Green Envy™ - An Exceptional Echinacea for Your Epidermis

For years, I've grown coneflowers (Echinacea sp.) in my garden, including one called Green Envy™. I love how its pink petals are tinged with green, as if designer Lilly Pulitzer had a hand in its creation. It gives coneflowers a special look, but it's also unique in its botanical qualities.

Echinacea has been used for centuries as a homeopathic way of boosting the immune system against colds. It can be found on many an ingredient list and many people swear by it when it comes to warding off disease.

Green Envy™ is notable because this particular cultivar, discovered by New York gardener Mark Veeder, contains considerably more of the phytochemical cichoric acid. An antioxidant, cichoric acid improves the condition of skin by inhibiting the enzymes that break down collagen. All echinaceas have it, but Green Envy™ has a higher concentration of it.

Farmacy, a skin care company in New York, bases its products on Green Envy™ and its pharmaceutical properties as related to the skin. They are partnered with Willow Wisp Organic Farm in Pennsylvania and Patent Wall Organic Farm in the Catskills, who grow the plants used in their products.

I've been using their Sleep Tight ointment for a couple of years now and have to say its my favorite skin treatment of the many I've used. It's not the sole product I currently use, but it's the one I reach for most often.

At first glance, it looks like petroleum jelly, but it's not as thick. You don't need to use a large amount at a time, and the skin absorbs it much like a serum.

Honey Potion comes with a metal

spatula, which stores on top of the lid
because the lid is magnetic!

I also use their Honey Potion on occasion and love how soft it makes my skin feel. This is a mask, though I've left it on longer than the typical mask time, even as long as overnight. When I do that, I use a smaller amount.

I'm often told I look younger than my nearly 62 years. I don't know if I do or not, and I don't know if Sleep Tight is part of the reason. But I do believe the research that has shown that the active ingredient in it is helpful for improving skin quality. I also like using a product that includes beneficial plant elements.

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Farmacy Beauty products are paraben and pthalate free, mineral oil free, formaldehyde donor free, synthetic fragrance free, and cruelty free. They also offer free shipping on orders over $40 and a flat rate of $5 on those under $40. They have free returns on all orders and Rakuten currently offers a 7% rebate on Farmacy Beauty orders.

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* Because I like their products so much, Sleep Tight in particular, I decided to participate in Farmacy's affiliate program. If you click on the links to products in this blog post and then make a purchase, I will receive a small amount of compensation. I was not asked nor paid to write this post and my opinion of this product is honest and genuinely my own.

In a Vase on Monday: A Milkweed Bouquet

I didn't intend to put together a bouquet today, although there are plenty of flowers in bloom out in the garden. All I was doing was feeding my monarchs.

Monarch egg on swamp milkweed.

Right now, I've got a dozen monarchs that I'm raising in the house. I found 11 eggs on various types of milkweed in my garden, and one teeny tiny caterpillar that had just hatched out that day. I don't usually raise them this early in the season, but when I saw the eggs and thought about all that could go wrong if I didn't, I just couldn't leave them out there.

Newly hatched!

We're well past that infant stage now, in fact, two of them are now chrysalides, as of Sunday afternoon. That means that the ten remaining caterpillars are eating voraciously and I'd better keep up with supplying milkweed, or else.

So that's what I was doing, going through my garden and cutting milkweed to bring in for them to eat. I decided I would cut four different kinds: common, swamp, butterfly weed, and whorled. The eggs were found on common, swamp and yet another kind I'm growing - poke milkweed. But hey, they'll eat any of it.

When I put the milkweed in water, in a little vase, and was ready to put it in the terrarium I use for raising them, I thought, "Wow, that's kind of a cool little arrangement." That's why you're looking at a photo of my monarchs' breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

The wispy one is whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata), the yellow-flowering one is butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa 'Hello Yellow'), and the other narrow-leaved one is swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata).  In this photo, it's difficult to tell the difference between the foliage of the latter two, but in real life, butterfly weed has rather hairy or fuzzy leaves, whereas swamp milkweed's leaves are smooth.

Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) has been named Perennial Plant of the Year
for 2017 by the Perennial Plant Association. It's usually seen with orange blooms.
This one is 'Hello Yellow'.

All three milkweeds are native to Ohio and many other parts of the country. It's highly recommended that you grow what's native to your area and I give you all the information you need to make those good choices in my book, THE MONARCH: Saving Our Most-Loved Butterfly.

It's appropriate that my bouquet is made of milkweed this week especially, since it's National Pollinator Week. And tomorrow, Tuesday, June 20th, I'll be a guest on Twitter's #plantchat, talking about monarchs and my new book. It starts at 2:00 Eastern, so be sure to join in!

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* "In a Vase on Monday " is a blogging meme hosted by Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.

In a Vase on Monday: Love in a Jar

I was walking through my garden last night and saw something blooming that I knew would make a great "In a Vase on Monday" candidate. This something was something I don't grow much of, in fact, there are only two stalks of blooms of this something in my garden at present and that may likely be all I get for this year. This something is also something that I think really does look better in a vase than in a garden and I can't think of much of any other somethings that I can say something like that about.

So this morning, I took my pruners to the garden and of course, you know what happened... I saw something else that needed pruning, so I pruned it. And then I remembered I was going to tip out my milkweed to stimulate some new growth for the monarchs that are not laying eggs on it. (Okay, we've found two eggs, but it should be many more.)

So I pruned that milkweed and inspected it for eggs and caterpillars and found none. :-(
I got rid of that and then remembered the something that I was going to prune for my vase and knew if I waited much longer, the somethings weren't going to be anything because each bloom doesn't last very long anyway.

I cut them and then I cut something else to go with them and went in the house and arranged my bouquet. I'm not a very good bouquet arranger, but flowers are pretty no matter what you do with them, so it looked okay to me. That's what mattered.

I photographed the bouquet from this angle and that and got ready to do my blog post for the meme, "In a Vase on Monday, " hosted by Cathy at Rambling in the Garden. But the photos of the arrangement I did today will have to wait until next Monday. Because there's an even better arrangement already in my house.

You may recognize these as Queen Anne's Lace (Daucus carota). They can be seen with such frequency around here right now that they seem downright invasive. In fact, they are not only on Ohio's Invasive Species list, they're on the Well-Established Invasive Species list.

They're pretty, in their own right. But this bouquet is the most beautiful one I've ever seen or had the pleasure of having in my home. It was a gift, you see...

If you've ever received a floral bouquet picked by a child, you know what I mean.

Thank you, Hannah.

Walking On Sunshine

I have this kind of love/hate relationship with dandelions and I'm betting you do too. They're the sort of thing that you can't live with because they irritate you so much and you can't live without them because they just won't let you.

At this time of year, they're fairly innocuous, and to be honest, they've got a lot going for them. We've just emerged from winter and seeing the first dandelion bloom pretty much makes each and every one of us smile, even if it's only on the inside. And one or two of them won't hurt anything anyway. Unless you let it go to seed.

One dandelion bloom produces 54 to 172 seeds and one plant will produce more than 2000 seeds. A single acre of dandelions is estimated to have the capability of producing 240,000,000 seeds a year. Not only that, dandelions do this all on their own because they are apomictic. In other words, no sex is required for them to reproduce. No wonder they pop up anywhere and everywhere.

Even though dandelions don't require pollination to produce seed and thus reproduce, they are well-visited by pollinators such as bumblebees, honeybees, butterflies, beetles, and moths. Dandelions are one of their earliest sources of nectar and far be it from me to deny the bees their breakfast.

But you could be enjoying dandelions for your breakfast too. Every part of the dandelion is edible, with the roots tasting a lot like parsnips, the young greens making a tasty leafy salad, and the blossoms as the basis for a delicate-tasting jelly. And there's wine.

Dandelions pack a punch when it comes to nutrients. According to nutritiondata.com and the USDA, “This food is low in saturated fat, and very low in cholesterol. It is also a good source of folate, magnesium, phosphorus and copper, and a very good source of dietary fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol), Vitamin K, Thiamine, Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, calcium, iron, potassium and manganese.”

One serving of dandelion greens (1 cup) has 35 calories, provides 112% of your daily value (DV) of Vitamin A, 32% of Vitamin C, 10% of calcium, and 9% of iron.

We've never had a perfect lawn. Far from it, for several reasons. First of all, we live on an acre that has a lot of grass. We don't weed and feed, and as far as dandelions go, I'm perfectly fine with seeing them peppered throughout the yard as yellow flowers. I don't mind clover either but that's a conversation for another day.

Do we battle dandelions, in spite of all the facts about them that are in the pro column? Sure, because we don't want an entire lawn of them and I don't want them in my gardens. We're not trying to raise them as a crop.

So we dig out the larger ones and we try to mow before they go to seed. We keep just enough around for grandkids to make daisy chains and bring us sunny bouquets. Just enough to provide pollinators with nutrition when it's in limited supply. Just enough to make us smile when we that's exactly what we need.

Kara, age 6, in 1986

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The article, "Walking On Sunshine," first appeared in my weekly newspaper column in the Paulding Progress, published in Paulding, OH.

I've Never Met an Anemone I Didn't Like

I've grown spring anemones, summer anemones and fall anemones. They have been ivory, white, red, pink, and purple. The fact that their flowers are daisy-like are probably one reason I love them so much, with white daisies being my favorite flower of all time. (Well, that's what I'll tell you today. Next week, it's likely to be something else.)

I got a new one that I planted this fall - Anemone nemerosa 'Bracteata Pleniflora' - and it's a spring ephemeral. That means it will come up in the spring, flower, and then disappear with the heat of summer, never to be heard from again until the next spring.

Wood Anemone (Anemone nemerosa 'Bracteata Pleniflora')
Photo: Washington State University

When my "bulbs" arrived from Easy to Grow Bulbs, my first thought was, "These are bulbs???" They're actually rhizomes. To be honest, they reminded me of some of my red wigglers that sometimes escape from my worm bin in my office and can't find their way back home. Three days later.

See what I did there?  ;-)

The included planting instructions said I should soak them in lukewarm water for about 3 hours or so, prior to planting. But as I often do, when soaking is recommended, I used Annie Haven's Moo Poo Tea. That's what everyone calls it, but its official product name is Haven's Natural Brew. Soaking bulbs is just one of the things it's good for. I also use it as a nutrient-rich drench for my houseplants about once a month, and in my garden as a soil conditioner.

After soaking, I planted the anemone rhizomes in a location that's part shade and I'm hoping for some of those beautiful semi-double blooms come spring.

Wordless Wednesday: All Hail the Queen!

Queen Anne's Lace 

Daucus carota var. carota

 

Zones 3-9

Full Sun to Part Shade

24-36" tall

Biennial

Can cause dermatitis from handling

Noxious weed in some states, including Ohio

 

Wordless Wednesday: First Spring Bloom...Snowdrops

The only brave souls in a northwestern Ohio garden that feels like spring forgot...

Double Snowdrops
Galanthus nivalis 'Flore Pleno'

Zone: 3-9

Height: 4-6 inches

Light: Light Shade to Full Sun

Bloom:  Late Winter/Early Spring

Other: Flowers are fragrant. Ephemeral. Naturalizes.

It's Not Goldenrod's Fault

Fall has absolutely positively arrived, both officially and unofficially. The wondrously cool nights and crisp clear days when the warmth of the sun feels good on our backs instead of making us sweat is a welcome relief from the hot, dry summer. The leaves are beginning to turn those lovely shades of red, gold, and orange and soon the frost will be on the pumpkin.

Notice the unremarkable blooms on this ragweed.

And those of us that have seasonal allergies are sneezing and itching and coughing. Most of us with those kinds of allergies know that it’s ragweed that’s the biggest culprit right now, but do you know what ragweed really is? I’m here to tell you what it ISN’T.

You know those beautiful golden plumy things that are blooming right now in the fields and along the roadsides? That’s goldenrod, one of our most beautiful fall wildflowers. It’s not ragweed and it’s not the cause of all your allergy frustrations, in spite of what you may have believed all these years. In fact, goldenrod pollen is too heavy to be carried by the wind, and some forms of goldenrod contain a powerful herbal ANTI-allergen for those who suffer from seasonal allergies. Take THAT, ragweed!

While it’s true that allergies flare up about the time goldenrod blooms, it’s because ragweed blooms at the same time. And ragweed isn’t nearly so glamorous, despite belonging to the genus Ambrosia. (There’s a cruel joke, eh?) It has boring green spikes of tiny blooms and you really wouldn’t give it a second look, even if you were taking a slow, leisurely stroll down a country road.

Ragweed pollen is particularly irritating, due to its spiny exterior, and though it’s found in every corner of the country, it’s more plentiful in the eastern US and the Midwest. In fact, the Midwest has the honor of having the most ragweed pollen of anywhere on earth. The bad news is that because our climate is changing, the hay fever season is becoming longer.

And more bad news – if you think you can avoid ragweed pollen, think again. It’s generally too small to be caught by common filtration masks (who wants to wear those, anyway?) and it’s heaviest during the hours of 10 AM and 4 PM, so unless you can stay inside with windows closed, you’re out of luck.

Ragweed foliage

And you know how we all love the smell of bed sheets that are dried on the clothes line? Don’t do it. The pollen gets embedded in the sheets and then you’re just sleeping in the stuff all night. Yeah, I know. I’m not helping, am I? So let’s talk about goldenrod some more.

Our native Solidago canadensis is in the Aster family. It’s the Kentucky state wildflower (Nebraska, too) and many in the Appalachian areas use it to make tea to combat fatigue. You can grow it in your gardens and many people do. There are hybrid cultivated varieties as well, such as ‘Peter Pan’, ‘Fireworks’ and ‘Golden Baby’.

Short's Goldenrod
(Solidago shortii 'Solar Cascade')

The CREW (Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife) Center at the Cincinnati Zoo worked to bring back a specific goldenrod – Solidago shortii, named for Charles Short, who discovered it in 1840, growing on an island in the Ohio River. It’s one of the rarest plants in the world. Once considered to be extinct, it’s now on the Federally Endangered List after a small population was rediscovered in Kentucky in 1939. Another small crop was located in southern Indiana in 2002.  Now you can purchase it from nurseries to grow in your own garden. (For example, Bluestone Perennials.)

So, don’t blame the goldenrod for your sniffling woes. Enjoy it for its sunny disposition and natural beauty it gives the landscape. Appreciate that it’s a great source of food for butterflies and bees. You might even want to grow some in your own garden.

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Revised from, "Vindication for the Innocent," that I wrote and was first published in print on October 3, 2012, in our local newspaper, Paulding Progress, for my weekly column, "In the Garden."

For the Last Time — Lobelia

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

The third time's a charm, they say.  Well, I say, not quite.  It remains to be seen.  When I first started gardening in earnest, I wanted to grow it all and that included one of Ohio's native wildflowers, Lobelia cardinalis.  It's a tricky one, it turns out.

I first saw it in person during a 2006 visit to GardenFair, held at Winterthur in Delaware, that great estate of the du Pont's.  In the Quarry Garden, the lobelia was in full bloom and its bright red color was stunning.  I wanted some of that.

It wasn't difficult to find lobelia to buy, but I only purchased one plant and it went into our shade garden near the house.  I don't think that one even lasted one season.  A couple of years later, I purchased some blue lobelia (Lobelia syphilitica) and it met a similar fate.

Then I was advised that lobelia likes to grow in clumps and if you want to successfully grow it, you'd better plant at least three together.  This spring, I saw some beautiful plants at Oak Park Landscape and Water Garden Center and couldn't resist trying again.

Lobelia likes it wet and though my shade garden isn't overly so, this was a good year to grow plants that like moisture.  We've had unusually regular rains so if ever I was going to have success growing lobelia, this was the year.  But I didn't count on the slugs.

Here's my lobelia, with its stems chewed all to heck by what I'm guessing are those darn slugs.

Unfortunately, I didn't notice it until they'd done a fair amount of damage. The three plants were doing pretty well but I lost two stems before I decided to take action by putting sand around the base of the plants.  Hopefully it's not too late to save them.

And bless it's little heart, it's trying to bloom in spite of its injuries...

If I lose my lobelia this time, I'm done.  I'll just have to admire it in someone else's garden.

Late Winter Walk in the Woods

Eastern skunk cabbage
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

In my quest to see skunk cabbage in its natural environment, Romie and I headed down the road to the woods where we go to see the wildflowers in spring.  Eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is the first to appear here, usually appearing in late February or early March.

Skunk cabbage smells funky because one of its pollinators is flies.  They're attracted to stinky stuff.  This plant has a cool trait though; its flower buds generate heat - enough to melt snow!  The temperature inside the plant can reach as high as 70° F on a cold winter's day.

We cross Poohsticks Bridge on the way to the woods.

I've never seen it in this woods, in fact, I've never seen it in person anywhere, in spite of it being native to our part of Ohio.  I suspect I've just never been out and about during the time when it emerges. Only the prospect of seeing a wildflower would get me out in the woods at a time of year when I've thoroughly had it with winter.

We didn't find any skunk cabbage - mostly just some grasses and moss were greening up - but we did see some lovely lichens growing on fallen trees. It will be another month before we start to see much in the way of wildflowers on the woods' floor.

 

Note the small stick that's threaded all the way through several layers.

I'm not sure what type of fungus this is.  It has a black stem and the cap
measures about four inches across.

 

One of the things I like about our walks down the road is that we have the most interesting - and strange - conversations.  Yesterday's went like this:

Romie:  (Standing, facing south)  I wonder if I took my gloves off and held them against my stomach in the sun, if they'd get warm enough to keep my gloves off.

Me:  I think it would depend on if there's wind or not.

Romie:  Yeah, I mean out of the wind.

Me:  Probably at this temperature (30°), they'd stay warm enough.  But having your hands inside your gloves holds your body heat there too, so it's probably a wash as to which would be warmer.

You know, there are people who think about these things when they're kids and then they grow up to become scientists because they want to know the answers.  I want to know the answers, but I don't want to devote my life's work to finding them.

Thank God for scientists.

Romie:  Yeah.

And an earlier one:

Me:  I wonder where the snakes are.

Romie:  I don't.

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Thank You, Lady Bird: A Visit to the Wildflower Center in Austin

Photo: WHPO

I'm not too young to remember Lady Bird Johnson's "Beautify America" campaign (or Northerners trying to imitate her Southern accent while saying it), but I'll bet my own grown children don't know why they see wildflowers growing along our rural roads and highways. It's become such a part of the United States we know today that most of us take it for granted. But it wasn't always that way.

When Lady Bird became our nation's First Lady after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, one of her first projects was promoting green space in our nation's capitol.  She didn't like the concrete parks nearly devoid of flowers.  She went on from there to get behind the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, which limited signage along public highways.

Lady Bird became well known for her efforts, and on her 70th birthday - December 22, 1982 - she and actress Helen Hayes founded the National Wildflower Research Center in Austin, Texas. Later renamed the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center because of her financial contributions, today the center is part of the University of Texas at Austin. The Center celebrated 30 years in December, when Lady Bird would have been 100 years old.

Author Kathi Appelt and illustrator Joy Fisher Hein collaborated to create a beautiful and charming children's book, Miss Lady Bird's Wildflowers: How a First Lady Changed America (Harper Collins Publishers, 2005), targeted for ages 7-10. Kids will learn a little bit about Lady Bird Johnson, including how she got her nickname, as well as what led her to lead the way for a more beautiful America. It's important to know the story behind Lady Bird's legacy and this book is a wonderful way to learn about it. There's even an online activity kit that coordinates with the book.

When I visited Jenny Peterson, my co-author of our upcoming book, Indoor Plant Decor: The Design Stylebook for Houseplants, at her home in Austin last July, we took time out to visit the Wildflower Center. It was a very warm day, with a high of 102° F, so we didn't really care that we only had a couple of hours to spend there.  It wasn't necessarily a high bloom time for the Center, but still very beautiful, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent there with my good friend. I'd like to make a return visit someday.

Here are some photos I took during my brief visit at the Wildflower Center. Enjoy!

Now THAT'S an agave!

Metal wildflower sculptures are located throughout the center,
including this native Texas Bluebonnet.

Yes, the sky really was that blue.

Kiss Me Quick (Portulaca pilosa)

Dragonfly - possibly a Neon Skimmer

I have agave envy!

Texas sotol (Dasylirion texana)

Top to bottom:
Cardinal Feather (Acalypha radians)
Silver Pony-foot (Dichondra argentea)
Damianita (Chrysactinia mexicana)

The requisite cactus.

Halberdleaf rosemallow
(Hibiscus laevis)

Mexican primrose-willow
Ludwigia octovalvis

Jenny has a similar photo on her camera!  ;-)

Hey, I know that one!  I have one in MY yard!
Beautyberry Shrub (Callicarpa americana)

I  just hope the snakes know how to read.

I guessed this to be a Euphorbia because it reminded me a
little of a poinsettia.  It's Euphorbia cyathophora.

Gulf Fritillary butterfly

Click on photo to enlarge for easier reading.

Learn more about the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center by visiting their website.