Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

Today’s Horse Nettle we found in the pasture is as beautiful as poisonous. It feels like something out of a Disney movie, but it yields gorgeous photos and is unique and lovely, and I love it.  Like so many flowers, it has a great story to tell.  I’m excited to be learning the.  The Nestle reminds me of the treacherous and wicked witches of the old Disney movies.

While Horsenettle is a toxic plant, reports of animal poisoning are extremely rare. Most animals stay away due to the flower’s sharp prickles, which can cause injury in the mouth and food pipe. A toxic component, a glycoalkaloid known as solanine, occurs in varying concentrations in different plant parts. Horse Nettle is one of them.

Horse Nettle has had some medicinal uses in past years. Both the Native Americans and the early European settlers used this plant. Leaf tea was used as a gargle for sore throats, and a wilted leaf poultice was used for Poison Ivy rashes.

The glycoalkaloids act on the digestive system to cause excessive salivation, colic, diarrhea, or constipation. These signs may be followed by depression, weakness, depressed respiration, dilated pupils, collapse, and even death (even in humans)  if horse nettle is eaten in large amounts.

I notice that our animals stay well clear of the Norse Nettle. We remove them when we can, but wildflowers are just what their name suggests  – wild.

I see the Horse Nettle as a reality flower, beautiful yet dangerous.

The beauty and wonder of wildflowers never cease to amaze me. I am truly grateful for the discovery of Horse Nettle, a plant with a unique and memorable story. I owe this discovery to Maria, and I am thankful for it.

The more I see nature, the more I am in awe. Wildflowers tell a story, and the Horse Nettle has a memorable one. I repeatedly stuck my fingers on the thorns while placing the flower. It was worth it.

I’m deeply absorbed in a new book by critic and writer Olivia Laing called “The Garden Against Time.” It is a fascinating look at gardening from a different perspective than I have ever heard or thought about. In just a few pages, she is already getting me to think differently about my garden bed and the flowers whose pictures I am taking.

I’m just 30 pages into the book and can’t wait to read more this weekend.

Laing’s work explores what gardens and flowers mean to us and how they might be surprisingly valuable as we move into a new world of Climate Change.

I’ll write about the book as I go through it when  I find something that should be shared by the flower and garden world and perhaps by others. This is not your grandma’s how-to garden book. It’s about what flowers and gardens might mean in the frightening new world.

Laing writes that even the most miniature garden intersects with history, as it must since every plant is a traveler in space and time.

“I wanted to explore both types of garden stories, to count the cost of building paradise, but also to peer into the past and see if I could find versions of Eden that weren’t founded on exclusion and exploitation, that might harbor ideas that could be vital in the difficult years ahead.  Both of these questions felt very urgent to me.  We were poised on the hinge of history, living in the era of mass extinction, the catastrophic endgame of humanity’s relationship with the natural world. The garden could be a refuge from that, a place of change, but it can and has also embodied the power structures that have driven this devastation.”

Wow, she got my head spinning. I’m eager to figure out where my little garden and I fit into this new worldwide drama.  I am getting flashes of understanding about just why I love to take these pictures. More to come.

This was another wildflower day before the rains expected this weekend. I’m still in love with these simple and honest flowers.

I went out with my camera and sat in the sun. Open and close your eyes at these pictures. I did; they spoke to me and whispered that life is good.

I’m signing off now; see you in the morning; thanks for reading.