – I'm talking to you: Kathy and Lynn – will set me straight if I've got these wrongly identified.

In the meantime, the perfume from these bouquets is filling the room and I'm loving it.

___________

Another interesting tidbit that I learned in my research:

Narcissus is the Latin or botanical name for all daffodils. So daffodil is the common name for all members of the genus Narcissus. And to confuse you further...

In some parts of the country any daffodil is called a jonquil. The term jonquil actually refers to one specific type of daffodil, the Narcissus jonquilla. Jonquils tend to have clusters of several flowers, instead of just one bloom, and have a strong scent. (See Sir Winston Churchill above.)

And that, my friends, is your botanical lesson for the day. You are dismissed!

March Madness

While nearly all Kentuckians are obsessed with watching March Madness unfold on the basketball court, my eyes are watching for evidence that Spring is unfolding at Farm Dover. Which is more mad?

In the land where fairies dwell

Fairies are invisible and inaudible like angels.

But their magic sparkles in nature. 

– Lynn Holland

Royalty flutters by

When we planted our fields in native grasses and wildflowers, we included in the mix a large scoop of common milkweed seed. Milkweed: it’s that plant with the fluffy seeds that escape from pods and float through the air this time of year. As a child, I confused it with a dandelion seed head and would always try to catch it and make a wish. I thought it was magical.

Turns out, it is magical. It’s the only plant that Monarchs eat when they are in the caterpillar stage and the only one on which they lay their eggs. Unfortunately, it’s been rapidly disappearing from meadows, rural fence rows, and sides of roadways, thanks to Roundup® and urban sprawl. Studies estimate that the plant decreased 21 percent in the U.S. between 1995 and 2013.  

And because it is disappearing, so are Monarch butterflies. Remember chasing monarchs as a child? Remember, how they were everywhere? In my memory, they were the most common of all the butterflies. But, despite our best efforts to plant the food they love, we’ve only seen a few on our farm this year. Every time I see one, I whip out my camera to capture it, but it always manages to fly off before I can press the camera icon, find my subject, and snap. It’s a gone girl. 

I’ve also taken to inspecting the leaves of milkweed, hoping to find some tiny eggs or a host of caterpillars munching happily through the green leaves. Haven’t had much luck there either. Seems the milkweed contains a poison that the caterpillars have adapted to – but it stays in their bodies, making them poisonous to any predators.

My awareness of the plight of these beautiful creatures was heightened upon reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, whose plot hinges on an invasion of monarch butterflies in a small Tennessee Appalachian town.

It wasn’t until we visited the 270-acre Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens at Boothbay that I got a close up look at what I’ve been seeking all summer. There, among the beautiful flowers and plethora of milkweed, were hundreds of monarch butterflies, as well as plenty of yellow-and-black-stripped caterpillars, eating hungrily on the milkweed leaves.

And best of all, I got to see the lime green chrysalis, decorated with metallic gold dots, that hung from the wood siding of the various structures around the gardens.

I couldn’t take enough photos, Ed finally walking ahead of me back to our parked car as I called out: “Wait! Just one more. Just one more.”

So, to be perfectly transparent: Yes, I took all of these photos, but all were taken at the Botanical Gardens on our recent trip. None were captured at Farm Dover.

But even now, in mid-October, we occasionally see a lone monarch or two fluttering around the goldenrod and daisies in our fields. I wonder how much longer they will stick around before striking out on their up-to-3000-mile migration to Mexico. I hope the ones that make it, spread the word that there is plenty of milkweed at Farm Dover and invite their friends and family to come back to Kentucky next summer.

What fun it would be to have that most royal of all butterflies fluttering by!

A Growing Vision

From day one, I had a clear vision of how I wanted our house to look and feel. What I couldn't quite figure out was how we would leave our imprint on the land. When we bought Farm Dover, it was being farmed, rotating corn and soy beans. Before that, it was a dairy farm.

Fortunately, my partner in this adventure is Ed, who possessed a very clear vision for the land. Before we even broke ground on the house, he met with a wildlife biologist from the Ketnucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources to figure out how we could create a healthy wildlife habitat, particularly for quail.

One of the recommendations from the biologist was to eradicate the fescue grass and convert most of the fields to native warm season grasses. We chose to plant Little Bluestem, as it is ideal for quail, providing them with excellent nesting cover while maintaining enough bare ground to allow their chicks to move freely.

Turns out, planting native grasses is tricky work. One must have the right equipment to drill the seed into the ground and the expertise to know how to do it and when to do it. With a bit of calling around, we found our expert: Greg Stephens. Greg interviewed us about what we were trying to accomplish and suggested that we add some specific wildflower seeds to the native grass mix. Last summer, he planted most of our fields with Little Bluestem mixed with Black-eyed Susans, False Sunflowers, Greyheaded Coneflower, Purple Coneflower, Partridge Pea, Butterfly Milkweed and Lance-Leaved Coreopsis. With this wildflower mix, one or more of the varieties would be blooming from May through October.

It took a full season for the plantings to get established. Last summer was hot and dry and not much was happening out in the fields. I was beginning to wonder if they were supposed to look like they did -- and if so, what was all this fuss about native grasses/wildflowers?

I want to show you how our fields look today. It just takes my breath away. It is acres and acres of the most beautiful yellow Coreopsis.

The quail love it; mornings and evenings we hear them calling bob white back and forth. The bees are buzzing all over the place. The red-winged blackbirds rise up from and dive down into the grasses, as they fly to and fro from their nests. The gold finch perch on the slender flower stems. Millions of fireflies at dusk stage a magical show, put on just for my entertainment.

I can't wait to see what comes up next.