Lost Stories

Most of the small family farms here have disappeared. The few that are still here have houses and outbuildings in sad need of paint and repair. Often scattered around the property is rusted farm equipment, reminders of valiant but failed attempts to make a go of life on the farm. They are limping along. Most have been bought up by larger farms. I suspect those farmers sent their sons and daughters off to an agricultural college or university to learn how to run the family business. I visited a seminar a few years ago held at one of those huge successful family business farms. Huge and expensive machines were positioned around the fields by suppliers for farmers to see them. Clicking on photos will enlarge them.

The old homes and outbuildings of those old family farms soon fall down or are pulled down. Their remaining hulks are burned. The concrete and stone foundations are either knocked down and buried deeply or hauled away. Sometimes the plants that were at one time enjoyed by the families, the lilacs, snowball bushes, peonies, daffodils, lilies of the valley survive the disruptions and grow. When I first moved here there was an almost completely collapsed farmhouse in my neighborhood. There was still a clump of lilacs and several clumps of poeticus, a very old fashioned variety of narcissus with small white flowers with a central disk of orange-ish/yellow petals (perianth I believe). I rescued five very small lilac branches from the edge of the bush the first year here. They are surviving but it will be years before they are big enough to resist deer and actually flower. Two years ago as the house was disappearing and the garden was returning to weeds and trees, I also rescued one of several clumps of poeticus.

Virtually every old farm had one or several poeticus clumps. I suspect farm families shared plants like peonies, lilacs, snowball bushes, evening primroses, phlox, poeticus bulbs, etc. Eventually with time poeticus bulbs divide and grow into impressive clumps. I divided my clump and splanted the individual bulbs around in my yard. The flowers are smaller than more modern varieties of narcissus. Now my plants have only one or sometimes two flowers which from a distance look like the puffy seed heads that dandelions produce after their yellow flowers are gone. But one day!! One day they may look like these clumps (below) I found near a large field. Evidence that at one time a family lived in that spot, had children, sent their kids across the street to the one room school, and did their best.

This one room schoolhouse on Shay road is across the street from the farm where the clumps of peoticus above are found. I wonder if the family living in the three houses across the street now there are descendants of the original farmers. The school is kept in reasonably good condition, again, maybe by that family. There are several one room school scattered around my county. Some have been turned into small churches, some have been turned into homes and have additions added, most sit empty.

Wood Hyacinths

The above white lilac I found at one of those perennial exchanges held in either Bad Axe or Sandusky, Michigan. This is the first time it has flowered. I had forgotten, if I had ever even really known, that it was white.  The screening around it is to protect it from deer browsing. Lilacs are not normally eaten by deer but when the bushes are small deer may nibble on the leaves to see if they like the taste which hinders growth. Lilacs, like many plants, produce their  yearly leaves only in the spring and if they are removed (eaten) by herbivores, they are not usually replaced. So if the plant does manage to live and grow, it does so more slowly. Protecting the plant in the early years increases the likelihood of its health and survival and shortens the time needed so they can produce flowers.

Years ago there was a fungus disease that ravaged white pines, our state tree. We were told that there were two hosts for the white pine blister rust; the white pine of course, and a wild current the yellow current (which actually has yellow flowers but produces black currents). So the state set out to eliminate the alternate host - the yellow current. People looked for the bush everywhere and removed them. I had never seen as plant so had no idea what they looked like actually. Then one day under an arbor in the front yard of a very old house near downtown Royal Oak I saw a curious large bush with the typical current shaped leaves and clove scented yellow tubular flowers. I broke off a branch, took it home and planted it. It grew. (That original bush has since completely disappeared.) When I moved north about eight years ago, I took a cutting from my bush and planted it here. It has grown and is now beginning to actually prosper. The scent, the clove scent is amazing. The bumble bees, queens at this time of the year, love it and have a tongue long enough to reach the nectar at the base of the flowers. And, the plant is pretty too.

This is the first year my redbud has flowered. As a seedling it also came north with me along with several others which the rabbits and deer found before they could get bigger. There are not many flowers this year but if it continues to thrive, then soon it will be lovely.

Cercis canadensis - redbud

My neighbors are not getting along so one built a long high white fence on his property which completely blocks his neighbor's view of his house. It also blocks his view of mine.One of them is very litigious.