Tuesday, August 15, 2006

aka "Uncle Tommy"

My farmer friend Tim provide us with a very interesting and fun tip regarding a flower called Queen Anne's Lace -

He told us that if you take clippings of these flowers and put them in a vase with water and add food coloring to the water, that this flower will change colors to that of the food coloring you added. As you can see from the two pictures below; a before and after, we gave this a try and IT WORKS!! All we had in the house was green food coloring but we plan on buying more and trying this with other colors too.

This plant is also known as Wild Carrot, which is a biennial and a member of the Parsley family, and normally grows three to four feet tall, but can grow almost five feet in the right conditions. Its flowers are white and sometimes pink. Being related to the carrot, it has a carrot-like root that even smells like a carrot.

There is a tiny purplish-black floweret in the center of the otherwise white flower? The black floweret is sterile and will not produce seed. It is not known why nature put it there, perhaps to attract pollinators.

In memory of JoAnne's uncle, we now refer to this flower as "Uncle Tommy". When visiting us one day Tommy had mentioned that he really liked this flower and that's all it took to have it named after him - at least in our little corner of the world. Just ask Emilie what this flower is called and she'll tell you, "Uncle Tommy"! He is certainly missed by all...

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