garden confetti or, how humans interact with plants

John,
I've been searching about so that I could photograph this postcard that Tom and I found in our mailbox a few years ago. We hadn't gotten any mail for awhile (which can tend to happen in our neighborhood so we weren't entirely surprised) and then we found this card, it was simply an advertisement for something but the mailman had scrawled on it somewhat frantically:

"too many bees in the yard.
risk of being stung is high.
your postman."

I really should have realized the blurry binding between my studio and garden practices a long long time ago, 7 years? It was when I used black electrical tape to repair rain damage on an overly exuberant lupine plant. I was very worried about the life of the lupine and all I had on hand was the electrical tape (oh and a used, slightly purple popsicle stick for a splint)--miraculously the lupine survived and bloomed and actually looked rather post-industrial jaunty with its black plastic bandage and weirdly angularized branch.

Right now I am getting into the source of the whole pastoral/bucolic tradition--Theocritus. Amazing poems, and saturated with agriculture and the natural world, but so far not so much that directly refers to the tending and care of plants. More about the herdsman life. Although now that I think about it, I kind of like the idea of herding rather than cultivating plants. And also materials. Temporary is as.

The background blog image is of one of my moss rafts this spring. I was happy that the falling cherry blossoms rode into the studio on the raft. Garden confetti.

So I need to know more details about cacti in the Pennsylvania woods.