Peggy's Jibber-Jabber: Rascal Gets A Drink

Well!

All I can say is I really messed up last week's letter blog!

For starters, I printed them with the wrong date at the top. I use a saved format, keeping the date at the top and changing just the day, and month, as required. I guess it was just a matter of time until I messed it up.

Then, upon reading my letter blog with fresh eyes the next day, I see I dropped the n in hand. I know it's not the first time and it probably won't be the last because I read it the way I meant to write it.

And, lastly, I missed a picture! I was talking about things yet to bloom, showed you bergamot, but didn't show you the bull thistle!

Oh, the difference a few days can make!

The bergamot has started to bloom. I still have a lot of unopened buds, but everyday there are a few more flowers open. I'm sure you'll be seeing Wild Bergamot again because it's one of my favorite wildflowers. I've picked the leaves, dried them, and made tea. If you've ever tasted Earl Gray tea, you've tasted bergamot.

This one is tiny, with fabulous detail, but I haven't been able to find out what it is.

Queen Anne's Lace can be pink before it blooms...

...and is also called Wild Carrot because the root smells like carrots. It got its name because of a legend that Queen Anne pricked her finger and a drop of blood landed on the lace she was sewing.

Oftentimes this wildflower will have a single purple, almost black, flower at its center.

Early Europeans cultivated Queen Anne’s lace, and the Romans ate it as a vegetable. American colonists boiled the taproots, sometimes in wine as a treat. Interestingly, Queen Anne’s lace is high in sugar (second only to the beet among root vegetables) and sometimes it was used among the Irish, Hindus and Jews to sweeten puddings and other foods.

But we call it a weed and chop it down.

St. John's Wort is blooming! This herb has been used for centuries for mental health conditions but it has some serious side effects.

The teasel will soon be blooming.

This wildflower grows tall, way over my head. The leaves grow together around the stem and form cups that hold water and dead insects. I wonder if this is something that benefits the plant or just something that happens.

"Peg, why don't you Google it?" you ask.

I did. I discovered that teasel has a rich history but can't find anything that speaks specifically to that.

The young leaves of teasel are edible although you have to take care to avoid the spiny, stout hairs of the older leaves. Teasel leaves can be eaten raw, cooked, or added to a smoothie. The root can be used in a tea, making vinegar, or tinctures as it has many health benefits. It contains a scabicide, which is something that destroys the itch of a scabies mite. It also has a prebiotic fiber called inulin, but a better source of inulin is chicory.

This dragonfly was easy to identify because of his coloring. He's a Spangled Skimmer.

This is Bouncing Bet also called Soapwort. The plant contains a poisonous soap-like substance that you get when you crush its foliage. The name Bouncing Bet is an old-fashion nickname for a washerwoman. Now you know.

"What, Peg, no close-up?"

Nope. Not this time. The Bouncing Bet was down an embankment on our dirt road and I couldn't get to it, so this is all you get — for now.

Oh my gosh! Look at the chokecherries! They will continue to ripen until they are a dark red-purple in another month. These guys are almost all seed but you can turn them into wine and/or jelly.

I found a wildflower I'd never seen before. When the flowers bend down like this they call them nodding heads. So I had to either get down on the ground and shoot up, or pick one and turn it over. Guess which I did.

"It reminds me of Moth Mullein," I said to Mike, but upon researching it, I find that it's Fringed Loosestrife.

In his manual from 1597, an English herbalist named John Gerard wrote that the fresh plants were tucked into the yokes of oxen, "appeasing the strife and unruliness which falleth out among oxen at the plough..."

And so the plant got its name.

It's not the plant that has magical powers to soothe the savage beast, but rather it repels gnats and other annoying insects, which in turn can make an animal easier to handle.

Speaking of pests, here's a stinkbug for you. These are sometimes called shieldbugs too.

Have you ever been out for a walk and have a bit of fluff float past you? Well, it might not be fluff. I caught this little guy and set him on a leaf so I could get a picture for you.

"What is it?" you wonder.

He's an aphid. A Woolly Aphid. The fluff is actually a wax-like substance they secrete to make them taste bad to critters that might want to eat them.

"Does anything eat them?" you wonder.

I know, right! I wondered that myself. Turns out there are a few things that will eat them; ladybugs, hoverflies, and parasitic wasps are a few.

These are Black bean aphids, having lunch.

The most fascinating thing about these critters is they can reproduce asexually (they don't need a mate). They live about fifty days, give birth to live offspring, and can have as many as thirty babies in their short life.

I know, I know! More than you wanted to know.

The Chicory is blooming too. Did you know that each flower only lasts for a day?

Chicory roots can be roasted and ground as a coffee substitute or additive.

The apples are coming on. These are wild apples, meaning no one cares for the tree. And that, my dears, results in wormy apples.

Have you ever wondered what they did before the advent of pesticides?

Yeah! Me too!

"When I was a little girl, we picked apples in an orchard where the people didn't care if they got any apples or not, so I'm pretty sure they weren't sprayed," Momma said when I broached the subject with her.

"And they weren't wormy or you ate the apples anyway?"

"No. They weren't wormy. I wouldn't eat them if they were."

"So how did they not get wormy?"

"I don't know."

And the mystery is still a mystery.

Pale Touch-Me-Not, aka Yellow Jewelweed. These are larger than the spotted variety and I've only seen a few plants around. The spotted ones are way more abundant.

Bittersweet Nightshade.

"I know this one!" you say. "It's poisonous."

Yes, it is, but not nearly so much as you might think. Belladonna is the one called Deadly Nightshade.

This one, this Bittersweet Nightshade has its place in herbal medicine. But my advice is this; unless you know what you're doing — leave it alone.

This is Rascal. Drinking out of the rain barrel. All of our cats drink out of the rain barrel.

Cats have an interesting way of 'drinking' water. Unlike dogs, cats don't dip their tongues in the water. They extend their tongues straight down toward the water with the tip of their tongue curled backwards so the top of the tongue, and only the top of their tongue, touches the water.

Then the cat draws its tongue back up, forming a column of liquid, which it bites off and gets a nice drink of water — and he doesn't get his chin wet.

We've got the vanities in our master bath. That's right, you heard me! Vanities! Plural!

We were only going to get one vanity right now, but we found a deal on these two. They were a close-out so if we didn't buy them both, there was no guarantee we would ever be able to get a matching one in the future.

Mike's is a four-foot vanity and we put a mirror that we already owned above it until we can afford to buy the medicine cabinets.

My vanity is five-foot. That's right. Girls just need more room. Above mine is a mirror made by my handsome little redheaded brother, Richard.

"Peg? You have a drawer under your sink. How did you do that?"

Good eye! And I'm so glad you asked!

The five-foot vanity was made for a double sink top. My handy and handsome husband rehabbed it to be a single sink base. He moved a top brace and after all the plumbing was in, he shortened the top drawer. I'd have been happy if all he did was glued the front of the drawer back on but he loves me, so he took a little extra time and made me a short, very functional, drawer.

Speaking of Mike, someone got his mower stuck — again.

After I took his picture, and pulled him out, he asked me to hang around until he was done down at the pond, just in case he gets stuck again.

He did.

On a recent walk-about with the girls, Itsy and Ginger, and my entourage, we happened on this little guy up by the upper barn. I stopped in my tracks. The girls hadn't seen it yet.

"Now don't you bark!" I warned them. Itsy's ears perked up, she looked around, and I could tell when she spotted the fawn. "Don't bark! You'll scare him away! You hear me?" Then I finished up with a very stern, but not loud, "DON'T BARK!"

Now Ginger was alerted on the fawn

and the cats had seen him too.

We stood still and quiet and watched him for probably four or five minutes before he bounded into the weeds.

I still can't believe the dogs didn't bark.

This guy zipped past my head. It's almost like they want me to take pictures of them sometimes.

He is, of course, a Yellow Finch.

This guy is a Yellow-Collared Scape Moth. Despite having yellow in its name, they have an orange collar. I couldn't get a picture of his topside cause he flew off.

Scape Moths are cool in that they feed on plants that make them taste bad to birds, hence the orange, warning color. But bats are a nighttime predator and hunt by echolocation and not sight. The moths can hear their sound and send a warning signal back to them. If it's a bat's first time encountering a Scape Moth and picks him up anyway, he soon spits him out and remembers the moths warning sound.

Cool, right!

This one is one I've shown you many times over the years but in case you've forgotten, he's a Pearl Crescent.

This guy's a skipper, you can tell because of the big eyes, but I don't know which one he is. He's on Wild Basil

This is a little iridescent bee on white sweet clover.

My birthday is coming up next month and I wanted a study Bible. Mike, bless his heart, didn't wait for my birthday and bought me one. I'm not very good at finding the books in the Bible yet so tabs are a must for me.

When my tabs came in the mail, I sat down and started putting them on. I get the first row put on okay but I hit a snag on the second row. I could NOT figure out how come Nehemiah is hidden behind Ezra. They are supposed to be staggered, not overlapping. Yep. That's where Ezra is supposed to be.