Baker's Balloons

Chet Baker loves to accompany me to the mailbox, which is about a quarter-mile from our house. It is a most agreeable walk, being shady and studded with purple coneflowers. Fourteen years ago, we planted these gorgeous things, just raked seed into fresh earth, and it is clear that they are happy in the light shade along our driveway. They are spreading like something nonnative might spread, but whee!! They are native.
I love the wild type coneflower, with the retrose shuttlecock petals. The cosseted plants I bought to put in my garden beds are nowhere near as hardy or lovely as these, grown from Vermont Wildflower seed. Pretty much everything in that seed mix has died out except these, and they look like they mean to go on forever.I just can't stand what the plant breeders are doing to this noble gangly plant, dwarfing it, making it dibbly-double; making it orange and white and yellow and mango colored. OK, I'd take a mango-colored one, but don't show me those darned ucky frilly gnomish monstrosities.Eccccchinacea (my spelling) "Razzmatazz." Well named, at least. It's less than a foot tall, and there's no way for butterflies to access nectar, even if there were any, because the nectiferous cone is all covered with petals. Please. You take one of the most useful plants in the garden, full of nectar for leps and seeds for goldfinches and buntings--and you remove everything that makes it useful, ergo everything that makes it beautiful. And just for good measure, you dwarf it. Yeah! That right there is Improving on Nature.

This time of year my tall natural beauties--chest high to me-- are alive with fritillaries and swallowtails. I've counted more than twenty butterflies at once on one stand of coneflower. We have four stands, all along the driveway, so that's a lot of fritillaries.
On our last walk, Chet found a cluster of balloons that had doubtless been released at a baby shower or wedding. Mether. If ever there was a perfect thing for a Boston terrier to bring home, it is this. It is lightweight, and very very shakable. Listen. It goes wubba wubba wubba when I shake it. I will take it home with me.
Well? Are you coming with me?
Carrying these balloons home is nothing for a dog like me, who once carried a basketball named Scooby all the way around The Loop. You must, must click on the link to see me, Chet Baker, as a baby.

And once I get them home, I rip them up, completely. This picture shows my brindling very well. My father, Peanut Brittle, is a bright red brindle. I am a seal brindle, the best kind.

Because KatDoc will scold us otherwise, we have to say here that Mether took the balloons away from me as soon as I started shredding them. And it is true. Most good things must come to an end, and one of them is blue balloons. But wild purple coneflowers go on forever.