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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Category Birds

Plants to Feed the Birds

Have you ever seen a goldfinch balance on the tip of a Liatris flower spike as it sways in the breeze? Or watched chickadees plucking seeds from the cones of your Echinacea blossoms? Birds enliven any garden with their colors,…

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