gardens – In the Woods

whenever we’re not looking

5.11.26 ~ Race Point Beach, Provincetown, Massachusetts
photo by Jon

In May I took a whirlwind trip to Cape Cod and Connecticut to scatter and bury Tim’s ashes. Five intense days of sharing memories and enjoying the family and friends and activities that Tim used to love. It’s taking me a while to recover but I’ve decided to share a few pictures here to help me remember.

On May 11th, 27 of us headed out to Race Point Beach in Provincetown where I scattered some of Tim’s ashes on the beach where he spent many of the happiest days of his life. Tim’s brother Dan shared stories of their childhood adventures in P’town. And many in the gathering took turns spontaneously sharing their favorite memories. Moments after I scattered Tim’s ashes, we heard the particular call of a laughing gull flying overhead, gently reminding me of Tim’s wonderful sense of humor.

While we were there we took advantage of the opportunity, with all of Tim’s remaining brothers gathered, Dan, Matt, Jed, and Josh, to scatter some of their father’s ashes. Erik had died back in 2008 and also had close ties to Provincetown. And Tim’s cousin Allegra scattered some of her mother’s ashes there on the sand, too. Her mother was Tim’s beloved Aunt Delorma, who died in January, only three months after him.

We all have such happy memories of vacationing at the family home in Provincetown. The current owner of 180 Bradford St. was very gracious to allow us to leave two memorial blown glass hearts in the garden. Allegra sculpted them, with some of their ashes inside, the red one is Tim’s.

The next day, Fran, Allegra and I had an amazing family history adventure, locating 72B Commercial St., where Tim and Dan’s 2nd-great-grandparents, Elijah & Zipporah Rodgers had lived. When Tim and Dan were kids they were taken to the house and met the widow of his great-granduncle, Capt. Neadom Oscar Rodgers (1876-1953), Aunt Lil, and Neadom’s son Oscar. (Oscar was Aunt Lil’s stepson.) Allegra was also taken there, as a very small child, on a separate occasion. Tim showed me the place on our honeymoon but my memory of its location got very fuzzy.

As we were checking it out a man came down the grass-covered lane it was located on and, after explaining who I was, I asked him a few questions. One thing led to another and the next thing we knew we were sitting in the dining room of an elderly neighbor who has lived there his whole life and remembered Aunt Lil Rodgers and playing in the lane. Aunt Lil died in 1979. The information we got from him led me to find more information about the house and its occupants online.

That afternoon I took a walk on Beech Forest Trail with my sons and nieces and nephew and some of their spouses. (No one in my generation was up for the hike!) I told them the story of Tim & I taking this walk on our honeymoon, and how we took it again after getting our first digital camera in 2009. The picture of the squirrel on the sidebar of this blog came from that walk, and was my first taste of enjoying nature photography. Sadly, this time, I, and some of the others, came back with a tick.

I’m thinking the universe may be trying to tell me that fewer nature walks and more genealogy research will be my new direction in life…

At the end of this mile-long loop walk my sons discovered a poem by one of my favorite poets under glass on the top of a picnic table. They brought me back to see it and it seemed like a beautiful reflection of my mood about the changes in focus I’m going through in my life.

For example, what the trees do
not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer’s night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now – whenever
we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine
they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade – surely you can’t imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can’t imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.
~ Mary Oliver
(Can You Imagine?)

…to be continued

vibrant spring blooms

‘pink sparkles’ phlox
3.8.26 ~ Juniper Level Botanic Garden
Raleigh, North Carolina

Last weekend Susan and I took a Sunday drive all the way out to Raleigh to check out this unique botanical garden, which is only open to the public on nine different weekends over the year. It has 10 acres of plants for education and research and, although privately owned since 1986, is now associated with North Carolina State University.

Our garden philosophy is to promote botanical diversity by assembling the largest collection possible of growable, winter/summer hardy ornamental plants for our region and display them in an aesthetic, sustainably maintained, healthy garden setting. This philosophy includes obtaining plants from all over the world with a strong emphasis on North American native plants, realizing that these are, as a group, no more or less adaptable than plants from foreign lands.
~ Juniper Level Botanic Garden website

We saw these yellow puff balls from afar and couldn’t wait to see them up close and find out what they were. They were very fragrant, and we got a pleasant whiff before we reached them. Some garden websites describe the scent as gardenia-like.

After meandering through several sections of the garden we started to pay attention to the bits of spitting rain hitting us and looked up to see a threatening rain cloud. We headed back to the car, with me protecting my camera under my jacket. We missed one last garden section but were happy we did manage to see most of the place.

rain cloud, time to turn around and head home

The plants were very well identified and I took 146 pictures. It was difficult choosing which ones to share for this post!

eye contact

12.19.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden
northern mockingbird

On a mid-December visit to the botanical garden with a friend there were a lot of birds, all of them strategically avoiding my camera behind twigs and branches, but keeping a good eye on us.

The botanical garden had posted on its Facebook page that a yellow garden spider (aka a zipper spider) egg sac suspended between two Okefenokee hooded pitcher plants had been spotted in the Carnivorous Plant Collection – and we found it.

one side *(above)* and the other side *(below)*

Inside are up to a thousand or more tiny, dormant eggs. Creating this warm silk sac was one of the last endeavors of their mother’s life – yellow garden spider adults usually don’t survive the first hard frost. If all goes well, the eggs will spend the winter safe in this sac, emerging as itsy bitsy spiderlings in spring. … This particular pitcher plant variety is native only to the Okefenokee Swamp in southeastern Georgia. (There’s also an introduced population in North Carolina.)
~ North Carolina Botanical Garden
(Facebook, December 17, 2025)

Quite impressive. Silk is very strong, but can be weakened by wetness and sunlight. Time will tell if this egg sac will make it though the winter. We’ve already had some morning temperatures in the teens.

late autumn lunchtime

11.25.25 ~ red-bellied woodpecker in Arcadia

I am often at a loss for words these days, but a couple of hours of birdwatching with a new friend was a welcome interlude in the grieving process.

The beauty, variety, and unexpected behaviors of birds can inspire feelings of joy, awe, and wonder, which can be a powerful counterbalance to grief.
~ AI

around the botanical garden

10.7.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden
37th Annual Sculpture in the Garden

So, we haven’t visited the botanical garden since the end of May, over four months ago. I wasn’t about to risk any more seed tick attacks. On this new try, I had Tim spray my shoes and pant legs with picaridin, giving up on previously tried deet and permethrin. So far, so good, but I’ve not been attacked in the month of October before so maybe I didn’t need it. Not taking any chances, though.

I didn’t get too many pictures of the sculptures this year. I guess I was starved for the beauty of flowers and berries!

“Sonoran Sentinel” by Gary Taber
*A contemporary reimagining of a desert giant, drawing inspiration from the formidable presence of arid landscapes.* ~ Gary Taber

wildflowers in the sassafras sapling grove
(this spot always enchants me)

When we got to the boardwalk going through the Coastal Plain Habitat we were amazed to find ourselves surrounded by a sea of black-eyed Susans, some of them quite tall, enjoying the sunshine.

Even though there were a lot of old favorites to delight my eyes, some new-to-me flowers presented themselves, sending me peeking into the greenery looking for id signs. If none could be located there was research to do at home. It felt good to get back out there and into the swing of things again.

“Marshland Morning” by Forrest Greenslade
*My egret reaches for the sky to greet the day*. ~ Forrest Greenslade

“Guardian of the Night” by Nana Abreu
*Taíno Moon Goddess symbolizes renewal, mystery, and unseen life forces,*
*representing the feminine rhythm of existence while illuminating the shadowed side of nature.*
~ Nana Abreu

Chinese aconite aka Carmichael’s monkshood

“Opossum in the Cherry Orchard” by Bronwyn Watson
*Local opossum in early summer after an enjoyable night dining in a cherry tree.*
~ Bronwyn Watson

the days are hot, hot

“The Summer House” by John Henry Twachtman

Everywhere, from sunup to sunup, the world is full of song. The days are hot, hot, and all the day long I listen to the bees lifting from flower to flower, to the watchful chipmunk sounding its chock chock chock alarm while the red-tailed hawk wheels, crying, high in the sky. I can’t see the songbirds in the dappled light of a thousand leafy branches, but I can hear them calling from the trees.
~ Margaret Renkl
(The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year)

blood type and cancer risk

5.20.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden
‘peve minaret’ bald cypress

I can’t stop thinking about something a naturopathic oncologist told my sister, who was recently diagnosed with endometrial cancer, the same kind of cancer I had. Apparently having blood group A is associated with an increased risk of cancer, and blood group O is associated with a decreased risk of cancer. Both my sister and I have type A blood.

Coincidentally, a few days after learning this, while going through another one of my family history boxes — I’m now on box #6 of the 14 — I found my mother’s blood type A identification card from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she was receiving treatment for metastasized breast cancer in 1990. She died when she was 59, in spite of four years of surgery, radiation and multiple chemotherapies.

As I was pondering the significance of now knowing her blood type, it hit me that her father, my grandfather, had prostate cancer. (I have no way of discovering what his blood type was.) With some aggressive treatments he survived his cancer and lived to the age of 95.

And then I started wondering about my grandfather’s parents. Locating his father’s death certificate I discovered that he died at age 75 of adenocarcinoma of the transverse colon, metastasis to liver. He had surgery in August of 1948 and died in July of 1949.

Finding these connections for four generations in a row is unsettling, as looking closely at genograms can often be. If I could trace it I wonder how far back the cancer line would go. All my children have type O blood so likely they will be spared from this specific cancer risk factor.

The gene for type A blood is dominant, and the gene for type O is recessive. Which means I have a recessive O gene that I passed on to my children. (They got their other O gene from Tim. One needs two O genes to have type O blood. Tim also has type O blood so that’s the only kind of gene he could give them.) It surprises me that none of them got the dominant A gene from me because the law of averages suggests that half of my children could have received it and had type A blood!

Until my sister consulted one, I never knew that naturopathic oncologists existed. After witnessing the nightmare I’m living through due to radiotherapy aftereffects she is not interested in submitting to the same recommended treatment for her cancer. We both are of the mind that sometimes, for some people, quality of life is more valuable than a prolonged quantity of life. It will be interesting to see what things we will learn about other treatments from this alternative, integrative physician.

Meanwhile, the current administration continues its efforts to cut funding for health care and cancer research. And now this:

If you’re under 65 and don’t have a chronic condition, there’s a very real chance you won’t have access to a Covid-19 vaccine this fall. Much depends on what happens next month. ACIP could defy the FDA and recommend vaccines for broader use, but that would be risky. We’ve never been in this situation before. ….. This isn’t about whether everyone needs a yearly Covid-19 vaccine—that’s a legitimate, ongoing scientific debate, and one ACIP was already tackling in June. This is about how decisions are made—and who gets to make them. FDA political appointees are sidelining expert panels, bypassing transparency, and turning public health into a performance. That might fly in other arenas, but shouldn’t when it comes to people’s health and daily lives. ….. Vaccine decisions must be rooted in evidence, debate, and transparency. ….. If this is the new model, we should all be alarmed.
~ Katelyn Jetelina
(Your Local Epidemiologist, May 21, 2025)

Closer to home, last summer I endured three episodes of seed tick bites on my legs following walks in the botanical garden. I thought I had solved the problem by using recommended permethrin as a repellent but when I took a walk there on Tuesday I was attacked again and now have 9 bites. I’m done! The pictures in this post are not worth the price I’m paying to have gotten them!

Tag: gardens