She has Risen

I did a double take yesterday as I walked by and noticed little pink flower heads dangling in the breeze where I had once planted Ladies Petticoat Columbine.


I last saw this flower in May of 2006 (the year I planted 3 of them). I had given it up for dead. All those yellow specks on the purple Heuchera is pine pollen. We need a good rain to get it all out of the trees.

Wild Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)

As a kids, we called this flower "honeysuckle".

It seems to me we used to bite the tips off and suck out some sort of sweet liquid. . . or maybe we just thought there was a sweet nectar because of the name.

I wouldn't suck on them today as I believe I read they are poisonous.

I found a couple growing in my garden yesterday. I usually pull them out when I see them because to me wild flowers should be in the wild, not in my garden.

But I must admit, they have a quiet beauty. The one growing with the dame's rocket/phlox is very tall (I've never seen one so tall), while the one below is quite short and just peeking out of the daylilly foliage. I think I will let these two live on.

Ladies Petticoat Columbine Has Been Planted

If you are a long-time reader of my blog, you know that my big pet peeve is posted macros without showing how the plant actually looks in the landscape.

As I did yesterday with the columbine.

That pic gives you no idea of the actual size of this plant nor how it looks incorporated into a garden. That is why we are so often unhappy with plants we order from big nursery catalogs--they know the macro trick makes their plant so much better than it is.

When I got home from work this afternoon, I planted the columbines. They are small flowers and really have no presence on their own. I felt they needed to be near a big rock to give them some interest and that is where I planted them.

You see three in this picture. I also planted one in front of a different large rock about 4 feet away from these.

I think another purple/pink is just what I need in the rockwall area. :)

Columbine Ladies Petticoat

DH took a bag of pine needles to his mother who lives in the city and likes the pine needles for mulch for her acid-loving plants. She sent him back home with 4 of these Columbine that she grew from seed. She said they are called "Ladies Petticoat", presumably because they resemble a petticoat.

They are quite pretty.
I will have to find a place to plant them tomorrow.