Honeysuckled

    

     Earlier this week, a message arrived from daughter, Sarah, with a picture of her son, Horatio, gleefully sucking on a honeysuckle blossom. Quoting her text: Honeysuckles are blooming! Possibly bugs are pooping in them, but we don’t worry about that.

Horatio sucking honeysuckle

         Once upon a time, when Sarah was quite young, I had stopped her from nibbling on a honeysuckle blossom with the warning that bugs had peed and pooped on it! Sarah tells the story much better than I with her much more vivid remembrance of the incident. What I do vaguely recall is that I did not know if the blossoms were safe to eat/suck, and also worried that Sarah might be allergic to them – spring used to wreak havoc on her allergies, many kinds of blossoms bothered her. And I guess at the moment I saw Sarah put a honeysuckle flower to her mouth, I thought the quickest way of getting her to release the blossom was to suggest she might be eating poop.

from my backyard - just blossomed!

         After a while, was it days or seasons? Sarah realized my warning was ridiculous. And even though she has been known to call Poison Control herself for other things her kids have eaten, Sarah encourages all who listen to her story to suck honeysuckle with abandon, and insect poop and pee be damned!

15 20180511 honeysuckled

        

Squirrels, chipmunks, birds, big fluffy cat, and insects all poop and pee somewhere!