I AM SO PROUD

I am the first one in my family to go to gardening school!
Pooh on all their BSs, MSs and PHDs, I am now a
Master Gardener in training.
Yesterday was my third lesson. Already the mysteries are beginning to reveal themselves. Who knew that soil (you can’t say dirt) needs to be 25% air, 25% water and 50%other stuff. Needless to say that it’s hard to figure out how I will get to that from the hard clay and rock that is my mountain home. But now that the secrets of the universe are within my grasp I have faith.
I must say that everything is a bit more complicated than I thought. It’s a miracle that anything I did before brought forth so much. Just think of what will happen now. I started out taking copious notes but it occurred to me that everything is probably in the book issued us. The history of the world could be in there it’s about 6 inches thick. My time is better spent listening to the stream of experts that come to talk to us.
Being a noticer, there are many things I have noticed about this group. The first thing was that nobody in the group is excessively fluffy. In fact, I may be the fluffiest person there. I’m working on that. The second is that while they all take the course seriously, no one seems to take themselves too seriously. I like that. The third is that it’s not clubby, I like that. We are there for a purpose. And I’m learning so much! I like that!!!
One of the things I have long thought was verified by our speaker yesterday. The plant can’t distinguish between nutrients provided organically or chemically. Nitrogen is nitrogen is nitrogen. So spending outrageous amounts of money on the idea that everything must be organic is a choice, not a law, even for good gardeners.
I will give you some trivia every week from the course.
Did you know that a tomato is a berry? Did you know that an Irish potato is a stem? Did you know that all tree nuts are fruits?
That’s all the news for now. See you next week.

BIRDS

I love birds and my neighbor loves squirrels – can you see the collision coming?

She proudly told me last winter that she had “raised” an entire litter of squirrels in her yard. I took a deep breath and responded in my nicest tone – OH.

I feed the birds, more regularly than I feel the humans that live here, and nearly as often as I feed my beloved dog. I buy special feed for the birds, I know what food each kind likes to eat and I furnish it. I cut oranges and put grape jelly for the orioles in their feeder. I have the thistle feeder, the sunflower seed feeder, and the mixed seed feeder. My neighbors are no longer shocked to see me in my jammies filling a bird feeder.

This year I have one less feeder as the squirrels ate the bottom wire mesh out of a feeder my step-mother gave to me. Now all my feeders are squirrel-proof, a complicated system of heavy wire cage around the feeder which only birds can get thru, baffles, greased hangers, I have it all. And no one has told the squirrels that they cannot get into these feeders so they try several times each day.

This summer I had a new bird, a hawk. I don’t know what hawks eat, and I don’t feed him, but I think he eats small rodents and he spends a lot of his time perched on a post in my backyard. I do not discourage him, I look at him as a second line of defense against the fat little squirrels, even my most imperial tone doesn’t discourage them more than a few seconds.

My dog will not chase squirrels as she has figured out after several attempts that she cannot climb trees, so why put forth the effort. The odds there are too uneven.

This winter, as the trees all lost their leaves, I can look out my window and see dozens of bird nests in the branches. I think I have identified the hawk nest, it is the largest of all the nests and in the maple tree in my front yard.

So, I watch my hawk (I have taken possession of him as much as anyone can a hawk), I feed the birds, I chase the squirrels, who aren’t one bit afraid of me and will run up a tree and cuss down at me, and I know I must truly blessed to have such a circus going on in my backyard.

My own little garden greenhouse

I am trying something new this year. Lee bought me a contraption that looks like a giant garment bag with 4 shelves. The shelves will hold 3 trays each of starter pots. The whole thing is covered with a clear plastic cover. It has a door with zippers on each side which gives you wonderful access. I have never had any luck with tiny seeds, this year I am determined. Did you know that the wave petunias are around $3.00 a package of seed? That they take 90 days to bloom? Which is why I planted them the 1st of February. Each seed is coated with something. I use my buddy's toilet paper roll method for the dirt but I only filled the roll 2/3 up with potting soil, the last 1/3 I used a very light sprouting mix. My thinking is that the light sprouting soil won't support the root growth needed. I watered everything well with a turkey baster put the trays in there , put a heating pad in a plastic bag set on medium on the bottom shelf and zipped it up. Most of them sprouted!! Yea!! I have gotten this far many times, Some thing happens between here and the second leaves. I am hoping that this closed, moist enviroment will make the difference. I haven't had to water them in a whole week. Everyday or so I spray a little fine mist into each shelf area. What do I do next? I could use some garden tips for fine seeds.

Pavlov Had Nothing on My Mother

Many of us remember that Pavlov was a scientist that always fed these dogs to the sound of a buzzer. Over time the sound caused the same response in the animals as the smell or sight of food.

Extreme salivation

I think it’s called conditioning.

My premise is that many parents, worldwide, unwittingly use this as a training method for their children. The most heinous use of this conditioning is in potty training. Mothers, turning on the water in the wash basin to encourage their tots to make the same sound in the potty.

Future gardeners beware.

Now, I never asked my Mother and she never said but I have empirical proof that this diabolical method was used on me. As a young person you don’t even realize this has happened. As you reach your senior years the conditioning reasserts itself with a vengeance.

An avid gardener, I love to be outside. The day slips away before you know it. At some point during the day you begin to realize that you have to go.

“In a minute,” you tell yourself. You are vaguely aware that this happens several times. You’re busy and you keep putting it off, not wanting to spend a second of this beautiful day inside.

Finally it’s almost time to start dinner. Just one more quick thing!

And you turn on the hose!

Thanks, Mom

A Prairie Dog's Rebuttal

In a previous blog my blog-buddy described prairie dogs as “just big, mean, and ugly brown”. I read that blog and I was so shocked I couldn’t believe that AP hadn’t had her eyes checked in the last few years and had lost her mind when it came to describing things!

I thought of the huge village of prairie dogs that live close to Lowe’s and beside the hospital. I love the prairie dogs, love, love, love them. They are a pretty brown and so fat that when they run it’s more like a ball of fur rolling along. They have shiny hair, the cutest little button brown eyes, and need braces on their teeth so badly that they look like they are smiling all the time.
When Petco was built they had to move their entire village further to the west, and managed to do it before any of the heavy construction started. They live on 17th Street and the intersection of highway 61, and they are pretty street-smart little animals - it is rare to see one squashed on the road.

Every trip to Lowe’s requires a detour to the back of the lot where I can sit in the car and talk to them. They seem to like to visit, they stand up by their tunnel and chatter right back to me – we smile at each other, something people don’t do too much these days.

They must build the most inventive tunnels, some end right at the curb of 17th street, and they will stand there and watch the cars go by, and yes, I always slow down, roll down the window and say “hi little guys”.

Now, here is the point that AP and I would merge on thoughts, while I love watching them play and run around and I like their village of tunnels, I do not want one for a pet and I absolutely do not want one (or a colony) in my yard. I can understand why farmers and ranchers don’t want them in the pasture, but no one is ever going to farm or ranch behind Lowe’s, so it’s a good home for them.

And the moral of this blog must be –

Beauty is in the Eyes of the Beholder! (And I am a prairie dog beholder!!)

Now I'm Getting Excited!!!

I know, I know. It’s only almost February. But that’s gobs closer to March and that’s almost SPRING!

Dee (my precious daughter-in-law) and I were talking a couple of days ago, about the garden of course. That girl is a genius. She is the real deal. They have just moved into what they hope will be their forever home on five acres. Already she and J. have put together (2)-4x4x4x4 compost bins made out of pallets and are happily going about getting them started. In the high country we call this bear bait, but most places it will work.

Now this is the genius part, they left the space of one pallet between the compost bins and will eventually have many more in a row against the fence line, all with one pallet space between them. All of these empty spaces are meant to be little green houses, using the heat that the compost bins generate naturally to protect the tender plants. All you need is clear plastic on two sides and the top, thousands of toilet paper rolls filled with potting soil, seeds and water and your garden is weeks ahead of schedule. I’m thinking that they might be to some extent, self watering.

You just roll up the plastic on warm days and keep them covered other times. Dee, being the genius she is, figured out that the soil would be too nitrogen hot in those spaces for seed to flourish in the ground thus the rolls(check a previous post about this great idea).

They could be rubber banded together for easier care and set into egg carton trays for watering. Like all the corn could be together.
Are you getting the idea that on the whole this is as close to free as you get in this life?!
The idea has endless possibilities. One of the best is -where do you put your deck and patio plants when winter come?

The play “The Little shop of horrors” comes to mind.

“You gotta Feed Me!”

You could actually walk around the house without fear of disappearing into the rain forest never to be seen again.

Bravo Dee!!

The Gardening Plaque

I received a handmade plaque several years ago which hangs above my desk; the bottom is a flurry of flowers and coming up each side is a sunflower standing proud all made of felt and embroidery. The plaque has the embroidered words “Tickle it with a hoe and it will laugh into a garden”.

I look at this plaque at least once a day and probably have done so since the day I received it; I’m still trying to figure out just what it means.

If you hoe something, don’t you cut it off, dig it up, do away with it? Or, when we hoe does it just pop up at another spot in the middle of the garden?

Does it mean we need to hoe to have a garden that laughs – a lot of gardens have made me laugh, the ones with 25 of that person’s favorite concrete ornaments, or the ones that obviously were planned by someone with an abstract vision – were they all hoed?

And, why was I the recipient of this gift – I hate to hoe and to be very honest I am a weed puller – I love to pull weeds, I love how the garden looks after I have pulled the weeds, I like the order of things when they are cared for. Was my friend telling me I needed to hoe and get finished quicker, or that they didn’t think I was a good weed puller, or was the gift because I love to garden, it mentioned garden, so I must love it.

And, do I love it? Yes, I do, I admire the felt flowers, the embroidery, the tea-stained linen it was made on, and even if I do not understand the verse I have certainly spent more time pondering it than most things!

And, so grows our gardens, sometimes funny, sometimes a mystery to be solved, a puzzle with one piece missing, sometimes neat and orderly and a week later a riot of blooms that make us wonder what the original plan was.

So, I leave you with these words, “Tickle it with a hoe and it will laugh into a garden”.