Note: This is a test post for members to see how logging in with your user name and pass word is supposed to function.
I might want to show a picture or talk about something with my friends in garden club, but not share it with the public at large. So, there is an access control option to hide some posts from non-subscribers (non-CGC members).
All new posts will go to the top of the page in this blog, most recent gets the spotlight. If I write a post for CGC Members Only, it too will appear at the top of the blog posts as soon as it is published. However, unless you are logged in with your Username and password, you will never see that particular post; you will only be viewing the most recent public post.
By the way, anyone in Carroll Garden Club can learn to make their own posts/pictures with our WordPress blog right from their home computer. Or, you can e-mail your post and pix to me to upload or scan if you are more comfortable doing that.
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Mildred harvesting cattails
I recently discovered a mouse chewed and torn album of photos from the 1910-1920’s that had some really wonderful photos of my maternal grandmother, Mildred Blanchard, as a young woman in upstate New York. The frontispiece shows her in the raspberry patch with her Leghorns.
I just loved the naturalistic setting of this picture because it reveals her gathering cattails somewhere on the farm to make a simple arrangement. And, of course, the family dog is accompanying her.
She would dig up wildflowers from their woods to transplant closer to the house where she could enjoy them. As a child, I can recall the feeling that I was in a fairy glen where she had a shade garden of low growing woodland flowers, Bloodroot, Forget-me-nots, Lily of the valley and other low growing blooms. She was a great one to cut bouquets of lilacs for vases that would cover every flat surface during that short bloom season and she would also put flowers in wall pockets.
I learned that she was responsible for the majority of flower and fruit planting at the Dickinson farm (circa 1840) where she lived once married. Many of my must-have choices are due to her: sour cherries, blackcaps and red raspberries, a Weigela which she referred to as “my Cardinal Bush” and I can still hear her tell me that those blue flowers are “An Chew Sa” (Anchusa). Yup, I have one of those hairy plants as well! It was this grandmother of mine who always said “Come and see my garden” as soon as we exited the car and we females would wander along her narrow winding footpaths as she talked to us of small triumphs of bloom in her zone 5 farm-garden.
Thanks for the gardening genes, Grandma!
