Finding the Beauty in Everything

 By Kristy Belaney

  Yesterday I took a route home I don’t normally take. As I was rounding the corner of a particularly overgrown weedy area, something caught my attention. It was a giant patch of blooming Asclepias syriaca, swarming with bumblebees, moths and other pollinators working away, unknowingly doing their good deeds.

   I paused, took a moment to gather it all in and smiled. I have lived at this address for nearly ten years and never noticed this simple but beautiful gift just two hundred feet from my front door. Maybe if I had seen them before, I would have thought the flowers were cute or enjoyed the pleasant smell they gave off as I walked by. But that is probably where the admiring would have ended. By the time I got home I would have forgotten all about the not so particularly memorable flower. And what a shame that would have been.

Identifying Milkweed Seedpods

Milkweed Seedpods Come in all Shapes and Sizes

Poke Milkweed - November 1, 2013

  At nodding Onion Gardens we propagate seven different milkweed species, several of which are currently not in production. At different stages of development it is easy to confuse one species from another. Identifying milkweed based on their pods shape is a simple method of learning how to recognize one family member from another.

  The only draw back to this strategy is; like flower color it requires one to wait patiently until the flower blooms or a pod forms. It is not the most efficient means of identification; never the less it is fun and entertaining.