A perfect picture of a violet has been stored away in my blog file since May waiting patiently for his opportunity to shine. This poem from Mary O’Neill’s book Hailstones and Halibut Bones ends with a perfect line about violets.  But sharing the poem requires asters.  The wait is over.  Asters are everywhere--on roadsides, in the middle of the woods, in gardens, and in bridal bouquets.  So here is the poem and the pretty, purple flowers that bookend our Summers.    

Asters from Elise Kendall's garden.  Violet from Jane Verdrager's garden.  

Gardeners often have a plan in mind when deciding which flowers to plant and where to plant them.  They take many things into consideration such as when they will bloom, how much sunshine they need, and how they will look beside their flower neighbors.  Most of these planted flowers behave very well.
I want to write today about those plants who don’t conform to expectations.  They are the  escapees.  They are the plants that manage to free themselves from their assigned spot in the garden and end up in the middle of pathways, on rocks, or even in the woods.  They seem to pop up out of nowhere.  Do they escape in the dark of night?  Is the wind complicit?
There’s a cockiness about these pioneers who leave the safety and security of the pack that I admire. They risk their lives in the hope that either rain or a kind gardener will keep them watered. They also run the very real risk of being stepped on by people who don’t notice them in such odd places.  Despite these dangers, some manage to grow and thrive in their outside-the-garden patch of dirt or pavement crack. I admire their spunk.  They are not unlike the poets and explorers who march to a different drummer and enrich our lives. So my hat is off to the stalwart escapees.  May you continue to escape and prosper and show up as unexpected delights in our lives.     

​​Sweet Williams’ Farewell to Black-Eyed Susan
 
By John Gay
 
All in the Downs the fleet was moor’d,
The streamers waving in the wind,
When black-eyed Susan came aboard;
‘O! where shall I my true-love find?
Tell me, ye jovial sailors, tell me true
If my sweet William sails among the crew.’
 
William, who high upon the yard
Rock’d with the billow to and fro,
Soon as her well-known voice her heard
He sigh’d, and cast his eye below:
The cord slides swiftly through his glowing hands,
And quick as lightning on the deck he stands.
 
How swift the lark, high poised in air,
Shuts close his pinions to his breast.
By chance his mate's shrill call he hears,
Then he drops at once into her nest.
The noblest captain in the British fleet
Might envy William's lips those kisses sweet.
 
Oh Susan, Susan, lovely dear,
My vows shall ever true remain;
Let me kiss off that falling tear;
We only part to meet again.
Change, as ye list, ye winds; my heart shall be
The faithful compass that still point to thee.
 
Believe not what the landsmen say,
Who temp with doubts thy constant mind;
They’ll tell thee, sailors when away
In every port a mistress find.
Yes, yes, believe them when they tell thee so,
For thou art present wheresoe’er I go.
 
If to far India’s coast we sail,
Thy eyes are seen in diamonds bright;
Thy breath in Afric’s spicy gale,
The skin is ivory so white.
Thus every beauteous object that I view,
Wakes in my soul some charm of lovely Sue.
 
Though battle call me from thy arms,
Let not my pretty Susan mourn;
Through cannons roar, yet safe from harms,
William shall to his dear return.
Love turns aside the balls that round me fly.
Lest precious tears should drop from Susan’s eye.
 
The boatswain gave the dreadful word;
The sails their swelling bosom spread;
No longer must she stay aboard;
They kissed, she sighed, he hung his head;
Her lessening boat unwilling rows to land:
'Adieu!' She cries; and waved her lily hand.

The Black-eyed Susan is from Anne Langsdorf's garden.  The Sweet William is from Jane Verdragers' garden.  

When I visited Linda Douville’s garden last week, I saw lots of pretty flowers, but I was drawn to tiny pink ones that seemed to speak to me.  I spent a long time trying to photograph these delicate flowers.  Despite there being no wind, they were always gently moving as I tried focus on them.  It was as if they were playing with me.  
I don’t believe in spirits or ghosts but became less skeptical when I asked Linda about these flowers and she told me the story of Mother Shea.  Mort and Pauline Shea used to live near Linda and her husband Gary.  According to Linda “Mort passed away a couple of years ago.  He was a wonderful man, an avid gardener, and loved by everyone who knew him.”    
Before the Pandemic plagued our earth, the Grantham Garden Club would occasionally run mystery garden tours.  When Mort was asked to include his garden on a tour, he was more than happy to but wasn’t well enough to lead tours himself.  Linda volunteered to be his docent.  To prepare, Mort walked her through his garden pointing out the various flowers and including some of their history for her to pass on to the visitors. When they came upon a patch of exquisite, pink flowers, Mort explained that they came from his mother’s garden.  He called them Mother Shea’s flowers.  He told her that he often gave friends the opportunity to transplant some in their own gardens.  When he made that offer to Linda, she happily accepted.  Years have passed, and Mother Shea’s flowers still flourish in Linda’s garden including the ones who beckoned to me.    
A few years ago, Linda and Gary were hiking in France and were delighted to come upon a field full of Mother Shea’s flowers.  Since Spirits aren’t bound by earthly constraints, I believe that Mother Shea was sending love and affection to them for helping to keep her son's and her memory alive.  

This blog is about a well loved local legend who has a unique history with our small town of Grantham.  Her name is Joey Dunbar Holmes and here’s a small piece of her story: 
In 1900, Joey’s great uncle Lorenzo donated money for a library in memory of his wife Ellen.  The library was named The Dunbar Free Library.  Eighty years later when Linda Moore was the librarian, Joey would check out books for patrons while Linda ran a story hour.  That volunteer work led to Joey’s being hired as an assistant librarian.  At the age of 86, Joey is currently the Assistant Director of Inter-Library Loans.  
Joey grew up in a house next to the library where the parking lot sits today.  After her mother passed away, the home was sold and eventually acquired by the library.  A much needed addition was planned in 2009 which would mean that the homestead would have to go. The original plan called for clear cutting the lot with demolition of the house, barn, and outbuildings, and all the shrubs and trees.
Enter a Knight in Shining Armor--Andy Gelston.  Andy is Joey’s fellow library staffer who “didn’t want Joey, the town matriarch, to have to witness her childhood home being smashed with an excavator and hauled off in dumpsters.”  It took  Andy and another local hero Otis TenHaken three months to dismantled the buildings.  All the reusable wood was sold with the proceeds going to insurance (in case Andy or Otis fell off a roof) and to the library’s construction fund.  Many people took advantage of the wood sale.  Joey enjoyed speaking with the people who came in to the library to pay for their materials.  To be honest, there were a few midnight requisitions.  (I hope they got splinters.)   I like to think of the wood from Joey’s well loved home being embedded in rooms and sheds all around town and beyond.  (After the blog was posted, I heard from Janie Clark who wrote “I had not remembered it was Joey's house, but we too are enjoying part of it.....  The huge rocks in the rock garden here are from the foundation of Joey's house.  Matt Gallien moved them from the cellar hole to our garden.)  
The original clear cutting plan also included destroying the flowering crab apple tree that Joey had planted for her mother as a tiny sapling in 1957. 
Despite his not being a restoration expert, Andy changed the plans to save the tree.  That’s the tree that sits in the island outside the library to this day and is pictured here. 
Like many of the gardeners’ homes I have visited, there are keepsakes and transplanted flowers to remind them of their earlier lives.  When I interviewed Joey at her home, she pointed out the granite slab entrance to her house that once was the entrance to her home next to the library.  Growing outside her window are the roses that bloomed outside her mother’s.  Her favorite tree flourishes by the town library for her, and for all of us, to enjoy.  

Photograph of the crab apple tree in all its Spring glory was taken by Sir Andy Geltson.  

Janie Clark's garden with her rock garden on the right.  

This is the perfect time to share Mary O’Neill’s poem “What Is Blue?” from her enchanting poetry book Hailstones and Halibut Bones.  The reason why it’s the perfect time is because Gentians are in finally in bloom.
When I first read Mary’s poem, I was familiar with Forget-me-nots but I had no idea what a Gentian was.  Google gave me the prosaic information but I wanted to actually find the flowers, and to find the flowers in Grantham.  I was on a quest, and GGC Veep and gardener extraordinaire Janie Clark came to the rescue.  She had planted Gentian and showed me where to look and told me they were expected to bloom in a month or so.  Yesterday Janie invited me to see some new flowers.  I was in her garden for a long time before I spotted the Gentian.  There’s always a feeling of magic when flowers quietly pop up waiting to be found.  They are waiting to be found by pollinators and have no idea of the human beings who patiently look for them and shower them with admiration.  

The Gentian and Forget-me-nots are from gardens of Jane Deane Clark, Elise Kendall, and Sharon Parker.  The video is of a field of Forget-me-nots that blanketed the forest floor behind the Shakespeare Garden.  By luck and to my delight, I happened upon it one May morning.  I was enchanted by the sound of the birds, the bees and the wind.

With its unusual petals and different colored flower within a flower, Bachelor’s Buttons are always a happy find for me as I poke around my go-to gardeners’ gardens. I spotted my first one in late May and it's a treat whenever I find one. I had never actually seen any before. Being introduced to these delightful flowers was one of the many rewards I have received from my ‘photographing gardens’ project.
In doing a little research, I learned that historians say the name comes from the Victorian era tradition of unmarried men sporting these colorful flowers in their jacket buttonholes. The ladies would know that they were available and looking for a girlfriend. Today’s equivalent is a guy’s single status on his Facebook page.  The Bachelor’s Button boutonniere is much more elegant.
A folktale I heard about the Bachelor’s Button is that if you’re wondering if your current beau is the real deal, put a flower head in your pocket.  The next day, take it out and see if it’s still vibrant.  A fresh flower means he is the one for you.  If the flower has wilted, time to look for a better prospect. 
If you have any Bachelor’s Buttons blooming in your garden, please let me know and I’ll rush over with my trusty camera to add them to the GGC’s growing photo collection.

Bachelor's Buttons from the gardens of Jane Deane Clark, Elise Kendall, Ruth Stavis, and Jane Verdrager.  

​While taking pictures of flowers this summer, I have encountered a number of tiny flying and crawling critters.  Some were cute.  Some were creepy.  All were interesting.  There were some I had never seen before in my life and hadn’t a clue what they were. To find out, I visited iNaturalist for the first time. I heard about it during a raptor demonstration from an educator at VINS (Vermont Institute of Natural Science) in Quechee. She encouraged everyone to become Citizen Scientists and contribute data at iNaturalist.org
According to their website, iNaturalist is an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature.  I like the idea of not only learning, but participating. 
I uploaded some pictures and included when and where I saw the creature.  Within a day, I received a response with an identification and information such as a map of the world and every other sighting of that particular insect.  If you take a picture of an animal, bird, bug, or plant and want to know what it is, I recommend you give iNaturalist a try.  The better the photo, the more apt they are to identify it.  To my embarrassment, I learned that the spider above is actually backwards and hard to id but some kind of orb weaver.  I liked him too much not to include him.  The next one is a crab spider shortly after s/he caught a tasty meal.

Eastern Forest Sedgesitter on an Apple Blossom

Geron Bee Fly on a Black-eyed Susan

Dragonfly on Water Aven

Tachinida Fly on Astilbe

Scudder Bush Katydid on Pink Peony 

This strange creature was patiently sitting while I took this picture.  I haven't a clue what it is but couldn't resist adding it to this menagerie.

​In small and large towns all across our country, flowers decorate public property such as post offices, police stations, libraries, and fire stations.  When you pass by these places, even if you don’t consciously notice the flowers, you will probably sense that the people who live there care about their town. Our little town of Grantham, New Hampshire, is one of those well-cared-for towns.
For this blog, I decided to do a little digging into the history of garden clubs.  Horticultural societies, some dating back to colonial times, restricted women’s membership. In response women formed their own clubs within their own communities. The first garden club in America was the Ladies Garden Club of Athens, Georgia, founded in 1891.  According to information from the Women’s History Museum “While many garden clubs started with the goal of exchanging information and cuttings, they soon adopted larger missions, which indelibly shaped the American landscape.” The Grantham Garden Club was founded over twenty years ago and has been working ever since to enrich the lives of its members and the community.  While they continue to share information and cuttings, they do so much more.   
With a population of fewer than 3,000 people, Grantham boasts an active garden club of 80+ people. The Grantham Garden Club is responsible for container gardens throughout downtown. The photographs shown here are of the container gardens at the library and the town hall. Volunteers sign up for one week of maintenance and are responsible for watering, fertilizing, and deadheading all the flowers.  Each Sunday, the volunteer hands off the watering kit to the next volunteer. The volunteers provide care from May through September every year. Amelia Lantz is this summer’s coordinator, and she runs the whole process like a well-oiled machine.   
As I hope is evident, I am very proud of the Grantham Garden Club.  I think this is a fitting quote from anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”   

​Years ago on a walk around a suburban Annapolis, Maryland, neighborhood, I came upon one of those Little Free Libraries that dot the country, including at least three in Grantham.  In that sweet library, I found Hailstones and Halibut Bones, Adventures in Poetry and Color by Mary O’Neill.  By the time I read the first few poems, I had fallen in love with the book.  It became my go-to book for presents for special people in my life.  My sister Sandy would turn off the lights in her grandchildren’s bedroom just before Nico and Elsa went to sleep.  She would read one poem a night by flashlight.  Finally Nico asked “Nana, can you please read all the colors.”  I plan to share a lot of the poems on this blog and include pictures of flowers included in the poems.  If you can’t wait though, I recommend you buy a copy.  The book was published in 1961 and is still popular today. 
 
Unlike all the other poems in the book, this poem doesn’t name any flowers so the flowers I’ve chosen to accompany this blog are an unusual sort of black one and and one pretty white one.