TWO COMMON ROADSIDE FLOWERS, AND "THE GREAT DIVIDER"

YARROW

DAISY

Saturday,  7:30 AM.  62 degrees F, wind N, light with stronger gusts.  The sky is cloudless, with little haze.  The barometer stands at 29.97" and the humidity has fallen to 66%.  This is the finest day in weeks, especially following on the heels of the miserable weather of the middle of last week.  The landscape project plants were finally delivered in late afternoon yesterday and the majority of them are in the ground but there is still work to do this morning.  It will be a really nice job when finally completed.

   Two of the most common roadside and field flowers are white.  Yarrow, Achillea millefolium,and the common daisy, Chrysanthemum leucanthemum, are both in the sunflower family, the daisy bearing the commonly recognized daisy flower, while the yarrow, also known as millfoil, has very small flowers growing in a dense head.  Both are naturalized from Europe, although there also are native species of Achillea as well. There are countless horticultural varieties of both plants. Yarrow has long been used as a blood clotting agent, and both the genus and species names allude to this property;  Achilles, the Greek hero of the Trojan war, is said to have used it to treat his soldiers wounds, and  the species name millitaris refers to  his troops.  The next time you cut yourself while working in the garden, use some yarrow leaves to staunch the bleeding.  It works.

   The "'Great Divider," President Obama, evidently feels obligated to continually stir the toxic racial stew that the Zimmerman case has been cooked into by the media and the race-baiters.  He just can't seem to leave it alone.  He said yesterday that "Travon Martin could have been me thirty-five years ago," and that the most valued aspects of America  are "peace, security, and order."

   No, Mr. President, those are not the the values this country was founded on.  America was founded on individual freedom; and the right to self-defense being the most basic of all human  freedoms,   George Zimmerman was found not guilty by a jury of his peers.. If our country had been founded on peace, security and order we would still be British subjects.