Garden Pests

Below are pics of my garden pests-- Winston and Emma:

• Both love to dig large cavernous holes and lie under shrubs while chewing off any lower branches that impede their comfort.
• Both chase chipmonks mercilessly and care not where they step in their efforts to catch them.  Emma caught one and played with it for about 45 minutes one day.  Bob thought she had a toy until he investigated it more thoroughly.  The chipmonk scampered away seemingly unhurt. 
• Both leave muddy tracks and fall leaves in my sunroom and near the doggie door.
• Both love to chase neighborhood cats that  mistakenly sit (or plot and taunt) on the picket fence supports. 
• Both try to leap the picket fence when the UPS truck drives by.
• Both have created a trodden pathway along the length of the fence chasing anyone and everybody on foot or riding a bicyle or motorcycle.
• Both trample my impatients to get to their water bowl.
• Neither have a real appreciation for the beauty of butterflies other than chasing them and jumping to catch them.

Emma is the overall winner in the pest category because she chases frisbees all over the yard.  She also takes all her toys out the doggie door and leaves them in the yard. 

On the plus side, both contribute to the compost so I guess we'll keep them.

It's time to pull these kiddos indoors

When we purchased our home in the fall of 1990, one criterion was to find a home with a sunroom.  After enjoying a Florida room and wicker loaned to me by my in-laws, I wanted to recreate that feeling of cottage coziness. I purchased vintage wicker and hung ferns along the wall to wall windows.  The wicker proved to be uncomfortable, the ferns shed, and the ficus plants kept outgrowing their space allotment.  The romance with wicker and lots of indoor plants died after a few years. 

I kept two plants in the sunroom.  These two ficus (is the plural fici?) came with me in 1991 as 2 foot fledglings from Walmart.  As you can see, both are over 6 feet now and that's only after being pruned in February (when I pull them out to the patio) and in August (when I start planning to push these jokers back in).

I love the canopy aspect of the ficus.  Care is not difficult.  We've repotted a couple of times and I'm determined not to let them get any bigger so I have to control their room to grow.  During the summer, I water them 3-4 times a week.  After I pull them back inside, some of the leaves will yellow and fall off initially (response to a change in environment) but the plants respond to once a week watering,   Because they need light, I kept the recessed fluorescent lights despite our paint and ceiling contractor telling me I needed to put in canned lights when we repainted in August.  More light, however,means more water is needed.  Our sunroom has lots of windows so they should do fairly well until I can drag them out again in late February (or after frost).  This November will be the 20th year that these plants have graced our home.  They are now family.

Courage and boiled peanuts

I remember eating my first raw oyster and gagging the entire time, while thinking that the first person who ever swallowed a raw oyster must have been very courageous. I think the first person who boiled peanuts must have been in that club, too.

My big sister (whose birthday is today had she lived) was a transplanted Yankee.  She grew up in the South but quickly fled to Miami, then to Chicago, then to New York and finally to Sedona, where she thought she had found Nirvana.  On her visits home, she always begged for boiled peanuts.  We would visit Mr. Trawick's stand or sometimes drive out in the country to Headland or down to Campbellton to try to locate the best boiled peanuts.  We would gorge ourselves and share memories of our father boiling large vats.  His peanuts were always the best with just the right amount of salt.  We'd fight over the young peanuts that we could eat whole --juice and all.  The smell would waft throughout the house and we couldn't wait for them to cool.  We would sit on the porch and crack the peanuts with our teeth and toss the shells into the shrubs below.   Our dad didn't fuss-- he knew the shells make wonderful compost.

To honor Beverly on her birthday, I boiled peanuts.  I'm waiting for them to cool -- then I'm going to sit in the rocker on the porch to think about my sister and the good times we shared.

Fall's last hurrah -- green peppers

As much as I enjoy gardening, I cannot seem to grow a decent produce garden.  Our tomatoes failed miserably this year because we have so many trees.  The one sunny area that we have is taken up with my perennials.  The herbs I planted (with the exception of rosemary) were all scrawny and listless.   The only tomatoes that seem to grow well are the little Israeli ones that grow from seeds in our compost and had lots of growth but few tomatoes.

In an act of desperation, I planted several green pepper plants in my perennial garden long after planting season.  They were on sale (less than a dollar for each plant) at Lowes and I felt sorry for the little stragglers.  Despite very little care from me, they quickly overtook my pink pentas and started producing hundreds of green peppers. I've been trying out all kinds of recipes with green peppers and giving them away to anyone who looks mildly interested.  We've had green peppers filled with rice,ground beef and tomatoes.  Lunch, egg salad with green peppers, was fantastic.  Last night's spaghetti was enriched with green peppers.  I'm planning to have an omelette tomorrow for breakfast.  I'm planning recipes for the next week and I still won't have used all the peppers.

Mondo grass = superstars of gardening

Mondo grasses are my designated superstars of gardening.  

I've spent the last two mornings dividing and replanting dwarf mondo grass.  It's a great way to fill in an area under a tree (see my work this morning in the second picture).  Although it flourishes with watering and fertilizer, it tolerates drought and sandy conditions.  It's an evergreen and needs mowing only once a year (February).  It propagates most easily by sending out underground roots (stalons) that help establish it.  It's good to use when your landscape needs some definition.  To divide it, you have to dig it up and separate the roots and transplant it (unfortunately on your hands and knees) to its new location.  One large bunch can be divided up into 20 or more plants if you're really patient.

Another awesome type of mondo grass is liriope muscari-- some refer to it as monkey grass.  Liritrope is a widely used perennial.  It is also an evergreen and  rewards you with  purple flowers in August. I use it for edging, defining pathways and preventing soil erosion. It's also easy to separate and replant.  Once you've planted it, it sends out underground roots and grows exponentially.  It has funky seed (balls) but I've not seen it reproduce this way.

This morning, I put the hose down in an area edged by liritrope and even the water didn't penetrate the barrier.  It's wonderful for filling in as area that is hilly or shady. 

These plants help fill in spaces where nothing else seems to want to grow. My heroes.

Passalongs

There are two plants in my garden that I haven't a clue what they are.  Both are passalongs (plants given to me by someone else).. 

One is a white pinkish begonia (I think it may be a hardy white begonia) that blooms and fills in all the garden spaces from May to October.  It's easy to root and once you stick a cutting (cut, dip in water and rooting solution) into the ground, it goes wonderfully berserk and covers all those areas that look bad (roots of roses, for example).  I use it as filler and it never dissappoints me.  It likes to be pruned and comes back with a vengence.  Tami, Susannah's mother in law, gave me a cutting and it's all over my garden now.

Another passalong came from my neighbor.  I think it came along for the ride along with a rooted angel's trumpet.  I think it might be petite pink monarda but I really don't know for sure.  It grows well but the hydrangeas grew so large this year that it couldn't get enough sun.  It's not a towering plant but it was trying to reach the sun.  To rescue it, I took three cuttings and each is blooming now. 

Passalong plants are one of most rewarding parts of gardening.  I think about the contributor when I see each blooming. For example, the yellow daylies and white hydrangeas came from Susannah's grandmother, who died last year.  The forsythias, nikko hydrangeas and purple and white althea that grace my garden all came from my niece, Dana.  The angel trumpets and fox ivy came from my generous back door neighbor, Jan.

Steve Bender said that "true gardeners would much rather shake a hornet's nest than deny an interested part the joy of a beautiful plant." I'll continue to beg and plead for cuttings.  I have my eye on a wonderful pink flowering vine near Sears and I plan to ask its owner if I can have a cutting. Gardeners must be very brave, too.

The poop scoop

Bob, my sweet, sweet husband, does all my composting for me.  I do help him out a little bit.  I keep a compost pot by my sink and throw in all my vegetable trimmings, egg shells, coffee and tea grounds, and any flower arrangement that might be a little past its prime.  Warning:  You cannot place meat in the compost bin.

Bob contributes the majority of the compost (grass clippings, dog manure, prunings, etc).  He layers the compost materials and keeps black tarp over the compost pile (to add a bit of heat.)  Monthly, he turns the layers over and adds 8-8-8 fertilizer to the top, then re-covers the heap with the tarp.  He fusses at me if I throw away leaves or sticks.  Everything goes into the compost pile (except meat-- but I have questioned him about the doggie poop and he just shakes his head to indicate that I need to research the whys of that myself).  He has a Sears shredder that when its working, shreds limbs, twigs and leaves.  The kids and I tease him about his relentless quest to scoop up doggie poop all over the yard and add it to his pail that he empties out regularly.  You can see the pail below, too along with the compost heap.   Our composting is continuous and is generally ready to add in February.

Bob also makes compost tea-- requiring  1/4 pail of compost, a burlap bag and water.  He puts the burlap bag in the pail and covers it with water.  In a few days, you can use it to water flowers and it's an excellent fertilizer. 

Susannah always reminds me to tell Bop (what Anderson calls him-- the other grandchildren call him Pop but Anderson has trouble with his Ps) to bring his pooper scooper with him when we come to the Dallas area so he'll have plenty to do in her yard, too.  He's already excited.