{"id":5609,"date":"2011-09-06T09:11:26","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T13:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/?p=5609"},"modified":"2011-09-06T09:11:26","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T13:11:26","slug":"desdemona-and-the-swallowtail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/?p=5609","title":{"rendered":"Desdemona and the Swallowtail"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite things about gardening is the shopping. I realize a lot of people like shopping, but ordinarily, it is not very high on my list of enjoyable activities. I am not that crazy about food shopping, I hate clothes shopping, and other sorts of shopping I can take or leave, and I’m nearly always tired of it long before I am done. Plant shopping though- that is a whole other story. It is the only kind of shopping I truly enjoy doing in the company of others. Gardeners are enablers – we urge one another to new heights of plant greed and excess. You might miss a particular plant if you are shopping by yourself, but with others, you don’t miss a thing, because your fellow gardeners are sure to point something out to you. Consequently, a great many plants in my various gardens are loved, not just for their own sakes, but also for the memories they evoke – memories of a special day, spent with people I love. <\/p>\n

Such is definitely the case with this plant – Ligularia Desdemona. She spends her time languidly draped next to the concrete birdbath out back, with big dark leaves, and late in the summer, big orange daisy-like flowers. I bought her down in Virginia, when we went to visit Ellyn and Jason, right after Mark was born. We were shopping for Ellyn’s new shade garden, but I didn’t want her Desdemona to be lonely, so I bought one for me too. Hers did far better than mine the first couple of years, no doubt because of the kinder climate in her zone 6 garden, but eventually mine came into it’s own. It was a wonderful day that we got to spend together, enjoying the new baby, and sharing our love of gardening. This Spicebush Swallowtail, not a common sight here, seemed to think it was a wonderful place to spend a recent sunny morning.\"Ligularia<\/a>When Ellyn and Jason moved up to New York, she had to leave her Desdemona behind. I think we will just have to shop around, to find her one up here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite things about gardening is the shopping. I realize a lot of people like shopping, but ordinarily, it is not very high on my list of enjoyable activities. I am not that crazy about food shopping, I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,5],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5609"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5612,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5609\/revisions\/5612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}