Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart   Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee    Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events National Butterfly and Hummingbird Day Look at the Leaves Day   1877 Birth of Otto Emery Jennings, former curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and devoted scientist. In 1904, Jennings started as the custodian at the Carnegie Museum, where, over the next 41 years, he held almost every position before becoming the director of the Museum in 1945. Today, the Jennings Nature Reserve near Butler, Pennsylvania, is named for Otto Jennings. Otto worked to protect the 20-acre area because it was a natural habitat for the native Blazing Star (Liatris spicata "Ly-at-truss Spah-cah-tah"). The Jennings Reserve was expressly established to ensure that the Blazing Star could spread and multiply. The Blazing Star is native to North America and is known by other common names, including the Gayfeather or Prairie Star. The Blazing Star is a late-bloomer and features majestic plumes in purple or white. Blazing Star is a gardener favorite, easy to grow and propagate, it's low maintenance, makes excellent cut flowers, and pollinators love them (Monarchs go crazy for Blazing Star). The Blazing Star grows up to 16 in tall, but if you want something more elevated, its cousin, the Prairie Blazing Star, can grow five feet tall.   1891 Birth of Lewis Stiles Gannett, American journalist, and author.  Lewis wrote The Living One, Magazine Beach, The Siege, and two Millennium novels: Gehenna and Force Majeure. In Cream Hill: Discoveries of a Weekend Countryman (1949), Lewis wrote: But each spring . . . a gardening instinct, sore as the sap rising in the trees, stirs within us. We look about and decide to tame another little bit of ground.   Lewis also wrote, Gardening is a kind of disease. It infects you, you cannot escape it.  When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden; you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed.   1895 Birth of Sergei Yesenin (books about this person), Russian lyric poet.  One current biographical account of Sergei's life said, "his poems [became] the people's songs." Today, the Yesenin Monument graces the Tauride Garden in the center of Saint Petersburg. The likeness of Sergei Yesenin, seated in a thoughtful pose, is made of solid white marble. There are words that are difficult to translate ie Russian because there is no English equivalent. For instance, there is a word that translates to "mushroom rain." A mushroom rain is a gentle, fragrant rain that wets the forest floor in a steady, lazy fashion. It's the kind of rain that is perfect for mushroom cultivation. In terms of his use of language, Sergei Yesenin was not averse to adding new words to the Russian lexicon. He once created a Russian word to describe how sand ripples across the surface when blown by the wind - something Sergei would have seen daily growing up along the banks of the Oka river near the birch forests in his hometown. Sergei's first poem Beryoza (The Birch Tree), was published in a children's magazine in January of 1914. Today Sergei's Birch tree poem is still taught in Russian schools. Birch trees are a powerful symbol in Russia, where folklore held that planting birches around a village had the power to ward off cholera. A beloved tree in Russia, Birch trees can be found growing across the breadth and depth of the country. In addition to the birch, Sergei wrote about the maple, willow, fir, lime tree, poplar, and bird cherry.  Here's an excerpt from The Birch Tree: Under my own window White is birch's hue • Snowy blanket-shadow, Silver patterned too. On its fluffy branches With a snowy hem Tassels' blossom blanches Fringe's icy gem. Standing, birch is yearning, Silent, sleepy spire, Falling snow is burning In its golden fire. Lazy dawn in wrinkles, Circling all around, Now its branches spr