My first memory of bees was not a happy one.  As a child running barefoot through a sprinkler in my backyard, I inadvertently stepped on a honey bee and was shocked at the pain of the sting.  My mother put mud on the scary, white blotch with a red center and made me feel better--at least psychologically.  Ammini Moorthy, our hard working GGC Scholarship Chair, was given a very different treatment for bee stings.  She grew up on a farm in a remote village in the foothills of the Western Ghats in Kerala in India.  When she got stung by a bee, her dad would take her to the cow shed and let the cow lick her sting.  The sandy texture of the cow’s tongue removed the stinger in no time.  Ammini has sweet childhood memories of bees too.  Bees would form hives high up in the trees in her village.  A honey extractor would climb up and harvest honey as everyone watched below.  The entire village shared the tasty treat.   
My son Glen had an interesting first encounter with a honey bee when he was five years old. I noticed him bending over a flower and asked him what he was doing.  He told me he was “patting a bee,”  I was horrified until I saw that he was indeed successfully patting a docile bee.  He had watched an episode of the Children’s Television Network program 3-2-1 Contact, about bees and pollination and he did a little research on his own. Not surprisingly, Glen grew up to become a scientist and works for the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  (Excuse the proud Mom brag :-)
Our club was lucky enough to have Troy Hall, a commercial beekeeper from nearby Plainfield, New Hampshire, talk to our members at our monthly meeting last Friday.  If you missed it and would like hear his entire presentation, go to granthamgardenclub.org and find it under Presentations.  I enjoyed watching it last night and highly recommend you give it a look. 
Troy practices sustainable, pesticide free beekeeping.  Half of Troy’s hives are dedicated to raising queen bees that beekeepers from all over the country purchase. These queen bees have proven their hardiness by surviving at least one of our harsh winters.  A queen bee lays between 175,000 to 200,000 eggs each year with those offspring inheriting her strong genes and contributing to Troy’s success. Although he calls his a small apiary, Troy sells 15,000 pounds of honey a year.  I picked up a jar of Hall Apiaries Grade A (Unheated/Raw) Honey at Rum Brook Market and now I’m hooked on his incredible product. 
If we didn’t know it before, we now know from Troy how crucial bees are to our very survival.  The GGC website has in depth information on bees and other pollinators.  Go to granthamgardenclub.org and under Resources, click on Pollinator Information.  You’ll find a long list of plants with good pollinator value so you can help sustain these invaluable insects.  
As I was surfing around the internet looking for fun facts about bees, I came across this Ted Talk by zoologist Lucy King about elephants and bees.  It’s twelve minutes long so I recommend you make yourself a cup of tea, add some honey, sit back and enjoy this fascinating video. 
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/04/909193427/lucy-king-how-can-bees-keep-the-peace-between-elephants-and-humans

Years ago I spotted a large rectangular plot of Dr. Seuss-type plants in the Boston Public Garden across from the Swan Boat ride launch. Flowers weren’t my usual photo subjects back then but these guys certainly caught my eye. I now know those whimsical flowers were Purple Sensation Alliums and that they are a species of onions. 
Ornamental onions sounded like an oxymoron to me, but now I know better.  Many of the gardens I visited this summer included them.  I learned from the gardeners that besides being lovely, they ward off those hoofed locusts better known as deer.  Seems the onion family of plants gives off an odor that steers deer clear of them.  For those hungry deer undeterred by the smell, they take a taste, make a face and walk away. This not only benefits the onion plants themselves but their flower neighbors.  I learned that
Allium and other onion plants are low maintenance and drought resistant which certainly came in handy this summer. 
When I researched Alliums for this blog, I learned that they were grown at the Imperial Botanical Gardens in St. Petersburg starting in the late 1800’s. The flower loving Brits heard about them, swiped some from the Russians, and soon started growing their own and making new varieties.  Today there are more than 800 types. 
The obvious question is “Are they edible?”  From what I could find they are indeed edible but there were so many cautions about pesticides and eating the right types that I’ll leave that to you to decide whether or not to eat them.  For me, I’ll stick to taking pictures of them.  

Ornamental onions and wild chives from the gardens of Anke Clews, Janie Clark, Jane Verdrager, and Ruth Stavis

​Since I became obsessed with taking pictures of flowers, I have seen things I had never noticed before—things that have been right in front of my eyes.  I remember as a kid, waving milkweed pods and loved watching the cloud of fluffy silks scatter their seeds.  I hadn’t given it any thought but assumed the pods started out as itty-bitty pods and grew to the fat, green sacks I picked. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that milkweeds grow balls of tiny blossoms first.
It reminds me of something Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes say in A Scandal in Bohemia.  In response to Dr. Watson’s query about how Holmes can figure out so much more from looking at the same scene, Holmes tells the good doctor “You see, but you do not observe.”  Since the pandemic changed my life, I have been taking more time, looking more closely, and observing. 
I was delighted when I first spotted the milkweed blossoms.  I planned to take pictures of the process and visited the milkweed patch again and again.  Before I knew it, there were the big green pods I remembered as a kid.  I even searched youtube for time lapsed photography of the process but milkweeds have eluded even them. The best I can do is to show you some photos of how they look at the beginning and the end.    
I tried to take pictures of Monarch butterflies sipping their nectar but could only manage a small white moth.  I wanted to find a Monarch chrysalis hanging on a milkweed leaf.  I searched all over the leaves looking for fat yellow and black striped caterpillars chomping on their milkweed feast. Sadly luck was not with me.  If you have any milkweed growing near you and spot a chrysalis or caterpillar, please let me know.  I’ll be right over. 
The take-away for me is that even though the metamorphosis from blossom to pod seems magical, it’s elementary my dear reader.  (Groan ;-) 

Picture this:  It’s 4 o’clock on a Friday in late summer.  You’re standing in a garden full of over one hundred vibrant Dahlias in full bloom.  Fast forward an hour and (gasp) all the blossoms are gone.  Happily, by the next Monday afternoon, more than one hundred new blooms will replace them. 
This Dahlia garden is the masterpiece of an incredible Dahlia Whisperer named Emily Cleaveland—known affectionately as The Dahlia Lady.  Emily knows EVERYTHING about Dahlias. She even developed her own gorgeous variety from a “Honey Do” that she named “Can’t Elope.” This whole Dahlia thing started for Emily, as many good things do, with a kind gesture. Twenty years ago, when she worked at Dartmouth, Emily brought some ordinary flowers she had grown to a co-worker (coincidentally named Terri). Terri suggested she try her hand at Dahlias because they are such incredible flowers and are perfect for funerals. 
I think they are more perfect for weddings.  Hundreds of beaming brides have clutched Emily’s Dahlias as they walk down the aisle. As a photographer, I love the idea of all those pictures of short-lived Dahlia blooms preserved in cherished wedding albums for lifetimes.
Emily told me a funny story about the Dahlia named Café Au Lait.  She grew it one season but was underwhelmed by its beige color so didn’t replant it.  Oddly, Martha Stewart lauded the drab Café Au Lait as the perfect Dahlia for a bride’s bouquet to show off the whiteness of the bridal gown. Now Café Au Lait tubers run $30 to $50 each.  Reluctantly Emily bought some tubers and grows “The Beast” among her beautiful flowers. Another instance of the power of marketing is Emily’s 2020 Toilet Paper Shortage Dahlia which is actually a white Dahlia that has some imperfections and isn’t usually marketed.  People loved the name and bought them anyway. 
When I heard Emily’s presentation at one of our Grantham Garden Club gatherings last year, she showed us how to grow Dahlias. These aren’t your average bulbs that you plant once and enjoy for years. These ladies are high maintenance perennials.  Because our Upper Valley climate is too harsh for them to survive the winter, Emily digs up all 250 plants after the first killer frost. Then the tubers are washed, dried, rinsed in anti-fungal solution, marked with their names, and stored in her basement in peat moss in black plastic bags with holes punched in them.  Emily stores between 3,000 to 5,000 tubers each year. The whole process takes about three weeks with help. 
In the Spring, before planting tubers in her own garden, Emily sells many of her over-wintered tubers at the farmers market.  Lots of people buy them for their own gardens and treat them as annuals, skipping the labor-intensive parts. If you can’t wait to get your hands on some of these delightful flowers though, stop by the Norwich Farmers Market on Saturday morning for the next few weeks.  But hurry, the Dahlias go fast.   
If you’d like to volunteer to help Emily dig up her plants, go to her website bydesigndahlias.com/ and you’ll find her contact information.  Bear in mind that Emily won’t need help until late October/early November depending on when the killing frost arrives. She will insure social distancing.  I am looking forward to helping out. I enjoy supporting good people and doing something I’ve never done before.  To me, that’s what life is all about.  

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 delightful 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 while 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.