Fairy Crown #19 – My Fruitful Life

Somehow, when I started writing professionally about gardens and plants way back in 1988 as my youngest child headed off to first grade, I did not think I’d still be as charmed by the Goddess Flora as I continue to be today.  Especially given that my little first grader just turned 40 this spring and has a husband and three kids. Her three older brothers are in their 40s and 50s (the youngest gets married in Tuscany in exactly one month) and their mom – yes, me – is turning 75 today! When I was a young woman, I would have considered someone who’d reached my age as “elderly”. Funny thing – now I don’t! So Janet’s 19th fairy crown for August 10th is filled with fruitfulness – literally, the fruits and seeds of my meadows and wild places here at the cottage on Lake Muskoka and the fruits of a wonderful family life gathered over the past 45 years.

My family is very understanding:  most have worn fairy crowns at one time or other. Here are my two older grandchildren getting their own custom crowns for my 74th birthday (photo by my son-in-law)…..

…… and posing with their younger brother, mom and me (aka “Nana”).

But it’s a longstanding tradition, even before I started my season-long parade of fairy crowns. Here’s my daughter 11 years ago with what we could find growing wild….

….. and my granddaughter with weedy bits from the front boulevard at their home, sweet violets and dandelions….

….. and my older grandson looking positively angelic.

My youngest grandson wore a happy smile when I asked him to pose with his crown.

As for my own crown, it represents a different way of gardening here at the cottage, one I intentionally chose to pursue twenty years ago. There would be some places (mostly on our steep hillside) for the wild plants of the forest, and wildish meadows where favourite perennials, mostly native, would be free to grow, wander and seed themselves. There would be NO WEEDING. So, woven within my crown are native fruits, including Allegheny blackberry (Rubus allegheniensis).

Down by the lake are black huckleberries (Gaylussacia baccata) which are a little seedy, but fun to eat in late summer. And they don’t suffer fruit loss in droughts like the wild lowbush blueberries on our property.

Though neither of the above grow in quantities sufficient to gather enough to bake more than a pie or a dozen muffins, it is rewarding to pick a handful and understand that these have grown by this lake and sustained native people here, as well as the local fauna, for hundreds or thousands of years.

Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) is our most fruitful species, and I think its abundance is why I don’t suffer much deer damage to my “pretty” plants. White-tail deer love to browse on the branches and I see evidence of that all the way up our hillside.

Last summer, I even made a gin from my sumac blossoms. That’s it in the centre, flanked by blueberry and cranberry gins. I think in the final analysis it was my favourite flavour:  a little bit lemony with something herbal as a side note. Unusual but tasty.

There are floral fruits in my birthday fairy crown too, including the pods of lupine, below….

….. and the dark fruit of blue false indigo (Baptisia australis), below….

….. and foxglove penstemon (P. digitalis), below.  One of my very favourite plants for early summer – and a great bumble bee lure – it has very tough fruits, i.e. “capsules”, so when I harvest them after they’ve dried, I use pliers to crush them to avoid cutting my fingers.

Hiding in my crown is a little mushroom, but August is generally early for mushrooms on Lake Muskoka unless it’s a super-rainy month.   However, give it a month or so and the mushroom show in this part of Ontario is spectacular. In fact, one year when we hosted our hiking group at the cottage, I hired a mushroom specialist to tour us around the forest. I think we found 38 species that day, using his keys.

There will be a little dock party today with relatives around the lake. Pretty sure there’ll be cupcakes, too and grandkids’ homemade gifts. And of course there are lots of flowers in bloom in the meadows and beds now and I will make sure we have some on hand as I turn… 75.  I just need to get used to saying it.  It shouldn’t be that hard, right?

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There were 18 fairy crowns before this one. Here they are!

#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom
#10 – June Blues on Lake Muskoka
#11 – Sage & Catmint for the Bees
#12 – Penstemons & Coreopsis in Muskoka
#13 – Ditch Lilies & Serviceberries
#14 – Golden Yarrow & Orange Milkweed
#15 – Echinacea & Clematis
#16 – A Czech-German-All American Blackeyed Susan
#17- Beebalm & Yellow Daisies at the Lake
#18- Russian Sage & Blazing Stars

The Hummingbird Photo Studio

Here’s a little story about hummingbird photography. You see, my deck pots at the cottage here on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto are not intended to be beautiful. If they were, I’d buy some of the spectacular hanging baskets that the garden centres sell, plop them in and just enjoy the colour and texture. That way, I’d have more time to swim, read, write and drink wine. No, instead I use my containers to lure hummingbirds in order to photograph them on favourite flowers for the stock photo library that is my business. That’s why I call the containers my “motley pots”. They don’t match – in fact they’re a bit ugly – but they do the job.

For many years, I’ve been buying “hummingbird groceries” in spring, i.e. food for the ruby-throated hummingbird. I don’t have a sugar feeder, but my lake neighbours do, so my groceries are plants. I’ve learned which species they like (purple lantana, cuphea), which they love (agastaches), and which they prefer above all others (most tender sages).

Their favourite would be Salvia guaranitica ‘Black & Blooms’ (or the similar ‘Black & Blue’). This tender sage is not easy to find in Toronto so I’ve been digging it up in autumn and taking it to the city, where it spends winter in pots in my basement laundry tubs under a window, dreaming of Argentina. I water it occasionally and it sends up growth all winter. In mid-spring, I cut it back to the new sprouts and bring it back to the cottage. Provided it gets watered and no frost occurs, it’s raring to go again by July.

Other hummingbird favourites in my pots this year are Cuphea Funny Face, below, and some Agastache aurantiaca cultivars in pink, apricot and yellow that I seeded myself in the city rather late in spring, so they’re still small but will be good by mid-August. I will leave these to drop seed, because they’re excellent self-seeders, even in pots. And when I was at the garden centre in May, I bought some red petunias (Supertunia Really Red). I didn’t think they’d be good for hummingbirds but as a plant photographer, a new plant purchase is never a waste for me. Surprisingly, the hummingbirds seem to appreciate them too!

And I tucked in a few plants of Verbena bonariensis Meteor Shower for their airy blossoms which the bumble bees adore, but it’s not a great hummingbird plant. Here it is with a compact form of S. guaranitica, Bodacious Rhythm & Blues that I bought this spring at the Toronto Botanical Garden’s plant sale.

But the big score this summer are my plants of the biennial standing cypress, Ipomopsis rubra (so-called because its ferny leaves resemble those of cypress trees). I had photographed this plant, a native of the U.S. in the alpine garden at the Montreal Botanical Garden, below, so I knew I could grow it.

But seed I’d purchased from a seedhouse did not germinate; it took fresh seed donated by my friend, seed maven Kristl Walek in Brockville, Ontario to do the trick. I sowed the seed in 2020, and last summer (2021) there were lots of little ferny rosettes here and there in my sandy, granitic soil. Kristl warned me they’re very hard to transplant when bigger, so I dug up a few of the small rosettes and carefully put them in 6-inch pots filled with gravelly soil, below. In late autumn before the ground froze, I dug a hole behind the cottage and placed the pots inside, surrounding them with pine needles and mulching the tops with pine needles, too. We had a cold, cold winter (it even killed the spongy/gypsy moth eggs) but lots of snow cover – perfect for insulating the plants.

This spring after the soil thawed, I dug up the pots and very carefully transplanted the little plants into my deck pots in soil amended with sand and gravel. I watered them in and away they went. This morning, the tallest is 54 inches high and 4 inches wide, much bigger than those in the dry meadows. I call them my Dr. Seuss plants. I even staked them so they wouldn’t break in our summer storms!

And the hummingbird loves them! Yesterday, I managed to do some still photos with my camera…..

….. but I wanted a little video too. After sitting for more than an hour and having the hummingbird fly in, spot me, then fly away, I decided to set up my camera on a tripod. Then I went in and made coffee. I went outside periodically and turned off the video and started a new one. Finally, five videos in, I spotted her from the kitchen. I went to the door with my cell phone to watch and after drinking her fill of Ipomopsis, she moved on to the red petunias and cuphea. I videotaped that part with my phone! (I’ll get closer with my zoom lens later this summer.)

The camera video of the standing cypress isn’t spectacular, but it will do. (I will increase the frames-per-second in the settings for future videos). I actually saved it first as a high-res movie, then as a smaller computer-resolution video. The original had the happy screams of the kids across the bay swimming and also a few wind gusts. In the second, I ditched the kids and the wind and added some music by TRG Banks. It’s not perfect — I’m a photographer, not a videographer — but it’s a good start!

All in all, a good morning in the hummingbird studio. Oh, and here’s an older video of my hummingbirds from previous years!

Fairy Crown 14-Golden Yarrow & Orange Milkweed

With summer finally underway on Lake Muskoka, it’s time for a few of the stalwarts of my meadows and garden beds to feature in my 14th fairy crown. ‘Gold Plate’ yarrow (Achillea filipendulina) is hardy, low-maintenance and a dependable presence each July, well into August. I’ve written extensively about orange-flowered butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) over the years, and it remains one of my top 3 perennials for pollinator attraction.  At the top of my crown and over my left ear, you can see one of the bumble bees’ favourite weeds:  yellow-flowered St. Johnswort (Hypericum perforatum).  And that pale-pink daisy flower in the centre of my forehead?  That’s lovely pale coneflower (Echinacea pallida), a native perennial I’m trying so hard to naturalize in my meadows – but it takes its own sweet time, and will not be rushed!

As the July nights grow warmer, our cottage screened porch plays host to dinners gathering family members from far away. And the meadows are now full of colorful blossoms that generously yield bouquets for the table. 

Creating informal floral arrangements is one of my favourite pastimes at the lake, using a variety of containers from old ceramic vases purchased for a few dollars at the second-hand store in the nearby town to antique medicine bottles, below, bought at a garage sale.

Early each July, monarch butterflies arrive in my meadows at Lake Muskoka, seemingly drawn by some generational homing instinct to find the orange-flowered perennials that provide not just abundant nectar, but foliage on which to lay their eggs and ultimately feed the caterpillars of the next generation.  

Here’s a little video I made:

That perennial, of course, is butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) and it is one of my top 3 plants for pollinator gardening. (The two others will come later in my fairy crowns.)  It provides abundant nectar over a long period to a wide range of bees and butterflies, below.

But there is nothing more gratifying to me than counting all the monarch caterpillars on my milkweed plants, then watching them consume the leaves before disappearing to transform into the beautiful green chrysalis that becomes the butterfly.

With a wide native range from Newfoundland to Minnesota and Colorado and south to Texas and Florida, this is one of the most common milkweed species. In nature, it occurs in prairies, open woods and roadsides; it tolerates a range of soils from clay to limestone. For me, it grows in   the rich loam that was placed selectively in a few garden beds and in the acidic, sandy, well-drained soil of my meadows, below, with purple flowered Verbena stricta.

I’ve even had great germination results from kicking seeds into gravel on the path near our cottage.

It flowers for many weeks in July-August, reaching 2-3 feet (30-60 cm), and is a beautiful cut flower. Though it has a deep tap root and is described as being drought-tolerant, in the sandiest places on our property the leaves and blossoms wilt in a prolonged dry stretch while plants in more moisture-retentive sites thrive. It self-seeds readily, its oval follicles splitting open in fall to release its closely-packed seeds to the wind on delicate parachutes. 

One of the first perennials I planted at the cottage was the old-fashioned fernleaf yarrow Achillea filipendulina ‘Gold Plate’. Tall at 3-4 feet (90-120 cm) with sturdy stems and aromatic foliage, it is low-maintenance, ultra-hardy and bothered by nothing, including deer – unless you count…

….grasshoppers, which use the flat flowerheads as perches throughout summer. I see the odd sweat bee (Halictus ligatus) working the tiny flowers, but this yarrow is not known for its pollinator appeal. I planted it originally in richer soil than most of my meadows, and it generally prefers more moisture than many of my prairie perennials. Picked at the right time, it makes a long-lasting dried flower, keeping its gold color for years.

Pale coneflower (Echinacea pallida) is an enigma in my meadows, and one I’m patiently trying to encourage for its early bloom time, elegant flowers with their narrow, pale-pink petals and attraction to pollinators. This echinacea, originally considered an Ontario native, is now believed to have ‘ridden the rails’ into Canada from tallgrass regions in Iowa and Illinois, as part of freight shipments of “prairie hay” for cattle feed. It is more drought-tolerant than its cousin, purple coneflower (E. purpurea); indeed it flops in soil with too much moisture.  So year by year, I distribute seeds of the plants I have and keep my fingers crossed that one day they’ll be a major presence in my meadows.

St. Johns wort (Hypericum perforatum) is another weed brought to North America by settlers in the 18th century and is abundant in waste places on Lake Muskoka. An aggressive self-seeder and avoided by grazing animals, it is considered an invasive and detrimental weed when it invades rangeland. But try telling that to bumble bees and other native bees that forage busily on it in early summer to gather its abundant brown pollen.  Like dandelions, St. Johns wort is considered a ‘facultative apomict’, meaning it can make seed without fertilization – always a desirable attribute for a weed!

Some days in July as I’m working in the meadow, I hear the familiar “ke-eee” call above; looking up, I see our native broad-winged hawk (Buteo platypterus) wheeling in big circles on the hunt for small rodents and birds. Occasionally, it lands on an oak bough and peers down into the grasses, looking for lunch.

The hawk is just one of many birds on Lake Muskoka, a soundtrack that includes the slightly wonky multi-note song of the song sparrow, below; the pine warbler; red-eyed vireo; eastern phoebe; blue jay; black-capped chickadee; American goldfinch; hermit thrush and many others. Oh! And by the way, if you don’t have the Merlin Bird ID app installed on your phone, what are you waiting for? Such fun to hear that that piercing call is a Great Crested Flycatcher!

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Here are my previous fairy crowns for 2022:
#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom
#10 – June Blues on Lake Muskoka       
#11 – Sage & Catmint for the Bees
#12 – Penstemons & Coreopsis on Lake Muskoka
#13 – Ditch Lilies & Serviceberries

Fairy Crown 12 – Penstemons & Coreopsis in Muskoka

Within days of the summer solstice, the meadows and wildish garden areas at our cottage on Lake Muskoka north of Toronto have become spangled with flowers – not all of which I actually planted. Indeed, ‘weeds’ like pink musk mallow (Malva moschata), yellow birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) and everlasting pea (Lathyrus latifolius) are a fact of life here on Lake Muskoka; thankfully, most find it tough to compete with the rugged prairie perennials and grasses that I did plant.  Nonetheless, they all manage to look lovely together in my 12th fairy crown, which includes native foxglove penstemon (Penstemon digitalis), its steadfast companion native lance-leaved coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata), small yellow foxglove (Digitalis lutea), annual daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus) and the ripe fruit of native American red  elderberry (Sambucus pubens).

It’s a good time of year to craft bouquets from the meadow.

Foxglove penstemon (Penstemon digitalis) was one of the first plants I sowed at the lake and it remains one of my favorites.

Ultra-hardy, it is one of just three penstemon species native to Ontario; it is also native to Minnesota and other Great Lakes states.  Though there are red-leafed commercial cultivars like ‘Husker Red’ and some with dark leaves, stems and pinkish flowers like ‘Dark Towers’, I prefer the natural, red-stemmed variations that occur in a seed-grown population, like the one below

Best of all, it is perfectly happy in the dry, sandy, gravelly soil on our property where it survives drought, heat and extreme cold winter temperatures, often devoid of snow cover. It flowers at the same time, and in the same conditions, as lanceleaf coreopsis.  Here they are at the lakeshore…

…. and also behind our cottage this June.

Foxglove penstemon’s 2-3-foot (60-90 cm) spikes topped with bell-shaped, lightly-scented, white flowers in early summer are highly attractive to bumble bees, hummingbird clearwing moths and hummingbirds.

Here is a little video of foxglove penstemon and its flying fans at Lake Muskoka.

Lanceleaf coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata) is another carefree native that seeds itself around our property, enjoying the same conditions as foxglove penstemon. Until researching its native range for this blog, I had no idea another common name is “sand coreopsis”. It is also an “acidophile”. That explains why it is so happy in almost pure, acidic sand at the top of our Precambrian ridge where very few plants thrive, except perhaps Verbena stricta, hoary vervain.

However, it is not as long-lived as foxglove penstemon, below….

….and does not seem to appreciate extreme winter temperatures – unless it has adequate snow cover.  It reaches 2-3 feet (60-90 cm) with willowy stems. The cheerful yellow flowers host native bees and butterflies….

…. much to the occasional delight of crab spiders.

It is also an occasional (hilarious) snack for the local groundhog family, among many other tasty horticultural treats on that critter’s menu.  By mid-summer, I enjoy watching goldfinches eat the plentiful seeds.

Given that much of the ‘new’ soil on our hillside was delivered by barge, having been scooped up by tractor shovel from old fields nearby, it is unsurprising that common European weeds beloved by early settlers to the region would appear almost immediately. Musk mallow (Malva moschata) is one of those, a perennial that grows 2-3 feet (60-90 cm) tall and wide and features silken-petalled, pink blossoms in early-mid summer.

Musk mallow flowers aren’t visited by many insects, but are lovely additions to a small bouquet, along with the ubiquitous oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) from my 10th fairy crown.

Birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus), on the other hand, is popular with bees, like most legumes, but considered an invasive plant. Another European species brought to North America by early settlers as a forage crop, it likes the sandy, gravelly soil of roadsides and disturbed places.

Because it cannot compete with my big prairie plants – and, more accurately, because weeding is not something I do at the cottage – it is welcome to co-exist with the other weeds, including tufted vetch (Vicia cracca) in the background below, which bumble bees and other bees adore. 

Straw foxglove or small yellow foxglove (Digitalis lutea) is a curious foundling in my driest meadow, where it has spread from a few plants more than a decade ago to a good-sized colony today. Another European native that made its way to the new world via early settlers, it attracts few pollinators but makes a lovely cut flower. It is my only weed that has received a Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit!

The pink pea flowers of everlasting pea (Lathyrus latifolius) are tucked into my June 25th Lake Muskoka fairy crown, too. By now you should not be surprised that this is another European stowaway in my meadows, a sprawling 6-foot (2 meter) perennial vine that clambers over other plants to arrive at its destination….

….. all the while producing nectar-rich blossoms that my bumble bees shamelessly adore. I could try to eradicate it, but it would be mission impossible.

Because it blooms so early, I often miss the flowering of the native red elderberry shrubs (Sambucus pubens, formerly S. racemosa) that grow in moist, part shade behind our cottage. But it’s impossible to miss the bright-red, early summer fruit – provided hungry birds haven’t stripped it clean already. Unlike black elderberry (S. nigra), the bitter fruits of this large shrub, though ostensibly edible when cooked, are not tolerated well in quantity by humans. Leave them for the birds!

I have become increasingly enchanted with the airy, branching scapes and little white flowers of native daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus). An annual (or occasionally biennial) pioneer species that spreads easily by seed (and thus appears on agricultural weed lists), it blooms for weeks on end, adding a jaunty bit of lightness to the edges of my path and meadows where it grows 3-4 feet (90-120 cm) tall. It attracts numerous small bees, wasps and syrphid flies. 

In a sense, this fairy crown represents my gardening philosophy:  a little bit tame, a lot wild, and don’t sweat the weeds if the bees can use them. 

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Here are the blogs on my fairy crowns to date:

#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom
#10 – June Blues on Lake Muskoka
#11 – Sage & Catmint for the Bees

Fairy Crown #10-June Blues

My tenth fairy crown for June 10th created at the cottage on Lake Muskoka features an array of flowers picked from my meadows and wildish garden beds. If it’s a little quiet-looking, that’s because it’s still very green in the meadows, and the plants that predominate, such as lupines and blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) are, well, solemnly blue.  Along with those two, my crown has golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea), white nannyberry flowers (Viburnum lentago), white oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum superbum) and the tiny pink flowers of black huckleberry (Gaylussacia baccata). And, in an effort to reflect the bad with the good, there are some caterpillar-chewed oak leaves, courtesy of the spongy moth (LDD or gypsy moth) caterpillars.

In fact, it’s a time of year I think of as ‘June blues’; in reality, it’s more lavender-purple, but it’s remarkable that so many plants with similar flower color bloom simultaneously. I fashioned a bouquet one June, setting the finished product in the meadows where the lupines grow. In it were the lupines as well as false blue indigo (Baptisia australis), blue flag iris (Iris versicolor), pale lilac showy penstemon (Penstemon grandiflorus) and a few of my “weeds”, oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) and buttercups (Ranunculus repens).

I grew the lupines from seed – a fairly complex operation that involved soaking the seed in warm water for 24 hours, then planting them in my sandy, acidic soil in a spot at the bottom of a slope that stays damp all the time. Fortunately, it worked and plants that were carefully transplanted and kept watered the first year have self-sown successive generations of new lupines that are very drought-tolerant. This is how they looked in the first few years, though now the big prairie species in the meadow have elbowed them to the margins. Though marketed as the eastern native wild lupine, L. perennis, my plants were in fact likely hybrids with L. polyphyllus from the west coast.  

Nevertheless, they attract numerous queen bumble bees seeking to provision their nests in spring. 

There is something so enticing about lupine flowers, so I like to focus on them with my camera to see what might be hanging out there, whether spiders….

…. or baby grasshoppers. 

Blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) is a North American native plant whose pea-like flowers resemble those of lupine. 

Bushy, it grows to about 4 feet (1.2 m) and is happy in my gravelly, sandy soil on a slope that gathers a little moisture. In autumn, the foliage turns an amazing gunmetal-gray and the seedpods shake with a noise like a rattlesnake’s tail. Its common name derives from its use by Native Americans and settlers as a substitute dye plant for true indigo (Indigofera tinctoria).  So far, it has spread very slowly nearby.

Bumble bees and many other native bees are very fond of Baptisia australis.

If I admitted to liking a plant that is on every state and province’s invasive plant list, I would get into trouble. So I’ll just say that since oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) is on every Muskoka highway margin and dots the old fields in the area, I don’t mind at all if it pops up here too.

It cannot compete with my prairie grasses and perennials in the meadows, but it likes to hang out in spots of unplanted earth and at the edge of the path in front of the cottage, along with weedy buttercups (Ranunculus repens).  There’s a childhood memory of oxeye daisies. I remember sitting in the hayfield across the street from my house in Victoria, British Columbia, pulling the white petals from the flowers as I recited “he loves me, he loves me not” – and, of course, being delighted when I sat with a sad, petal-free flower convinced the boy across the street was my Prince Charming. Buttercups were part of my childhood too; we’d hold them under each other’s chin to see if we liked butter. Yes, butter.  There were no grownups around to tell us it wasn’t the predictive ability of a flower, but the reflective quality of its shiny yellow petals to create this magic.

Sometimes the oxeye daisies pop up near the lupines.

Native hoverflies, short-tongued bees and butterflies often visit the daisies as well.   

But path-cutting through the meadows – a necessity in early summer – quickly makes compost of the weedy buttercups and oxeye daisies… until next year.

I grew my golden alexanders (Zizia aurea) from seed and though quite particular about adequate soil moisture and a location out of hot sun, they are self-sowing here and there.  A short-lived native perennial from the carrot family, they prefer moist prairies and open woodland and are a host plant for black swallowtail caterpillars.

Though nannyberry (Viburnum lentago) is native to woodland in much of the northeast, I planted it behind the cottage in a spot with moist soil where it is shaded during the hottest part of the day.

Each spring, it bears clusters of white flowers that the bees adore, producing dark-blue summer fruit that the birds eagerly consume. Multi-stemmed, it grows to about 15 feet tall (4.6 m) and 10 feet (3 m) wide with glossy leaves (you can see them on my crown) that turn bright red in autumn.

There is a tiny sprig of pink, lantern-shaped flowers sticking up from the top of my fairy crown; they belong to black huckleberry (Gaylussacia baccata), a native shrub that grows near the lakeshore where its roots are periodically saturated with water from spring floods. Bumble bees nectar in the flowers, and in August….

…… the shrubs yield dark-blue berries that are sweet, though a little seedy. 

Finally, my crown bears a few oak leaves with and chewed edges.  I made it at the beginning of June 2021, when gypsy moths, aka spongy moths or LDD moths (Lymantria dispar dispar) were beginning to consume the red and white oaks, white pines and many other plants on our hillside…..

….. including my beautiful nannyberry.

It was a devastating and historic predation; by mid-July, the woodlands in our region looked like February, so bare were the deciduous tree branches, below.  (You can read last year’s saga with the gypsy moths on my blog here.)

But abundant summer rainfall nurtured the tree roots and they leafed out again with full canopies in August, though the moths laid abundant eggs on our poor trees once again. This year, we’re in a wait-and-see mode, given our cold days this past winter and the chance that a virus might decimate their population. But I sprayed all the egg masses I could reach on the oaks and pines on our acre a week ago, using my homemade cooking-oil-and-soap spray. Fingers crossed.

But let’s not leave on a sad note.  Here is my deconstructed #10 crown, with its familiar components:  lupine, blue false indigo, oxeye daisy and black huckleberry flowers. And here’s to June!

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Here are all my fairy crowns to date:
#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths
#4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza
#5 – A Crabapple Requiem
#6 – Shady Lady
#7 – Columbines & Wild Strawberries on Lake Muskoka
#8 – Lilac, Dogwood & Alliums
#9 – Borrowed Scenery & an Azalea for Mom