Nature's Bouquet

a reply to: angelchemuel
Sounds like a wonderful profession!
Interesting about the dill indeed. It's the latest in a string of messages urging me to take a step back and breathe. Thanks for all the good information and the rainbows!

originally posted by: MichiganSwampBuck
Before I moved on to my swamp, I would camp here. When I arrived from the city, I could smell the fresh air. It had a fresh, clean ozone like scent. You could smell the forest, with it's earthy green scent. After over twenty years of living here, I rarely catch that scent anymore, but I can totally smell the big city (Detroit) when I go there.

I often stop to smell the wild flowers when I walk around. Honey suckle, Russian Olive trees, and Lilacs often tickle my olfactory nerves. Wild roses are a treat as the blooms are very short lived.

ETA: I also crush up leaves from water mints, winter green and even skunk cabbage to get a snoot full. If it's edible I may even eat it, be it berries, flowers or leaves.

This is such a wonderful post. It's so gratifying to hear you moved to a place which made you happy and built a homestead in the fresh air. Reminds me of Walden (but better because you stayed).

Funny you mention skunk cabbage, as it was featured in the article Phage posted of the top 10 foulest smelling plants. Is it as repulsive as the article suggests?

originally posted by: zosimov

originally posted by: MichiganSwampBuck
Before I moved on to my swamp, I would camp here. When I arrived from the city, I could smell the fresh air. It had a fresh, clean ozone like scent. You could smell the forest, with it's earthy green scent. After over twenty years of living here, I rarely catch that scent anymore, but I can totally smell the big city (Detroit) when I go there.

I often stop to smell the wild flowers when I walk around. Honey suckle, Russian Olive trees, and Lilacs often tickle my olfactory nerves. Wild roses are a treat as the blooms are very short lived.

ETA: I also crush up leaves from water mints, winter green and even skunk cabbage to get a snoot full. If it's edible I may even eat it, be it berries, flowers or leaves.

This is such a wonderful post. It's so gratifying to hear you moved to a place which made you happy and built a homestead in the fresh air. Reminds me of Walden (but better because you stayed).

Funny you mention skunk cabbage, as it was featured in the article Phage posted of the top 10 foulest smelling plants. Is it as repulsive as the article suggests?

Skunk cabbage has a strong smell like a skunk, but not as bad. This time of year, they are still to be found, but not that strong smelling right now. Maybe other people will have a different opinion on the scent as I check them at least once or twice a season.

a reply to: zosimov

My avatar is Emerald Bees. Those little fellows came to visit one day to remind me that there is still so much I don't know about this amazing planet we call home.

I won't distract from your beautiful thread, so I just might start one on Emerald Bee just to share what little I know about them.

My brother is a bee keeper though, his bees would love to visiting all the flowers shared in your thread.

Thanks again for giving us a moment of beauty.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

Ah, I've seen some in my garden! If you find the time, I'd love to hear more about the gorgeous little critters, whether here or in a seperate thread is entirely up to you (more people might see it if you started a new thread).

Very cool that your brother is a bee keeper. I've often wondered where the bees in our yard go to make honey. Despite having plenty of types of flowers in my yard, the honey bees have a real preference to our raspberry bush (I imagine that honey would be great!) and the chives (that honey, I'm sure, tastes... interesting).
I found this link regarding naturally flavored honey in case anyone wants to read more on the topic:
localhoneyfinder.org...#:~:text=Most%20honey%20is%20naturally%20flavored,to%20give%20it%20a%20flavor.

I looked up the meaning of the pansy and found this to be quite fitting to leave here:

The pansy flower symbolizes the love or admiration of one person for another. The pansy flower was also the symbol adopted by the Free Thinkers Society, a group of people who decided to adopt a mode of thought that was free from societal constraints, expectations, emotions or religious dogma. In it’s highest form it is based on pure logic and reason. They adopted the pansy as its symbol because the word pansy is from the verb pensee in French meaning to think.

www.flowermeaning.com...

a reply to: zosimov

When I was young my next door neighbors had pansies in their back yard. The girl next door was one year older than me.

She told me once that ... (whoops! this isn't the horror story thread.) Sorry about that.

Any way, the pansies looked a lot like the second picture in your linked page, all multicolor. And all around the pansies, mixed in to the lawn were clovers. According to wikipedia, four leaf clovers are about 1 in 5000 compared to three leafers. In her yard though, around the pansies it was more like 1 in 500, very easy to find.


By Joe Papp CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org...
I moved to Oklahoma when I turned 18 to be a carpet layer's apprentice. I stayed in a tent with all my earthly possessions. This Teddy Bear is the only item I have left from then.


So we took a trip to Missouri to visit Chuck, an architect friend of my mentor. I quickly noticed how much clover he had.

"Look at all that clover!" I exclaimed. "I bet you have lots of four leaf clovers. How many have you found?"

"Um, there's no four leaf clovers there" Chuck claimed.

"Nonsense" said I, and ran over to the nearest patch. "Here's one right here." I picked it and handed it to him, then went back. "Here's another one. If I pick it, can I keep it?"

"Uh, sure" he replied.

I decoupaged that clover onto a piece of red oak. I think my first wife still has it.