dinner date? the salamander and the snail

Everyone loves falafel—it’s a year-round staple, and the frozen options at Trader Joe’s make it incredibly easy to prepare. But today, you should probably rid your freezer shelves of any Trader Joe’s falafel: In the company’s third food recall this week, on July 28 Trader Joe’s recalled its fan-favorite Fully Cooked Falafel after being informed by the supplier that rocks were found in the food.

No other plant native to South Carolina has such fragrant and beautiful spring blooms and stunning fall color as the witch-alders. Fothergilla was named after Dr. John Fothergill, an English physician and gardener who funded the travels of John Bartram through the Carolinas in the 1700’s. These beautiful shrubs have been planted in both American and English gardens for over 200 years, including gardens of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, is a popular celebration in the United States, due to the number of Americans, 10.5%, with Irish heritage. One million Irish emigrated to North America, Australia, or other parts of Great Britain in the mid-1800s because of the potato disease now known as late blight. Late blight, caused by the water mold, Phytophthora infestans, destroyed the Irish potato crops in 1845 through 1849 and caused the Irish Potato Famine. Another one million people died from hunger or disease.

Want to know how to get two distinct flavors from one plant? Well, the plant known as Coriandrum sativum can provide just that. C. sativum is commonly cultivated as a low growing, vegetative herb known as cilantro that adds a savory flavor to many foods and dishes. However, not everyone knows that the seed produced by C. sativum is commonly referred to as coriander. Coriander is used whole or often ground as a spice to provide delectable flavor to many traditional and newer fusion-type meals. The herb and the spice come from the same plant, just different parts. For this reason, C. sativum is referred to with two different common names.

I’ve made it clear in this blog that Winter is my least favorite season. Therefore, I always seek winter-blooming flowers to raise my spirits. However, before the yellow-flowered daffodils bloom to give me hope that Spring is coming, I rely on the soft-textured drooping gold threadlike leaves of golden threadleaf sawara cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Filifera Aurea’).

WHO VISITED: We met Twitter friends like @GardenGuyKenn (all the way from Michigan) and other blog-commenters like Bobster (all the way from Rhode Island) and Leslie (from Connecticut) and Ailsa and Patti, from Ottawa, Ontario.We met Joyce from Iowa and Michelle from Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania (31 miles from Wilkes-Barre, apparently) and Sandra from Clarks Summit (also Pennsylvania, 8 miles from Scranton) and Julie from Reston, Virginia, and Stephanie from Bainbridge Island, Washington, and Stephanie from Seattle (both Stephanies, both from prime garden country…a coincidence?). Someone signed in as being from Scotland, but can that be so? And all of you, thank you, whether from a mile down the road or a country or ocean away…or whether you just visited our virtual tour yesterday.Some of t

No, I have still not met Andre, though we’ve been in contact for more than a year. But we grow a little closer every week when the latest stash of doodles-in-progress arrives, and I get glimmers into the thought process that is behind them, just like I did when I read his memoir, “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.” (There is no better book to give your shrink; it should be on the curriculum of psychoanalytic institutes and departments of psychiatry in teaching hospitals and schools of social work, I swear. Insurance companies should mail it out to all patients using mental-health coverage, so they know they are not alone.) Some week

Since the book “Planting in a Post-Wild World” came out in 2015, co-authored by Claudia West with Thomas Rainer, I’ve been gradually studying their ideas and starting to have some light bulbs go off, on how to be inspired to put plants together in the ways that nature does, in layered communities.Claudia joined me on the July 17, 2017 edition of my public-radio show and podcast to about some of the practical, tactical aspects of plant community-inspired designs that we can app

Birthdays require flowers. Make mine peonies, one of the best perks of a June birthday. I am currently overrun by them, and the house actually smells too sweet; I had to put several vases outside. I even had the first-ever tree peony blossoms of my garden career (above) to cheer me this time around. That’s ‘Yellow Crown,’ which produced its first two flowers this year. Tada! Looks like a cupcake with lots of frosting, doesn’t it?Birthdays require gifts, and Jack the Demon Cat took care of this one already. Yes, another weasel tail on the front doormat (above); making four in the last week. Wish he’d stick to chipmunk

APPARENTLY WE ARE IN A CONTEMPLATIVE MOOD this week, not raucous or irreverent or even downright wild. Yes, doodler Andre Jordan and I have moments of reflection, you know…it’s not just all go-go-go with us; sometimes it’s at a snail’s pace.

The Red-Spotted Newt starts his life in the water, hatched from one of 300-400 eggs his mother lays, becoming a tadpole-like larvae, gills and all. After several months he sheds them and becomes terrestrial, and is called an eft (the term for the red juvenile stage). This stage lasts a couple of years or up to seven, according to some references, before the next metamorphosis in the salamander’s life occurs and he once again changes colors…and habitats…returning to the water. Now I know why some of the salamanders swimming in my garden ponds are slightly different from others: some are tadpoles, some adults back from their years on land.  The University of Michigan says these creatures can live 12-15 years!Of course as with everything in nature, there are exceptions: populations that skip the red eft stage (in some coastal areas) and others that never undergo the second metamorphosis back into the water. I think my pals are cut from the classic mold, but I am not a scientist.In all this reading sinc

I was already thinking about succulents, after writing a story about succulent-wreath how-to with Katherine Tracey of Avant Gardens. Remember? (That’s another of her creations up top: a box of succulents, meant to be hung vertically, like a framed mini wall garden. Here’s Katherine’s how-to on making a mini-wall garden.) Then during spring garden cleanup, I noticed that some Sedum ‘Angelina’ (a gold-colored, ferny-textured groundcover type) had fallen out of a big pot I’d placed on the terrace last summer, and planted itself in the gravel surface, and the surrounding stone wall. (Again, those succulent voices: “Hint. Hint.”)The next nudge came when I spontaneously pulled into a garden center last month—one I’d never been to—only to find an irresistibly low price on overstuffed pots of hens and chicks. I brought home a bunch.And then the final push: At Trade Secrets, the big annual benefit garden show held in nearby Sharon, Connecticut, it was as if someone had announced a theme: Every vendor seemed to be featuring succulents in one way or another.Dave Burdick (remember him?) of Daffodils and More in Dalton, Massachusetts, whose specialties include not just rare