Summer Snowflake

Dear Diary,

I feel like I have been channeling my grandfather the last week or two.  Today is no different.  I press Queen Ann's Lace (Wild Carrot) every summer.  I have since I was a little girl when my grandfather showed me how.  He was very knowledgeable about plants especially ones that had healing properties which this one has.  I just loved the way it looked like lace.  I would use it for the flower fairies I would make.  In later years I would frame them, like today's photograph.


I hang two or three of the pressed flowers in my window each year.  They look like snowflakes to me.  When I visited Concord a couple of weeks ago I toured the Orchard House home of Louisa May Alcott, which I had learned is a cousin of mine.  When I walked into the her bedroom, where she wrote Little Women, there on the window were pressed Queen Ann's Lace!  Later, I told the tour guide about my connection with her and the fact that I have pressed the flower for years.  Hanging mine this morning in the window made me feel there are subtle threads that connect us all, most of which we will never know of, some of which we discover quite by chance.

Queen Ann's lace was brought to this country by the Pilgrims and you can learn more about it here.  Be aware that it resembles the poisonous Hemlock plant but that blooms in the Spring while Wild Carrot blooms in the summer.  It is a fascinating plant.