Merriam-Webster gives the following synonyms for the word perennial:   abiding, enduring, perpetual, undying   Those terms can give gardeners unrealistic expectations for their perennials.   They're not eternal.   They will eventually part ways with your garden.   But, for as long as they can, your perennials will make a go of it.   Returning to the garden after their season of die back and rest.   Ready to grow.   Ready for you to see them, and love them, all over again.   Brevities   #OTD It's the birthday of botanist who was a petite, fearless, and indefatigable person: Agnes Chase, bornon this day in 1869. Chase was anagrostologist—a studier of grass. A self-taught botanist, her first position was as an illustrator at the USDA’s Bureau of Plant Industry in Washington, D.C. In this position, Chase worked as an assistant to the botanist Albert Spear Hitchcock. When Hitchcock applied for funding to go on expeditions, authorities approved the assignment for Hitchcock, but would not support Chase - saying the job should belong to "real research men." Undeterred, Chase raised her own funding to go on the expeditions. She  cleverly partnered with missionaries in Latin America to arrange for accommodations with host families. She shrewdly observed, “The missionaries travel everywhere, and like botanists do it on as little money as possible. They gave me information that saved me much time and trouble.” During a climb of one of the highest Mountains in Brazil, Chase returned to camp with a "skirt filled with plant specimens." One of her major works, the "First Book of Grasses," was translated into Spanish and Portuguese. It taught generations of Latin American botanists who recognized Chase's contributions long before their American counterparts. When Hitchcock retired, Chase was his backfill. When Chase reached retirement age, she ignored the rite of passage altogether and refused to be put out to pasture. She kept going to work - six days a week - overseeing the largest collection of grasses in the world in her office under the red towers at her beloved Smithsonian Institution. When Chase was 89, she became the eighth person to become an honorary fellow of the Smithsonian. A reporter covering the event said, Dr. Chase looked impatient, as if she were muttering to her self, "This may be well and good, but it isn't getting any grass classified, sonny."   #OTD On this day in 1924 it was Cornelia Vanderbilt's wedding day.    When the Vanderbilt heiress married British nobility, the diplomat John Cecil, the wedding flowers had been ordered from a florist in New York. However, the train to Asheville, North Carolina had been delayed and would not arrive in time.    Biltmore's Floral Displays Manager Lizzie Borchers said that,  "Biltmore’s gardeners came to the rescue, clipping forsythia, tulips, dogwood, quince, and other flowers and wiring them together. They were quite large compositions, twiggy, open, and very beautiful.”   If you look up this lavish, classic roaring 20's wedding on social media, the pictures show that the bouquets held by the wedding party were indeed very large - they look to be about two feet in diameter! I'll share the images in our Facebook Group The Daily Gardener Community.   In 2001, the Biltmore commemorated the 75th anniversary of the wedding with a month long celebration among 2,500 blooming roses during the month of June.      #OTD On this day in 1980 Alfred Hitchcock died.  On social media, you can see images of a very young Alfred Hitchcock in Italy, on the set of what many believed to be his first feature-length silent film, The Pleasure Garden (1925). He filmed an extravagant “Garden Party" scene in his 1950 film Stage Frightstaring Jane Wyman and Alastair Sim. Then in 1989, the first three reels of Alfred Hitchcock's 1923 silent film "The White Shadow" was discovered in Jack Murtagh's garden shed in Hastings, New Zealand. The film was long thought to be lost. It was Alfred Hitchcock who