The word I heard….
I hadn’t seen one, just heard the name.
Then I saw the written word somewhere: Anemone.
Kinda like the first time I saw the word “Cotoneaster” and called it a “Cotton Easter” shrub — to the amusement of experienced gardeners nearby. One of them explained: “It’s an aster. Cotone aster.”
Yeah, sure. But in my mind, it’s still “Cotton Easter”.
What can I say? People like me hail from a strange planet.
Which may explain why we can’t cook or bake or knit.
Or make nice floral arrangements.
But I digress.
The anemone flower, a member of the buttercup family, has magical origins.
If you believe the old legends, anyway.
And you should…. if you’re a gardener.
Because I understand that gardeners are really magicians and witches, and that if you see them in the moonlight — at exactly one minute after midnight — you’ll notice that their fingers are an…
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Cynthia Reyes 
It really is hard to change words for the original way you learned them.
So true. And to this day, I look at the word “awry” and wonder why it isn’t pronounced aww- ry.
Haha. While learning to read, I failed to do a dictionary lookup on quite a few words, context serving for meaning. The one I remember most is me-LANK-u-lee for melancholy.
Tee hee, Aggie! I love this one.
When I was growing up, my parents plated some cotoneasters in the front yard. I looked at the tag on one of the branches and pronounced it just like you did — cotton Easter. When I was corrected, I thought it to be the funniest spelling of a word. To this day, in my head I say “cotton Easter,” but out loud I stutter, “cotone aster.” 🙂
You made me smile, Susan. Yes, I am the same way. And if I slip and call it cotone aster, my husband will tease “you mean cotton Easter, don’t you?”
I also called them “Cotton Easter”. Also “agastash” instead of “agastake”, and many other mispronunciations I could mention.
Misery loves company and I’m thrilled that you called them Cotton Easter too!
wow – so true – this is such beautiful!!
Thank you and I’m wishing you a good week.
Cynthia, I also love these late bloomers for cheering up a needy garden at the end of summer. Thank you for the intriguing information about flowers blooming where her tears fell.
Blessings from the island ~ Wendy
You are welcome, Wendy, and thanks for your response.
I like this variety of flower too. J’en ai planté une l’année dernière mais je ne crois pas qu’elle ait survécu à l’été caniculaire que nous avons eu cette année…. Belle semaine à toi
Bonne chance, Christiane. Et, belle semaine a toi aussi!
You made me chuckle! But I seem to have failed to tell you first time around how lovely your photos are and what a wonderful little flower! 🙂
Hey Linda: Thanks! Isn’t that a sweet little flower, indeed?
What a beautiful flower!
I am terrible at pronouncing the names of plants correctly. I have a friend who loves plants like I do, but she doesn’t like to get on the computer much. She has me go to online dictionaries and let her listen to the pronunciations over the phone,. We laugh and laugh as we discover together just how many words we have been mispronouncing.
It is interesting, too that many words have one pronunciation for America, and a different pronunciation for Britain. Her husband is from England, and they have been married for over forty years so she pronounces a lot of things the same way he does. “The Free Dictionary” provides both. 🙂
It is funny when you discover how things should really be pronounced, isn’t it? Tee hee! Then, add the difference between British and american and it gets even more weird and comical! glad you relate to my faux pas.
I homeschooled (The computer just underlined my spelling of that word…but homeschoolers insist on making it one word) my daughter all the way from kindergarten until she went to college. When she was around seven or eight years old I taught her how to identify plants using a field guide. We had this one pretty plant that just showed up in our yard. It was native to our state, but we didn’t know what it was. When we identified it we discovered that it had many common names. Here is the botanical name: Eupatorium coelestinum 🙂
so, Theresa: You had to go use one of those big Latin names, didn’t you? (smile) Now I am going to have to google it! But how interesting that you homeschooled your daughter. You’re a rare bird. I always wonder about the commitment and work that must take. But how lovely that you introduced plants to her.
I’d stick with Cotton Easter – sounds much better! 🙂 And they are lovely – now nice to have them in your garden. Hope you are feeling well!
Haha, Jeanne. You made me laugh. If I stuck with all the words I mispronounce (e.g. ‘statistician’), no-one would understand me!