I went to pick parsley last night and discovered that someone had been there before me – in fact a contented gathering of the beautiful green and black “caterpillars” of the black swallowtail butterfly, Papilio polyxenes, was happily feasting on my kitchen door pot of parsley. These lovely larvae require a meal on members of the carrot family in order to complete their development and have adopted Dill and Parsley, neither of them native to North America, as tasty additions to their diet.  So now I’ll have to remember to plant a lot of extra parsley for the larvae, as well as lettuce for the rabbits and everything else for the wood-chuck.

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8/17/2007 9:22:29 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0] 

I was at Tony Avent’s amazing nursery Plant Delights with Horticulture’s “Great Plants event a couple of years ago. Tony has planted an avenue of golden dawn redwoods, Metasequoia glyptostroboides ‘Ogon’ with a ground cover of the purple pineapple lily, Eucomis comosa ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ near the entrance to the nursery. It looks sensational so of course I bought a couple of pineapple lilies and brought them back to Massachusetts.

I planted these bulbs in a container which I over-winter in my garage. This year they are really hitting their stride. The other day I had an “eek” experience when I looked at those beautiful dark burgundy leaves and found, nestled deep down in one of my lilies, a greedy snail! Too far down to pick out by hand, too small a space to get at –and then I remembered them – the ice tongs. One of those rarely used kitchen gadgets tucked away at the back of a drawer the all but forgotten ice tongs did the trick. The snail was extracted, the lily continues to bloom beautifully and the tongs have moved from the recesses of the kitchen drawer to a handy spot in my greenhouse. Who knows what other rescue missions they will perform?

P.S. I’ll be back at Plant Delights with the speakers in our fall symposium, Smaller Garden/Big Ideas. We’ll be there on Friday, October 19. Tony has invited all the registrants for the Raleigh symposium to come for breakfast and a little shopping at Plant Delights. I wonder what treasures I’ll find this time?

For more details click here or go to our web site and click on symposiums.

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8/6/2007 1:49:40 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]