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| Donuts: made for pennies, sold for dollars, and they are addicting. The future Mrs. Ichabod told me at Augustana College that I smelled like a bakery. I brought her pecan rolls. |
"It has attractive bottle-brush shaped blossoms, it can tolerate shade or sun, it likes moist soils, it attracts butterflies, it is native to Maine and it blooms in summer — July to September, depending on location and variety.
The most wonderful thing about it, though, is its fragrance. When it is in bloom, you can smell the plant from 50 feet or more away. It is intoxicating. One of its common names is summersweet, which alludes to the fragrance, and another is pepperbush."
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| Child labor laws do not apply to children working for parents. My calendar modeling fee was "Thanks, you can eat one donut." |
"The blossoms are an upright columnar shape rather than round. So many flowers are round, and it is nice to have a different size and shape.”
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| I had a call-back for a later Melo Cream calendar. |
"What a romantic plant! Butterflies, bees, and other beneficial insects are drawn to the sweet nectar of the shrub’s fluffy, candle-like flowers. The flowers offer a strong, but never-cloying scent that recalls honeysuckle, rose, clove, and heliotrope."
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| I got what I wanted for my first birthday - a cake. After the photo-op, they explained I had to share. |
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| The name Clethra does not convey its fragrance so I like Summersweet or Pepperbush as alternatives. |
I overlooked the two Clethra shrubs in the bird feeding garden, because the Chaste Trees outgrew them. Because Clethra is known for attracting butterflies and beneficial insects, I moved them to the rose garden.
I did not think of their fragrance until I walked by when the breeze blew the aroma into my face. Pow! I smelled a combination of cinnamon and other sweet smells. Yes, that was a good move.
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| The Chaste tree has a medicinal smell, loves lots of sun, and does not respond well to watering. |
I reported the death of the Chaste Tree too early. Its replacement came, so I tugged at one we moved. It had promptly wilted, so I dumped some rainwater on it and pruned the branches back severely. That worked once before but I did not see much hope. Tug. Tug. "This is really stuck in the soil!" - unlike the typical dead shrub. I looked closely at the plant and saw tiny new leaves all over the branches.
I put its tiny replacement in the hole left by an Easy Does It rose that seemed to grow but died later in the season. That place was probably too sunny and dry for the rose, so it was good for the new Chaste Tree, more like a Chaste Twig for now.
We enjoy many beautiful fragrances in the garden. Rose perfume often fills the breezes in the front yard. They say Joe Pye is more of a vanilla, and no doubt the butterflies are wild for that.
The backyard gardens have Poke, Butterfly Bush, Beautybush, and Elderberry, so that area often smells like grape jelly.
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| Hummingbirds also like Butterfly Bush. |
