The Leadership team for the club has been working very hard to help keep some sense of normalcy during these isolating times with cards, recipes, ZOOM programs, plant/bulb sales and sharing pictures of gardens. Since we cannot meet and chat together at our monthly gatherings, we came up with the idea of starting a Meet the Member portion to the blog.  Everyone has stories and maybe by telling them, we can find shared interests and histories and maybe it will help keep us closer.  If you'd like to include your story, please send an email to president@granthamgardenclub.org with your phone number, and I'll be thrilled to contact you.  To kick it off the Meet the Member blog, I'll start with mine

​My introduction to the garden club happened three years ago when I moved to Grantham and wanted to meet people.  My husband Bob and I went on a trip to the gorgeous Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens with members of the GGC.  It never would have entered my head to join a garden club since I wasn’t a gardener.  They invited me so I thought I’d give it a try.  Because I took the chance, I am pleased to be a very active in the club as photographer, blogger, bulb planter, flower deliverer, plant sale worker, and board member. The best part has been getting  to know an amazing group of people.

Gardeners often tell me that their mothers were their role models for gardening.  The same is true for me.  My city born and bred mother never gardened and, sadly, neither did I.  Since joining the club, I have planted some bulbs in the Fall and was surprised at how excited I was when the flowers popped up in the Spring.  No wonder gardening is so popular.  

I did spend my childhood on land that had recently been a farm in Stoneham, Massachusetts.  The farmer sold his property to a developer who razed the land and erected cookie cutter ranch houses.  When I moved in at age five, there wasn’t a blade of grass to be seen.  The flat yards were covered with rich, dark dirt and each one sported a forlorn crabapple sapling held up by a stick.  On this land that once produced corn, hay, and tomatoes, a new crop grew—a crop of babies.  There were nine children in my family and all the other families had a huge brood of children too.  Mom called it “The Fertile Valley.”  We were free range kids who spent every minute we could out of doors with never an adult in sight.  The older children were often tasked to mind their younger siblings so our pack was made up of lots of ages and hierarchies.  The big kids were always the bosses. We combed the woods in search of adventure. I am ashamed to say that we stole cherry tomatoes from strangers’ gardens and swiped chunks of ice from the back of the milk man's truck. Our crabapple fights were epic.  Ah, the good ole days.
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Besides my darling husband, three kids and four grandkids, I am most proud of my ten years working with the Stand & Deliver Academic Mentoring Program.  I started the Corporate Campus piece of the program wherein the students were bussed to my company, which not only got them out of their poor community for a while, but showed them a whole new world with exciting possibilities. The program grew from a pilot program of fourteen students and fourteen mentors to over one hundred each every year.  The volunteers and the students are among the best people I have ever met. I see a parallel with gardening and mentoring and with flowers and mentees.  The gardeners and the mentors put their time, effort, and expertise into helping plants and young people grow.  The gardeners and the mentors derive pleasure and satisfaction from the experience.  In the case of the flowers and the young mentees, it is they who deserve most of the credit.  It is through their effort and gumption that they blossom. 

The wildflower plants are tucked away until Spring but it’s always nice to remember they will be back again.  We don’t plant them, weed them, deadhead them, or water them.  They do all the work themselves and we merely enjoy them.  That is if we remember to pay attention.  As I have done for many years, many of us are so busy with our lives that we don’t notice them on the side of the road or purposefully go on walks to fields, meadows and marshes to find these free spirts  Seeing them up close to me is the goal.  Sue Coakley, Nancy Crocker, Sharon Parker, Anne Langsdorf and Amelia Lantz alerted me when particular wildflowers were in bloom—the Wildflower Posse. 

One of my favorites was the ragged robin.  To me they look like mini fireworks, albeit all pink. Its name is associated with Robin Goodfellow (or Puck), a fairy trickster who is charming, sly, amoral, and rather dangerous to encounter.  Some cultures discourage picking the pink bobbing flowers lest you invite unwanted attention from the fairies.  Others say they’re lucky to pick.  I like the idea of taking away their image on my camera but leaving them where they decided to grow.

Here are some more musings to go with the pictures: 
Lady’s Tresses are actually wild orchids.  They’re difficult to spot, but when you do, you’ll see a flock of them.  They are delicate and sweet. 

The Rosa Palustris, or more prosaically named Swamp Rose, grows near brooks in Grantham.  They reward us with their color and their lovely fragrance.

Trefoil is a shortbread Girl Scout cookie shaped like their emblem.  Here’s a little-known fact:  Trefoils, Thin Mints and Do-Si-Dos are the only types of cookies required by the organization each year.  This year I learned that the Trefoil is also a gorgeous yellow wildflower. 

The asters are everywhere in Autumn—zillions of them. I even came across a calico aster which doesn’t resemble its cousin very much though both are beautiful. 

Blue-eyed grass is neither very blue nor a type of grass.  These shy flowers are very difficult to spot which makes finding one that much sweeter.  Here’s an interesting observation--the flowers bud from the side of the stem rather than the top. 
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I’ll end with Crown Vetch because it the a perfect example of a wildflower that grows so widely and is so often overlooked but, on close inspection, is actually quite gorgeous.  

​While traipsing around Muster Field Farm in nearby Sutton, I came upon a new-to-me flower.  It was tall and looked like a kind of grass with lots of tiny red flowers budding on the top.  Imagine my delight when I learned that this bouncing little flower is called Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate.  I could easily imagine a tall country lad leaning over to steal a sweet kiss from the blushing farmer’s daughter.  I picture it as a Norman Rockwell painting.  And here are some more interesting flower nicknames that I was lucky enough to photograph this past growing season...

​We all have heard off forget-me-nots, but what about touch-me-nots? The touch-me-not is a small, bright orange wildflower that got its name from their seed pods that explode when you touch them.  So the name is actually a fair warning instead of a romantic notion  

​I read that the ugly named lungwort got its name because it looks like a lung (really?) In the Middle Ages, it was believed that God created it to look that way to guide people to use it to make medicine to help with chest ailments and coughs.  

This odd looking pink flower is Old Maid's Bonnet which must have received its nickname years ago before central heating; a time when old and young maids wore bonnets to bed and the men wore nightcaps.   

Where on earth did foxglove get its name with nothing foxy about it.  In Welsh this flower is called by the beautiful name of maneg ellyllon, or the fairies’ glove. In England these little elves were called ‘the good folks.’ No doubt, then, these flowers were called ‘the good folks’ gloves’, a name since shortened into foxgloves. 

Despite it sad name of Bleeding Heart, these flowers always delights when blooming in the garden.  A silly name for it is Lady in the Bathtub because someone thought that's what it looks like when viewed upside down.  Personally they always remind me of our beloved Peppermint Patty's who has been doling out ice cream to folks at Eastman Lake for decades.  
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So that's the end of my odd named flower blog.  I'm running out of ideas in the non-growing season but have a few more up my sleeve.  

Flowers from the Shakespeare Garden, Muster Field, and the gardens of Anne Langsdorf, Elise Kendall, Janie Clark, Jane Verdrager, and Sharon Parker.  

The daylily history starts in Asia.  There are thousand year old Chinese paintings that depict orange daylilies that look very similar to the ones we see in our gardens.  The ones in Europe and North America were pretty basic until China was opened to the West after the Second Opium War ended in 1860. Then all sorts of daylily varieties were brought to the United States and Europe. Today there are thousands of varieties. In the 20th century, American breeders embraced daylilies and created hundreds of additional combinations and colors.

These perennials thrive from Zones 3 to 9.  Daylilies need at least six hours or sunlight a day.  The lighter the color of the blossom, the better the flower tolerates the sun.  The darker flowers prefer less sun since the dark colors absorb the heat which hastens their already short life span. 

It’s almost magical the way the short lived flower is replaced by one nearby.  The flowering stalk continues producing new flowers for up to three weeks.  Each plant has many flowering stalks, and one plant may continue flowering for several weeks or months.
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They aren’t good candidates for cut flowers since their stems and their lives are so short.  You won’t see them in bridal bouquets for that very reason.  Maybe this is all part of the daylily’s plan to stay in their beloved garden home and not be picked by pesky gardeners.  Along with being hardy and gorgeous, they are pretty darn smart.  

Daylilies from the gardens of Anne Langsdorf and Janie Clark