Focus on Flowers

If you have a garden, you probably enjoy displaying your flowers in your home. I have many small vases and bottles with narrow necks, so that I can pop just one or two flowers into them. When I come indoors after my morning walk, I usually bring what I call my "Flower of the Day." It is the flower that has really caught my eye that I want to look at close-up. 

You may like to try drying your end of summer flowers in your microwave. 

The best way to air-dry most flowers is to hang them upside down in bunches in a dry dark place for 1-3 weeks. Take the leaves off the stems and bind 6-10 stems together tightly with rubber bands.

n 1906, Beatrix Potter acquired a farmhouse in the Lake District of England. 

Her new house and garden became incorporated into her stories about the famous characters in her books, such as Peter Rabbit and Mrs. Tabitha Twitchet, that still delight children today. 

She delighted in the plants that her neighbors gave to her: roses, hollyhocks, and phlox, and the fruit trees and vegetables growing in an informal way among the flowers. She blended the practical with the beautiful. There was a long flower-edged path leading up to the house, and she described her gardening style as higgledy-piggledy. Both Beatrix and her garden were utterly unpretentious.

Even as early as the 15th century in England, a time when gardens focused mainly on plants used in medicines and for cooking, there were a few plants grown because they produced beautiful flowers. 

The poem "Glory of the Garden" by  Rudyard Kipling.

Daphne, a shrub with tiny clusters of fragrant flowers, is poisonous as well as having sap that is a skin irritant. Just a few of Daphne's brightly colored berries could kill a child.

I have avoided dealing with some pressing but boring tasks today by reading some amusing quotations about gardens and gardening. Here are some you may enjoy: Barbara Spindel wrote recently, "Gardens have been sites of transgression ever since Eve and the serpent." 

Nicholas Culpeper was the son of an English clergyman, and he studied medicine at Cambridge University in the 17th century. When he began to practice, he gave plant medicines at minimal cost to his impoverished patients. 

In the 1960s, Beth Chatto started her garden on an unwanted wasteland in Essex, England. She was an ecologist and knew how to select plants that are adaptable to any conditions.