• Flowers for Friday

    If you’ve eaten okra but never seen it grow, you probably have no idea that those sometimes prickly pods have such beautiful origins. This time of year, morning walks always include picking pods and checking out the bumble bees in the okra blossoms. Last year I saved seeds from my burgundy okra using pantyhose and paint bush to prevent cross pollination with the neighbors’ green okra. Several of the plants are producing greenish pods, so my methods weren’t perfect. These…

  • Boys and the “Wild”

    Living in downtown Raleigh, there isn’t much “wild” to be found. My ultimate wilderness escape  includes tall trees, cool air and a mountain stream, but when not the mountains, I prefer my wild to be manicured and safe for letting two small boys run around and explore. This makes the J.C. Raulston Arboretum one of my favorite urban escapes. This week the temperatures dipped into the low 90s with cooler mornings. Two mornings in a row I took the boys…

  • Meet Jolly. Jolly, meet Everyone.

    We haven’t seen any traces of Itsy Bitsy in weeks. However, as I was scouring the “Italian Trombetta” squash vines for pests, I was greeted by this green spider, whom I’ve named Jolly. I don’t know if he has a web or not. I’ve only seen him hanging out on the same cluster of leaves for several days now. He is a Green Lynx Spider and is doing a little pest control of his own. The first time I saw…

Paige Puckett Pottery & Love Sown Garden