Pleas rise from compost
enlarge this imagePlants acquire voices, often loud voices, when placed on the compost pile. Try it: Throw one. You're likely to find that they aren't just bits of vegetable, after all. Above, one fresh shoot of turtlehead (Chelone obliqua). Below, the image that fills our brain when it calls out to us, "But, oh, what I could become!"
Some problems have no solution. All we can do is to share the
pain and ease it a bit with laughter. For instance, whyizzit
that:
...we can't let go of plants even after a bout of dividing has
made it clear our leftovers alone could fill an acre, if we kept
splitting? We wheel the excess to the compost, dump it, and dang it
if some tiny beauty doesn't sparkle like a gem so we start fishing
things back out of there!
Below: Intellectually, we know that beautiful shoot is
simply
part of this clump of excess plant matter. At the arrows:
previous season's stem base (A) and this shoot (B). However, with
our heart
we sense potential August glory.
Click the roots below for more on
dividing turtlehead...
but don't blame us for what happens next!
Note: Turtlehead is endangered in Michigan, Kentucky
and Arkansas, and threatened in Maryland. In those places you may
be in violation of conservation law to disturb the plants or
collect seed from any colony of the area's native genotype. More
about this restriction in Growing Endangered.