Blossom XLII: Carrots in Bloom

Daucus carota subsp. sativus attracts many beneficial insects to the garden.  This beautiful flower is the second year growth of a common, edible carrot.

~

We don’t see as much ‘Queen Ann’s Lace’ growing along our Virginia roadsides as I remember from childhood.  It was actually my mother who commented on this last weekend, as we were out driving together.  I can remember cutting stems of this lovely wildflower as a child, bringing it home, and wanting to put it on the kitchen table in a vase.

She was usually less than enthusiastic in those days, maybe because of all of the little insects still enjoying the nectar rich flowers.  I often brought home wild flowers and grasses from my wanderings, and never quite understood her concern with the ‘bugs’ they harbored.

Wild carrot is considered invasive in some states, but not in Virginia.  It is one of those common plants that immigrated to North America with the 17th Century European colonists.  I know a place along the Colonial Parkway where the wild plant grows untamed, along with other wildflowers.

~

Queen Anne’s Lace

~

This is the second spring that I’ve planted plain old grocery store carrots out into our upper sunny garden in early spring, wanting these gorgeous white flowering plants for summer.

You remember that a carrot is a biennial.  The seeds planted in spring result in a carrot root, usually harvested as a vegetable.  Were you to leave the carrots unharvested over winter, this is the plant you’d have the following year.  Organic farms still do this, sometimes, to generate their own seeds.

~

~

But I have simply bought some carrots and planted them.  I got a bag of ‘rainbow’ carrots from Trader Joes in late February.  I’m curious to learn whether the plant or the flowers will be different, depending on whether the carrot was yellow, orange or purple.  What do you think?

My planting technique was to simply open a space in the earth with my hori hori blade, as deeply as I could, and slip a carrot into the hole.  The carrot takes over, from there, and one day this spring I noticed this beautiful, fine foliage growing up through the fading daffodil leaves.

We will enjoy the show for many weeks; longer if I remember to deadhead the spent flowers.  Once the plant sets seeds, it has accomplished its life work.  As a biennial, it won’t return for another year.

But that’s OK.  We can fill the garden with flowers again next year for the price of a bag of carrots.

~

~

Woodland Gnome 2018

~

~

“It is easier to tell a person what life is not,

rather than to tell them what it is.

A child understands weeds that grow from lack of attention, in a garden.

However, it is hard to explain the wild flowers

that one gardener calls weeds,

and another considers beautiful ground cover.”
.

Shannon L. Alder

 

Summer Garden: Shifting Focus

~

“The beauty of that June day was almost staggering.

After the wet spring, everything that could turn green

had outdone itself in greenness

and everything that could even dream of blooming

or blossoming was in bloom and blossom.

The sunlight was a benediction.”

.

Dan Simmons

~

Allium

~

“And so with the sunshine

and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees,

just as things grow in fast movies,

I had that familiar conviction

that life was beginning over again

with the summer.”

.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

~

~

“There’s this magical sense of possibility

that stretches like a bridge

between June and August.

A sense that anything can happen.”

.

Aimee Friedman

~

Carrot flower and Coreopsis

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

~

Clematis

~

“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”

.

Oscar Wilde

* * *

For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Focus

WPC: Order

~

“Deep in the human unconscious

is a pervasive need for a logical universe

that makes sense.

But the real universe

is always one step beyond logic.”

.

Frank Herbert

~

~

“Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos,

including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic,

and abstract beauty.”

.

Deepak Chopra

~

~

“The order that our mind imagines

is like a net, or like a ladder,

built to attain something.

But afterward you must throw the ladder away,

because you discover that, even if it was useful,

it was meaningless.”

.

Umberto Eco

~

~

“Chaos is merely order

waiting to be deciphered.”

.

José Saramago

~

~

“The world is not to be put in order.

The world is order.

It is for us to put ourselves in unison

with this order.”

.

Henry Miller

~

~

“Chaos was the law of nature;

Order was the dream of man.”

.

Henry Adams

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

.  .  .

For the Daily Post’s 

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Order

Sunday Dinner: New Horizons

~

“When we look up, it widens our horizons.

We see what a little speck we are in the universe,

so insignificant, and we all take ourselves so seriously,

but in the sky, there are no boundaries.

No differences of caste or religion or race.”

.

Julia Gregson

~

~

“There is so much to say about a past.

It’s a vein of gold through a mountain,

leading to an incontrovertible stone heart of truth.

But the future is a horizon –

a faintly visible line that will promise much,

and always remain too far away to touch.”

.

Aliya Whiteley

~

~

“Watching the infinite horizons

gives you infinite dreams, infinite ideas,

infinite paths!

Choose a great target

and then you will see

that great instruments will appear for you

to reach that target!”

.

Mehmet Murat ildan

~

~

“Material and technical changes

are mostly quite visible.

But less visible are the changes

in the mind of the people, their way of thinking,

their conception of the world

and the quality of their fears.”

.

Erik Pevernagie

~

~

“Dreamers are mocked as impractical.

The truth is they are the most practical,

as their innovations lead to progress

and a better way of life for all of us.”

.

Robin S. Sharma

~

~

“In a world of change,

the learners shall inherit the earth,

while the learned shall find themselves

perfectly suited for a world

that no longer exists.”

.

Eric Hoffer

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

~

~

“We’re treating the sky as an open sewer.”

. 

“Every night on the news

is like a nature hike

through the book of Revelation.”

.

“Now we have solutions to the climate crisis,

and they can create tens of millions of new jobs.” 

.

Al Gore on CNN’s ‘State of The Union,’ June 4, 2017

~

 

Sunday Dinner: Community

~

“No man is an island, entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less,

as well as if a promontory were,

as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were:

any man’s death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind,

and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls;

it tolls for thee.”

.

John Donne

~

~

“If man is to survive,

he will have learned to take a delight

in the essential differences between men

and between cultures.

He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes

are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety,

not something to fear.”

.

Gene Roddenberry

~

~

“What should young people do with their lives today?

Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing

is to create stable communities

in which the terrible disease of loneliness

can be cured.”

.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr

~

~

“The single greatest lesson the garden teaches

is that our relationship to the planet

need not be zero-sum,

and that as long as the sun still shines

and people still can plan and plant,

think and do, we can, if we bother to try,

find ways to provide for ourselves

without diminishing the world. ”

.

Michael Pollan

~

~

“Remember that the happiest people

are not those getting more,

but those giving more.”

.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

~

~

In Memory of Special Agent Michael Walter,

who was lost in the line of duty May 26-27, 2017

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

~

~

“But many of us seek community

solely to escape the fear of being alone.

Knowing how to be solitary

is central to the art of loving.

When we can be alone,

we can be with others without using them

as a means of escape.”

.

bell hooks

~

Wednesday Vignette: Peace

~

“Peace begins with a smile..”
.

Mother Teresa

~

~

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness:

only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate:

only love can do that.”

.

Martin Luther King Jr.

~

~

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power,

the world will know peace.”

.

Mahatma Gandhi

~

~

“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness.

If you are attentive, you will see it. ”

.

Thich Nhat Hanh,

~

~

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2017

~

~

“The mind can go in a thousand directions,

but on this beautiful path,

I walk in peace.

With each step, the wind blows.

With each step, a flower blooms.”

.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Carrot Flowers?

Carrot blossom, ready to open sometime soon….

~

Back in mid-February, I told you about planting whole carrots from the produce counter in our garden, in hopes of getting flowers from them this summer.  I took the word of a gardener who wrote about planting carrots in the April 2017 Fine Gardening magazine.

It can be great fun to experiment with these quirky ideas when you have a little garden space to work with.  And so I planted about a half dozen whole carrots just to see what would happen.

~

~

It didn’t take long for them to produce a few leaves, but those first leaves didn’t last long.  I suspect hungry rabbits had a nibble here and there.  But I noticed strong plants growing from those experimental carrots a few weeks ago.  And now, Voila!   Our carrot plants have grown to about 4′ high.  Even before the blooms open, I find them quit spiffy.

~

~

As you can see, the carrot’s leaves are fern like and delicate.  These grow in full sun.

There is still time to plant all sorts of interesting things in the garden.  Whether you start with a root, a cutting, a bulb, a seed or a stem; why not try something new and different this year?

~

Carrot with Allium bud

~

Woodland Gnome 2017