Jewelweed and Water Droplet
One of my favorite flowers is the jewelweed also known as Touch-Me-Nots and scientifically named Impatiens noli-tangere. It grows wild and particularly likes moist soils. The flowers look like little dragons and are gorgeous colors.
Hummingbirds and bees love the jewelweed too so I’m seeing lots of those pollinators out and about. Today while gardening I saw two different hummingbirds, one a male and one a female.
The pigs love jewelweed too, but they like eating it rather than looking at it. Jewelweed is rumored to have beneficial medicinal properties so perhaps it is one of those little tricks to properly pastured pigs. Who knows?!
Outdoors: 77°F/68°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 77°F/52°F
Daily Spark: I love this time of year because I can walk along picking candy off the bushes… It’s like living in Willie Wonka’s dream world where everything is delicious.
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.
Am reading Willy Wonka right now. :)) Jewelweed tends to grow where poison ivy is also, at least here on my farm. It used to be an antidote for poison ivy, but with this what they call “super” poison ivy oil it does not seem to work. I’ve always liked jewelweed.
Always learn things from your posts, Walter. In Southern California where I grew up and lived for many years “jewelweed” is a little shrub with shiny long leaves that grows associated with wild elderberry and poison oak. It too prefers damper soil, like creek banks. It’s a fine reliever of poison oak rash, applied topically as a crushed poultice. It’s blossoms are almost unnoticeable.
I didn’t know that hummingbirds occurred over on that edge of the country. (Farthest East I’ve been was when I went to pay homage in Hannibal and crossed the Miss to see Cardiff Hill from the Illinois shore.) What species? Here in Davis we have mostly the Anna’s Hummingbirds, little greenies who live here and in the Sierra foothills year round. I had one female nest just ten or so feet from my feeder for a couple of seasons. Their nests look just like pine cones, and the little lady sits with her beak up and immobile “just another pine needle here.” You have to see them land to find a nest, so well do they blend into a pine tree. I wondered for years why they clutch in December and January, and finally figured out that that was hibernation season for squirrels, who like eggs. We see the occasional black chinned one. Down South, closer to Mexico, I’ve seen five species working the same feeders at once.
Enjoy your Vermont. We’ve been at 102 and 104 degrees lately. High nineties is a cool day.