Quirky White Ones.

8-8-10 VERMONT: The past three days have been beautiful. Seventies, dry, sunny, breezy and close to perfect. Things are starting to get dry again, however, and watering may become necessary. The weather glass shows atmospheric pressure dropping, so it may rain soon.

I have the August lazies and haven’t done much of anything, but no major chores are pending—a bit of spot weeding, pruning, picking veggies. We are giving tomatoes away, but there still piling up in the kitchen.

New blooms: chrysanthemum.


Indian pipes or ghost plant, Monotropa uniflora, is a non-green plant that grows on the forest floor on mycorrhizal fungi, these last are fungi that grow on tree roots in a mildly parasitic fashion. The indian pipes are not fungi. They pop-up in August in moist woodlands. Some are pinkish.


Another white one. Bane Berry or Doll's Eyes, Actaea pachypoda, has an interesting look, but is poisonous, cardiac toxic, to humans, and probably other mammals, but not toxic to birds. The glitzy style draws in the birds who eat the seeds and later poop them out with a drop fertilizer which is why it grows here under trees and fences.