Society Garlic

I remember it vividly.

My divorce was final on the first day of Spring (over a decade ago). I was living in Destin at the time and had "re-located" to the east side of the area, known as SanDestin. I went to Walmart and bought a bicycle for $69.00 and spent my non-travel, non-working days riding my bike around the neighborhoods that were nestled between the Choctawhatchee Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

While I am not, by any means, a bitter ex wife, my marriage was not a healthy place to be. It was not until I was out of it that I realized just how life had gradually transitioned into something that was not how I wanted to live. That Spring was the most gorgeous Spring that there has ever been. I remember commenting on it to a friend and their comment was "well, you must be happy". I was. I digress -but this brings me to the Society Garlic.

In the SanDestin area, I kept seeing these mounds of green spiky plants with clusters of star-shaped lavender flowers. While riding my bike around, I would stop and pick them from the resort's common grounds (being careful not to be spotted). They made excellent cut flowers that would keep for up to a week - allowing me to bring more of this most beautiful Spring into my home.

Two years later, I relocated to Northeast Florida in an effort to reduce some of my work related travel time. As I was looking for a new home, one of my top choices had this same plant in the front yard. This was the house that I ended up buying. I learned that the plant is "Society Garlic".

It supposedly gets it's name because it smells like garlic. I have never grown garlic, so I don't know what the plant smells like. However, I can tell you that, while it does have a distinct smell, it is not unpleasant at all and does not smell like the garlic that ends up on toast and spaghetti. The foliage looks kind of like chives and it spreads through bulb-like clumps. Except during our mild winters when it will sometimes turn brown, it looks great year-round and blooms from Spring through Fall. I have found it to be pest and disease resistant. And when I want more, I get the shovel and just dig out some of those clumps and replant it in a new location with great success! It remains one of my favorite plants and the flowers are still often cut and put in vases and bottles all over my house.

Beer Bottle Border

I think it all started with a conversation with my neighbor about my bottle tree. Anyway, she was telling me that she had seen flower bed borders in Italy that were created from wine bottles. The bottles were buried about half of the way, top down, into the ground along a garden edge to create the border.

Well, I just knew I had to take this idea and run with it. I love my wine, however I always drink the really fine wine that comes in a carton with the tap to prevent oxidation; therefore, I did not have a good source of wine bottles from which to work. However, I do like beer and I like it in a bottle; one of the greatest pleasures in the world is an ice cold beer after cutting the grass on a hot summer day.

Ironically, about this same time, my local recycling service quit collecting glass- so I just started saving the bottles that would otherwise have gone into my recycle bin. After a while, I figured it was time to proceed with this new project.

I had scouted out the perfect location - an area that ran parallel to my fence that separated some garden beds from my vegetable garden. I had stepping stones here already and I felt I needed a border to better define the area.

I got out my hole-diggers and dug a little trench about 5 inches deep and inserted the bottles top down. I then filled in the spaces between the bottles with the extra dirt. It took a couple of rains for the dirt to settle well in between the bottles, but I am pleased with the end result. I did not have enough bottle to do the entire area on my first run - but all the more reason to have another beer and save the bottle!

I usually drink either Corona Light (a clear bottle) or Amstel Light ( a brown bottle). I decided to just stick with the brown bottles for this project. Certainly, a nice imported beer gives my border a little more class! Really, I think green bottles would be prettiest.

Incidentally, when reading a book, African-American Gardens and Yards in the Rural South, I discovered that my idea is not so original. Blue and brown snuff bottles, brown Clorox bottles and soda bottles filled with colored liquid were used to line the walkways in African-American yards in the rural south.