Antsy About Ants on Your Peonies? Have No Fear

“The Ant King Palace opens its carmine door: Peony in bloom.” ~Yosa Buson (1716-1784)* It doesn’t take a scholar of 18th-century Japanese haiku to know that Peonies and ants often go together. Some of us encountered ants crawling on the rounded buds of Peonies when we were little, when bugs were “cool.” (In fact, this plant-critter connection was so fascinating to one precocious youngster that she became an entomologist.**) More of us, alas, approach the subject having experienced struggles removing the insects from our kitchen countertops. The idea of ants inhabiting one of the showiest of all garden flowers may,…

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Month July 2016

A Visit to Elizabeth Park

The sky was full of thunder on the afternoon we visited Elizabeth Park in Hartford and West Hartford (the park straddles the border between the two towns), but the moody sky and gusting wind only added to the drama and…

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