umbel season has arrived!

have i mentioned my fascination and affection for umbels? yeah, well, umbels are a personal favorite, and umbel season is beginning. umbellules, umbellets, umbellates, subumbellates, and of course umbelliforms. compound umbels, simple umbels, primary umbels, secondary umbels. a mother is supposed to say she loves all of her children equally. and i really do love all of my umbellate children just exactly the same. except i love wild carrot (queen anne’s lace) just a little bit more.

golden alexander (Zizia aurea)

can you eat it?

steve planted borage just outside our front door this year, as part of his ongoing campaign to convert as much of our two acres of woods as possible into a “food forest.” i was skeptical (that’s sort of my role) of his enthusiastic purchase of three borage plants, which we have never planted before, but lordy, when they bloomed, i was in all the way. the whole plant is edible, including these gorgeous flowers, which steve tells me will be featured soon on one of our dinner salads. ok, hon. i’m here for it.

borage flowers (Borago officinalis)

sleepless summer nights

i had a hard time falling asleep last night. the june bugs fell hopelessly in love with my bedside reading light, and threw themselves with tireless passion against my window screen, making sounds like lawnmowers. apparently by morning,  they had all died of broken hearts.

june bugs

a huge and hidden migration

squadrons of dragonflies are once again patrolling my yard. they seemed to arrive all on the same day. which is unlikely, because dragonflies over winter in three different ways: some dragonflies spend the winter underwater in their larval stage, other dragonflies lay eggs that survive the winter and hatch the next spring, and a few species of dragonflies, like this green darner, migrate south for the winter.  what? dragonflies migrate?  i only just learned this recently, and it blows my mind. on tiny two-inch wings, these guys migrate as much as 900 miles each spring and fall. here’s what i learned with a quick google search:

In the early spring, the first generations exit the shelter of their Southern ponds and fly north, an average of 400 miles on the wing. There they lay their eggs and die. The second generation hatches in the north and, by September, has flown south. There they lay eggs and die, too. Because the South is the most comfortable place for a dragonfly late in the year, the third generation won’t migrate at all. They settle in for winter in Florida or the Caribbean. Life is good — until spring rolls around, when the cycle of eggs, death, birth repeats.

my son is particularly fond of dragonflies. he recently shared this factoid with me:

Dragonflies are the world’s deadliest hunters. They are four times more likely to catch their prey than big cats. Dragonflies catch more than 95 percent of the prey they target. Dragonflies keep their prey in sight at all times with their large eyes, adjust their flight, and can predict how their prey will move before catching it

okay, so maybe a little more than you were expecting to learn about dragonflies on an ordinary wednesday morning in june. but, c’mon, how remarkable are dragonflies?

green darner dragonfly

peak fern season

i talk a lot about my ferns. i feel like it was only yesterday i was posting photos of fiddleheads. and now, it’s already peak fern season. that ostrich fern frond, going diagonally across the image is over 4 feet tall. that makes most of the rest of those fronds the length of my arm. imagine the single minded determination it would take to grow seven or eight arms, umm fronds, in one month. makes me feel like a bit of a slacker. what did you do with your month of may?

six ferns: ostrich, sensitive, lady, maidenhair, interrupted, and cinnamon