Summer Flax Project

Hi All,
A small group has been working hard this summer to cultivate 2 flax fields in the Morningside Community Gardens! One plot is brown flax and the other is golden flax. The flax will hopefully be harvested early this fall. Flax is useful for its oils and fibers. The oil can be used in a variety of foods, lotions, and soaps. The fibers can be used for multiple grades of fabric.

Summer Perennials & Back To School

Miniature Iris

         Try as I might, every year I come to the same conclusion: the flowers on summer perennials just don't do it for me. All of my favorite flowers - hellebore, peonies, iris, wisteria,  tulips and poppies- bloom before school gets out. Come September I'm tired of the usual garden flowers. Echinacea, rudbeckia, and phlox have been dominating gardens for a month. I succumb that they are, respectfully, the drought resistant carriers of the garden. Until this week we've not recieved much rain, and I've done very little watering (conserving resources....)

        The giant sunflowers of late August are eye-catchers and so are always welcome company walking down the street. But once a plant dies in your garden for two consecutive years there exists an unwelcome jealousy of neighbors with a small army of sunflowers standing watch in their yards.

        My favorite plants of August, the dahlia's never fail to make my heart skip a beat. But their fussy behavior (dig me up and take me inside every winter) and high investment costs prevent me from growing them. Hence, I go visit gardens to see them, and remind myself that although my favorite flowers bloom in the spring, summer foliage fills the garden so well and wins me over in the end... I love a garden in August.

Perennial garden at Frelinghuysen Arboretum, NJ

       This weekend is back to Syracuse for many of us who've been away and the return of friends for those who stayed  the summer. Which means we'll probably have a barbeque/work day/meeting/party sooner rather than later. So stay in touch & see you all soon!

Elizabeth
   

'Gardeners' Gone Bad

I use the terms gardeners loosely. As we have some folks who come and mow our lawns, but never do any actual landscaping.

That is, until last night. When I came home and they had decided for some bizarre reason to mow, I assume, as they have no other landscaping equiptment, the small garden along the edge of the above ground pool.

Why? I have no idea. The area looks less weedy than many other areas of the yard that they ignore week after week. As a matter of fact, MY VERY FIRST SUNFLOWER had just burst into bloom two days ago.What did they do after they destroyed all of my sunflowers and cosmo's? They left them laying in the grass to remind me of the devastation every time I look outside the window.

Its one of those weeks when forces beyond my control have quelled my desire to be in the garden. The birds will be sad too as I had save the sunflowers & cosmo seeds for birdseed.

Lovely Liverworts

I stumbled across a thriving population of complex thalliod liverworts on a friend's brick patio this weekend that I had to share.

Liverworts are a Bryophyte in the phylum Heptophyta. This population seemed to be spreading clonally, more specifically by gemmae. Gemmae are bundles of cells that reside in small gemma cups on the liverwort's body that are dispersed via rain droplets and produce clones of the parent plant.

Distinctly featured here, and the factor leading me to believe my population was genetically identical, was that all the plants in the area possessed archegoniophores, those palm tree like structures protruding from the leafy plant body.  Archegoniophores are female reproductive structures, and without a male antheridiophore in sight I'm afraid these liverworts have very little hope of being fertilized.

I think these relatives of the mosses are pretty neat, and I like that they flaunt their sex all over the place. They are putting on a lovely show if you'll only get down and notice!

PS- apologies for the picture quality. All are taken with my cell phone as my camera broke while traveling. One will have to wait until I am steadily employed, my birthday, or someone else wants to be my photographer for improved pictures. I hope you bear with me!

Enjoy the end of summer,

Elizabeth