Beautiful Garden Thugs

In one of my favorite gardening books,The Undaunted Garden, Lauren Springer refers to Epilobium angustifolium, or fireweed, as a “beautiful rose-purple thug.”  Fireweed is known to be invasive, but I’ve put it in rather difficult little spot in the back, and so far it hasn’t proven too bad.  It is such a beautiful flower, and I have such great memories of seeing it all over in Yellowstone, Alaska, and in the Utah mountains.  My garden seems to be rather Darwinian anyway, so at least for now it stays. My mom even made jelly out of the flowers while my parents were still living in Alaska, and it was quite delicious. 



Below is a picture of a type of pincushion flower named Knautia macedonica.  I have had to pull these out in massive clumps because their prodigious reproductive behavior.  These flowers would truly take over everything if I let them.  But they are so beautiful that I put up with prolific ways. The original ones I planted were the deep purple-magenta color, but they have also spawned some lovely pink-melon colored flowers as well.



Here they are all together in my back yard, fighting it out for garden supremacy.

Lonely delegate blues

Today I went to my party's caucus meeting. I haven't ever been to one before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Democrats are few and far between in this red state, which is a shame. Even if you don't subscribe to the national party line, it seems dangerous to have a virtual one party system in local politics.

So we met all together first for an introduction and then we split up into our precincts. I sat down at my precinct's table and patiently waited for the cohorts of my precinct to join me and tell me how this is all done. I kept waiting. When nobody else came to my table I started to feel like the last one picked for dodge ball. How appropriate that this was in an elementary school gym/cafeteria!

I dully drove home after the meeting thinking, "what have I done!" I vaguely recalled something about becoming precinct chair and delegate... something about a dodo and Alice running around in circles... did I just win a caucus race?

How did this happen? I ignorantly went to this meeting just to "check it out" and left feeling like I had just enlisted in the Army.

I guess it's like they say "the world is run by those who show up." Let's just hope that those who show up know what they're doing.

Sing all hell

Today in church we sang the hymn "We'll Sing All Hail To Jesus' Name," which is a hymn I really love. However here in Utah we usually pronounce 'ai' the same as a soft e. Thus the following words usually sound the same: hail/hell, fail/fell, sail/sell and whale/well. So I have to try to suppress a smile everything we sing that first line. It's also very noticeable because the second verse actually has a 'hell' in it.

Regional accents and and unique speech patterns are always fascinating, and I don't see that we should change them. I'd like to thing that those details make life more interesting and I hope I didn't spoil that hymn for anyone.

Arches in springtime

We went to Arches National Park this spring. We are starting to get the hang of camping, but I think more than 2 nights in a tent is still pushing it. The kids got the Junior Badges and learned about the geology there.

Spring was the perfect time to see the wildflowers. It's amazing to see how these plants have learned to thrive in such arid conditions. This paintbrush plant (I believe it's a Castillejea chromosa) seemed especially vibrant.
We really enjoyed hiking the Park Avenue trail. Saffron loved hiking on her own. She was quite the trooper.

The kids had a lot of fun. The weather was just right and it was so nice to get away. Hmm... maybe it's time for another trip!