Seasons of Interest: Spring foliage is dark green and attractive. Echinacea blooms all summer long and into the beginning of fall as well. Some gardeners choose to leave the coneflower seed heads on the plant at the end of the season to provide winter interest and food for native songbirds. Uses in the Garden: Coneflowers make excellent cut flowers and do well in butterfly gardens, prairie or native gardens, water wise xeroscapes, and full sun gardens.
Henry Blair was the second black inventor issued a patent. Blair was born in Montgomery County, Maryland around 1807. He received a patent on October 14, 1834 for a seed planter and a patent in 1836 for a cotton planter. Henry Blair was the second black inventor to receive a patent the first was Thomas Jennings who received a patent in 1821 for a dry cleaning process.
They tell about one of Jefferson Davis's slaves who invented a new screw propeller for steam-driven ships. He couldn't patent it, of course; but it served the South during the war that was fought to keep him a slave. The first patent to a black freeman was given in 1834 to Henry Blair for his new seed-planter. But records of patents, even to freed blacks, are rare before the Civil War. For one thing, black inventors usually put their patents in the name of a white lawyer. That improved chances for acceptance of their invention.