Garden Porn

It never occurred to me before now, but when photographed from just the right angle, Monarda (AKA Bee Balm) bears a striking resemblance to a large, pink and hairy spider. If I saw this “critter” coming up my water spout, I’d scream bloody murder.

This is nothing, however, compared to the recent news flash I received from the exterminator (who is essentially on retainer chez moi, due to the pesticide-resistant population of Terminator ants and squirrel-sized roof rats in our neighborhood). Evidently, my vegetable garden is home to a large nest of real black widow spiders. So now I go back there to pick the squash and strawberries with my hiking boots on, just in case. Not that I’m squeamish or anything. Not me. No. Never have been. But black widow spiders? A bit of precaution, that’s all.

Finally, the day lilies are plentiful all round the garden from now until the end of the summer. The amazing thing about them is that we started off with just two spindly but unruly clumps when the garden itself was just a dream. The day lilies were almost the only blooming plant in the back yard in those days, so we carefully divided those two clumps into six very small ones, and planted a couple of them around the pool, a couple in the optimistically named “flower bed,” and a couple more in front by the driveway.

Today, I swear we must have a dozen clumps of these sunny golden day lilies brightening up their places all around the garden, and all originate from those first two. Kind of reminds me of that old “Stone Soup” story that someone told me when I was a little girl, about poor villagers who wanted to make soup for supper but had nothing except a caldron of water and a smooth gray stone. Deciding that the stone might add a bit of flavor to the water, the villager put it into the caldron and stirred, sighing at the thought of her simple supper. “But I have a carrot,” said one villager, bringing it along and adding it to the caldron. “And I have an onion,” offered another, tossing it in. “Here’s a little turnip,” said an old woman, hobbling over to the caldron and dropping it into the boiling water. And so on and so on, until that caldron was bubbling away with bits of this and that, all combined to make a lovely big pot of “Stone Soup” to share. Does anybody else remember that story? Anyway, the day lilies remind me of it, the way they’ve added their flavor to what was a pretty poor plot of ground a few years ago.