Here in West Virginia we now have daffodils blooming in our gardens and along walking paths, like messengers of spring. Whew! Finally spring seems to have broken through the cold and the snow of a particularly cold February.Where there are daffodils, there are other...
Our Lenten Roses (Helleborus sp.) are now above ground and promising pink and white blooms soon. This is one of the confusingly named flowers. This flower was called a Lenten Rose because it blooms during Lent in the Christian calendar in Europe. This hellebore is not...
It’s that time of year again. Goldenrod is everywhere along the roads, in the fields, popping up in gardens. It is a great pollinator plant. Butterflies and bees use goldenrod as a source of late summer pollen so they can spend the winter with full stomachs. When I...
I have some blue cranesbill geraniums which spread aggressively in my garden and even in with the weeds. These are not the red double geraniums sold in all the flower stores. These are cranesbill geraniums (Geranium maculatum “Rosanne”). The native wild geraniums...
As we walk along we see little blobs of bubbly foam on a stem here and there. Often referred to as frog spit or snake spit, whose spit is this? It doesn’t come from either a frog or a snake. It is the house of a little bug nymph. And, yes, there really is a group of...
Two days ago I was walking with my golden doodle along a woodland trail we use every day, and much to my delight a little white fringed orchid (Platanthera lacera) had popped up. I was amazed that I had not seen it the day before. It was suddenly there next to my...
