I love lamium.

It's so delicate and pink and girlie. I thought it would be perfect to talk about it today, on Mother's Day. Lamium is a dense, trailing ground cover with silver-green leaves (sort of like lamb's ear) and pale flowers in the springtime of pink, lavender or white. I have a thriving patch on the side of our house, beneath a dogwood, that came from my mother-in-law's house in Durham. It's easy to care for, easy to clip and transfer, and brightens up a shady spot. And itt grows in almost any type of soil.

According to Wikipedia, "Lamium (deadnettle) is a genus of about 40-50 species of flowering plants in the family Lamiaceae, of which family it is the type genus." Other plants in the Lamiaceae family include a variety of culinary herbs like basil, mint, rosemary, thyme and lavender. (No wonder I like it so much.)

• Have you got any lamium in your garden?
• What's

My neighbors, John and Marianne, have the perfect spot for vegetable gardens. A couple years ago, John fenced it in to keep the bunnies and deer from turning it into a buffet and last year he and his sons lined the boundary with landscape timbers. They had enough left over to build a little staircase, which makes it really easy to get in to tend.

This year's garden proves to be a promising temptation; they've already put in two varieties of peppers, some tomatoes and started cucumbers from seed. Landscaping tarp covers the ground to keep out the weeds and plant stakes tucked into the fence remind them of which peppers they can eat without water and which ones will blister their mouths.

All in all, a tidy garden for one family's subsistence farming. They're adding some oxygen to the environment, saving some gas to and from the grocery, and eating healthy.

• Do you have a vegetable garden at home?
• Does it have an unusual or interesting

The history of Mother's Day varies from country to country, though it's generally believed that the tradition in the United States began when a young Appalachian homemaker worked to improve sanitation through "Mothers' Work Days," back in the nineteenth century, as she called them.

According to Wikipedia, Ann Jarvis "organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors. When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Originally the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, this building is now the International Mother's Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there,

May is a great season in the garden, so here are some tips I've assembled for the month that may have been named for the Greek goddess Maia, the Roman goddess of fertility. Some of these come from a pretty comprehensive book, Gardening in the Carolinas Month-By-Month.

• Plant your seeds at intervals to prolong garden color, about every 10 - 12 days, so they mature at different rates.
• Plant warm season annuals now, like African Daisy, Marigold, Vinca, Geranium, Impatiens, Globe Amaranth, Petunia, and Salvia.
• Prune your lavender and sage.
• Raise your mower height by 1/4- to 1/2- inch as the temperature climbs (this encourages deeper root growth and reduces heat stress).
• Clean up your plants and your flower beds.
• Apply a slow-release fertilizer when new shoots emerge (follow the label directions for amount

May is one of my favorite months, from the abundant explosion of spring color, to the delicate, graceful blooms of its namesake flower, Lily of the Valley.

My lilies-of-the-valley are very nearly ready to bloom, and I check them out each morning on my way to work and in the afternoon on my way back in the house. They grace the walkways of my front gardens, and frolic in the backyard beneath my huge dogwood. And when the weather's just right, we have a few blissful days of overlap—when the snowy white flowers of my dogwood sparkle above the peaceful bell-shaped blooms of the lily of the valley.

This woodland plant is a herbaceous perennial that spreads underground through rhizomes, and blooms in late April/early May. The blooms around my house last two or three weeks. I also find them easy to transport, so I give take them with me in the fall when we have dinner with friends or visit family; it's nice to have a little 'thinking of you' gift.

I like these two legends