Christmas Trees

Have you picked out your Christmas tree yet?  Last week I read an article about three new species of evergreens being raised in this country as Christmas trees,. Two are originally from the mountains around the Black Sea, the third from the mountains of  South Korea. All three are considered superior in their ability to last many weeks without losing their needles.

The Nordmann fir, Abies  nordmanniana, has strong branches, a statuesque shape and retains its needles for as long as a month.  The needles have silvery undersides that can create a “two-tone flash” when brushed.  The Turkish fir, Abies bornmeulleriana, is similar to the Nordmann in shape, but smaller, and has deep green needles. 

The Korean fir,  Abies Koreanna, has silky needles with  silver-white  undersides that can also create  the “flash,” as well as producing a nice lime fragrance.  The picture in the article made this species look pretty much like most Christmas trees, but when I went on the Internet I saw huge cones on all the Korean firs that hadn’t even been mentioned in the article.

Unfortunately not many Christmas tree outlets in New England stock any of these fancy new trees yet.  They are all pictured on the Internet, however. and can be ordered on line.  I assumed they'd all be pretty expensive, but actually found that the Korean Fir costs only $7.95 and could be shipped for free.  Alas, it turned out to be only 2 feet tall, root and all,  not exactly a great tree for Christmas.    Hopefully by next year we’ll start finding all these new species available here in the East.

As you might suspect,  our family has never had a store-bought Christmas tree., chopping down a variety of evergreens from our own woodland over the years.  Nowadays I walk around the sheep pasture each December and usually  find a nice baby cedar to be my Christmas tree. 

I've always decorated my tree with nothing but tiny lights and hand-crocheted stars my friend Edna Ford made for me many years ago, but when I got them out two days ago I found they'd gotten badly discolored.  I can bleach them, but since I'm headed to NYC this Christmas to be with Bridget and John and the boys, I think I'll just skip  having a tree  this Christmas. 

The most attractive Christmas tree  I’ve ever seen was created by my friend Henny Mead. The Meads' tree was always a live tree that could be planted come spring.  It was decorated with tiny white lights,  small bouquets of baby’s breath, and a dozen white feathered doves that looked so real you almost thought they'd fly away any minute.   

When I began asking friends about their tree decorations, I  was amazed at the infinite variety of ornaments they used,  but there was no variety about who did the trimming.  Husbands were allowed to string the Christmas lights, but that was all.  Just about every wife had experienced seeing their husband throw handfuls of tinsel at the tree.

 Besides the standard glass bulbs, tinsel and lights,  carved figures, strings of cranberries and popcorn, seashells, and heirloom ornaments were mentioned, but the most unusual decoration was  a labor of love by my Hungarian friend’s wife who always tied dozens and dozens of his favorite Hungarian candies on the tree which George continually snitched until the tree no longer had any decoration at all.

I get very nostalgic when I remember my grandparents' huge Christmas tree. It was always decorated with  real candles in beautiful leaded candle holders.  My cousins and I all loved this tradition because  every year the tree caught fire, causing lots of screaming and excitement and rushing around for buckets of water. The fire was always doused long before any real damage was done. It would be fun to continue that tradition, but I don’t know which cousin inherited the candle holders.

 Besides the standard glass bulbs, tinsel and lights,  carved figures, strings of cranberries and popcorn, seashells, and heirloom ornaments were mentioned, but the most unusual decoration was  a labor of love by my Hungarian friend’s wife who always tied dozens and dozens of his favorite Hungarian candies on the tree which George continually snitched until the tree no longer had any decoration at all.

My real favorite has always been the decorations on my grandparent’s huge Christmas tree,  real candles in beautiful leaded candle holders.  My cousins and I all loved this tradition because almost every year the tree caught fire, causing lots of screaming and excitement and rushing around for buckets of water. The fire was always doused long before any real damage was done. It would be fun to continue that tradition, but I don’t know which cousin inherited the candle holders.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah  or whatever you feel like celebrating.  Oh, and Happy New Year. My next column won't appear until 2014.

At Last, A NEW DOG!

This is Coco, my new beagle.  Thank you! Thank you! So many dog-loving readers responded with helpful suggestions that the result ended my long search to find a really sweet companion for Clover. I’m afraid I’m still so wrapped up in canines that I couldn't think about anything else to write about today, but I promise  we’ll get back to gardening soon.  

I just counted them up, and Coco is the 12^th dog to come live on Locust Hill. Some were smart, a few a bit dumb, and one we will never forget, Rasta, an American water spaniel named for the glorious Rastafarian dreadlocks that covered her from head to clicking toenails.  I couldn’t find a photo of her, so I used a drawing  I did years ago. 

You may not be familiar with this breed – fat, short legged, oily brown dogs with oversized heads, but Hank considered Rasta 

                                       The Perfect Dog.  

I was solely responsible for acquiring Rasta, a surprise birthday present for Hank’s 50^th.  Greater love hath no man for a wife who buys him an absurdly expensive six-week-old puppy, shipped all the way from Wisconsin, and eager to be housebroken during the winter months.

When we met Rasta’s plane at Bradley, the overpowering reek of her crate resembled an uncleaned lion’s cage at the zoo. And the poor sick puppy who crawled out of it was a wet, watery-eyed ball of kinky curls. I’m still not sure how it was possible, but Hank fell in love with her at first sight. He prepared her three meals of cooked rice each day for the next month until her intestinal  problems were cured.

The thought of house-breaking during this period was a joke, provided you had a sense of humor, but eventually Rasta learned to go on the lawn just beyond the front door.  She also learned to sit and stay, sometimes as long as 10 seconds. She never chewed shoes, gloves, baskets, houseplants or library books, so long as they were out of reach.  She rarely dug holes in the lawn, only in the gardens where the digging was easy.

Being no greedier than Henry VIII, she grew into what I called a bloated blob while Hank affectionately considered  her  a beautiful butterball.  She was neither.  She was pregnant! That November she produced 11 offspring  resembling at least four different fathers.  They were cute, but not one of our fourteen Thanksgiving guests could be talked into taking one home.

Becoming an unwed mother subdued Rasta a bit, but even being spayed didn’t dampen her greeting which was not just a wagging tail but a grotesquely wagging body of violent  s-curves of ecstasy.  When she slept, usually in a packing box in Hank’s shop, her pink tongue always hung out of her mouth, and she’d wake up with it  so dry she’d be unable to get it unglued for several minutes, so she’d waddle around with this strange pink appendage stuck to her lip, sort of like a young lady unaware of the lipstick on her front teeth.

Coco is as energetic as Rasta was, but I doubt if she will be as entertaining. Obviously her previous owner allowed her to sit in her lap, so every time I sit down she tries to sit in mine.  Not entertaining! 

Coco is very affectionate, but poor Clover's nose is a bit out of joint.  Getting a decent photo of the two of them together was so difficult I had to have Bridget come over to take these.  

Thanksgiving Thoughts



I bet I’ve written at least 20 columns about Thanksgiving over the past 30 years .  Their subjects included turkeys, Indian pudding, gourds, Indian corn, desserts and decorations, so I hope you’ll excuse me if today’s column on bittersweet sounds a bit familiar as an earlier version of it was included in my first book.

 Unlike most holiday decorations, bittersweet can be had for free.  Just drive along a country road and you’ll have no trouble spotting this vine, its stems twining over shrubs and tree branches and laden with clusters of bright red berries with orange caps.  That was how I got my Thanksgiving decorations for many years.

When we moved to Locust Hill however, I was sure I would find lots of bittersweet on the property, and I did, but only after much searching.  The vine I finaly found was very far from the house, so I decided to transplant some , thinking it would make a good screen in front of the ugly propane tank. 

I dug up a small piece of the bright orange root and planted it, unaware of its bad habits.  That vine grew faster than the national debt, but instead of hiding the unattractive propane tank,  it clambered over the fence into the sheep pasture. What was even more disappointing, it never produced any berries.

Eventually I learned why.  Bittersweet vines are like humans, they’re either male or female , and you need both a mama and a poppa to get any berries. The female vine may blush and bloom each spring, but if there isn’t a male flower around to provide her with pollen, it won’t do her a bit of good.

By studying the blossoms on my vine with a magnifying glass as if I were Sherlock Holmes, I learned they were boys, not girls.  By that time my plant had gone berzerk, tearing up the pasture fence and climbing the walls of the sheep barn until he had managed to get in a window.  What sort of sex-starved monster had I brought into my yard?

That summer I cut the stems down to the ground and painted each one with brush killer, but by fall a dozen new sprouts had appeared.  It took two more years before I finally managed to kill that bittersweet.  I kept looking for an appropriate spot where I could plant a new bittersweet, and eventually I did.  The town had just cut down a sick locust tree that was too close to the road, leaving behind a stump almost 8 feet tall. 

It was the perfect place to plant a new bittersweet vine, a spot where it could do no damage, and only a minute or two from the house.  As you can see from the photo above, it has enveloped the stump so thoroughly I can cut large clumps of it each Thanksgiving.     

Unless you have an equally safe place to plant some bittersweet,  I highly recommend that you don’t try growing this hungry plant.   Take a nice drive along a back country road until you spot those bright orange-capped berries clambering up a tree and cut some for your  Thanksgiving decorations.  Or get some nice colorful gourds and Indian corn to decorate your table.

Happy Thanksgiving.

A Request

Just Photographs

Did you all have as pathetic a gardening summer as I did?  This is what Ogden Nash wrote after a long hot season is his vegetable patch.

Say not that Eve needed Adam’s pardon

For their eviction from the garden.

I only hope some power divine

Gets round to ousting me from mine.

Since Locust Hill’s vegetables were a disaster this summer, I came close to feeling like Mr. Nash, and couldn’t think of a thing to write a column about, so instead of pulling up all the frost blackened plants so I could spread well-rotted manure on the garden, I took my camera and snapped a bunch of pictures of the summer’s trials and tribulations. 

I can’t remember which thunderstorm managed to break off the apple tree limb that supported Hank’s grandfather’s beautiful swing, but as you can see, there couldn’t have been much strength left in the hollowed trunk of that ancient tree to support it. The really sad thing is that there is not a single  other tree near the house with an appropriate limb  for that swing on. 

My next picture shows a small section of the backside of the perennial border’s fence.  That fence  originally bordered the meadow in front of the house when we bought Locust Hill, but since it was no longer needed there,  we dug it up and “replanted” it to be part of the sheep pasture.  Eventually the perennial border filled the area in front of it. 

Of course  pasture grasses loved to creep into the nice dirt of the border, so Hank laid sections of sheet metal down to discourage them.  Unfortunately this was a total failure, and after years of constantly uprooting these weeds, I decided this past summer it was time to fix the problem.

It was a mammoth job,  Just getting rid of the weeds and finding the  buried sections of sheet metal was a challenge.  Digging a  trench, then burying the sheets as uprights, lugging stones and buckets of well-rotted  dirt from the compost pile to firm them up was all such hard work that I could only manage to do a single section a day,

In fact when I took the picture above, I  saw that I still had a single section of fence not done.  How could I resist finally finishing the job?  I put down the camera, found the shovel, gloves and buckets and got to work.

You can see my reward in the next photo. The previous week I'd finally come up with a place to hang Hank's grandfather's swing. By standing on the seat of the tractor  I was able to reach up and loop rope around two beams of the long shed, and in  half an hour I'd hung the swing.  

I went up and collapsed on it when I'd finished fixing the last section of fence. Daughter Trum happened to arrive as I was rocking gently in the sun and snapped a photo with her cell phone.  

And since she also took a perfect photo of the sheep eating the remains of a Brussels sprout plant,  I will end with it.  Pilot is the big one in the center, my only male. On his left is Wimpy, a shy, elderly ewe who must be eight or nine.  My two newly acquired girls, are facing each other.  They came already named, Valiant on the left and Intrepid on the right. 

                                                           

A Flower for Funerals?

How do you feel about gladiolas?  Just about everyone I ask this question of gives me a very negative reply.  Yuck!  Funeral Flowers!  One gal actually gave me this quote –

She saw my gladiola bed

and as she looked at them she said,

“They make me think of being dead.”

Yes, there’s no doubt that these bright  spikes of color  are the standard decoration at funerals. I remember when Hank’s father died, we found a list of his preferences – along with a requests to be cremated,  favorite hymns to be included at his memorial service, and contributions to Ducks Unlimited in lieu of flowers. This was followed in red block letters  NO GLADIOLAS!

 I might never have grown these showy blooms  myself, but for the fact that the first year I ordered my seeds for the vegetable garden from Jung’s, a nursery in Wisconsin that a friend had recommended, they included a bonus of a dozen gladiola bulbs.

I knew nothing about these funny looking corms when they arrived,  and hadn’t been to enough funerals to  think of them as death decorations.  But I didn't even know what colors these knobby bulbs would produce, and I wasn't too enthused with the idea of having to dig them up each fall and store them in a cool dry place every winter  Being a terrible penny pincher, however, I wasn't about to throw them away. As Hank would say "Never look a gift horse in the mouth."

My perennial border was so new it could hardly be  considered a border.   It contained only a dozen plants, all given to me by friends. What harm to add a dozen gladiolas?  That summer as each one bloomed I tied a piece of colored yarn around its stem.  Being a knitter, I had all the right colors  - yellow, pink, white.  The blooms were very attractive as a background for perennials, and when fall came I dug them up,  attached  the right color yarn  to each corm and put them down in the cold cellar. 

I planted the corms each spring, and separated them each fall, putting the pink, blue and purple ones in a box for the border, and the white, yellow and one a gentle orange that would compliment Over the next few years,  I separated the corms each fall, putting the pink, blue  and purple in a box to be replanted in the border, while the white,  yellow and a soft pumpkin colored one that would look well in an arrangement in the living room, I would replant in my cuting garden. 

Isn't that a beauty? Now don’t put your nose up at the idea of an arrangement using gladiolas.  All alone I admit they aren’t my style any more than the name “glads” – an abbreviated word as tacky as “drapes.”  Mixed with other flowers such as zinnias, snapdragons and a bit of baby’s breath, they can fill out and compliment any bouquet. 

Sad to say, back then I didn’t take photos for my columns so you’ll have to imagine those bouquets compared to the one below that might decorate the grave site of my very tacky and least favorite teacher.   

If you grow gladiolas you already know how to treat them, but for the benefit of those who have scorned them and are now looking with a less jaundiced eye, here’s the scoop.  The bulbs should be lifted with a fork before the first hard frost and set out to dry, not in the sun, for several weeks. Then the old corm, shrunken from giving birth to the fat spear of summer flowers, is broken off and discarded.

The new corm which has formed above the old is already carrying next year’s bloom.  It needs a cool dry place for the winter.  It will be ready to plant in May.  To have a longer flowering period they can be planted at two-week intervals up until July.

Think about trying a few of these showy bulbs next year.  There are miniature varieties if you feel the large ones are too ostentatious.  And think about writing your funeral preferences.  After Hank and I read his father’s requests, we spent a hilarious night writing out ours.   Maybe your spouse would hire the Tanglewood chorus to perform Brahms Requiem?  Or plant some forget-me-nots beside your gravestone?

All about Halloween

 I  haven't raised pumpkins since 1995, the last year there were grandchiuldren living nearby who wanted to carve fancy Jack o' Lanterns.  That row of pumpkins above provided Reed and Ely with so many choices they didn’t even argue about who got which. 

Back in the Middle Ages the date Oct 31^st was not Halloween, it was referred to as New Year’s Eve. The druids (I had to look that up to discover druids were priests) celebrated the date by throwing a few black cats onto their bonfire to placate the witches in the area. Eventually New Year’s Eve was changed to All Hallow’s Eve, and the towns folk got into the act, dressing up as saints and devils, and dancing in the street.

In America  October 31st was called “Mischief Night” when ghosts roamed the countryside curdling milk and tipping over outhouses.  By the time I was a kid  the date had become Halloween.  It involved candy apples, popcorn and “witches’ teeth,”  and if folks weren’t sensible enough to stay home to hand out such treats, they’d be greeted with soaped windows, and strewn toilet paper on their return.

By the time my kids were old enough to  trick or treat,  it was Mars Bars and Milky Ways or  windows sprayed with shaving cream and more strewn toilet paper.  The costumes I made my three girls were considered old-fashioned by their friends who paraded around in store-bought Richard Nixon masks and authentic looking space suits and goblin garb. Fortunately  candy stuffed with razor blades and drugs were still a few years away.

Tricks and treats and costumes may change with the generations over the years, but one part of Halloween has been around for centuries, the jack-o-lantern.  In Ireland where these carvings originated, they were made from large turnips or rutabagas, but in this country they have always been carved on fat orange pumpkins.

 Having priced a few pumpkin at various farm stands this week,  I suspect quite a few gardeners who have children will grow some themselves next summer, so here are a few suggestions.  Pumpkin vines  take up a lot of room so I plant mine out by the manure pile instead of in the vegetable  garden.  Pumpkins do not like to be transplanted, so they should be started where they will grow.  To get a head start, plant the seeds in a sod.  Dig up a shovelful of grass from a field, turn it upside down and plant some seeds in it  indoor in March.

Since I now have a great grandson who visits Locust Hill each August, I may grow a few pumpkins next summer myself, and  personalize them for Twain. When a pumpkin is still young, you can take a carrot peeler and gouge out a child’s name or initials with the tip.  As the pumpkin grows these cuts heal over and the name will be branded in the pumpkin’s flesh.

Have a happy Holloween, and remember, if you bring jack o’ lanterns in the house, the warm temperatures will make them rot in a hurry.  Left outside they’ll last much longer.  

What are Invertebrates?

Oh, dear, what shall I write about this week? Having written columns on just about every garden subject over the past thirty years, it's hard to come up with something I haven't already covered. Flipping through my files yesterday, however, I came upon one labeled "Column Ideas" and when I opened it, the first article I found was titled "A Plague of Gypsy Moths." Since my last column mentioned the area on Locust Hill we call the Gypsy Cut, I'm hoping you might find their life cycle interesting.

The gypsy moth arrived in our country in 1868 when Leopold Tronvelot, a naturalist living in Massachusetts, let a cluster of their eggs he'd brought home from France fall out an open window.  An egg cluster can contain up to 1000 eggs, and when the eggs hatched into tiny larvae no bigger than mosquitoes, the plague began. These little innocents just spin long strands of silk in trees until they molt, but then they become the hairy hungry leaf-consuming caterpillars.

By July they are fat and full of green leaves and transform into pupae.  Some are males, some females, and when a pair gets together, the result is a gypsy moth, ready to start the cycle again when the female lays a new batch of eggs. It wasn't until 1974, 105 years after Mr.  Tronvelot  spilled the eggs, that both state and federal governments started pouring money into control programs.  Sad to say, that was not in time to save the beautiful stand of oaks on Locust Hill. 

Heard enough about gypsy moths? My idea file fortunately had several other articles on invertebrates, which by the way, means having no spinal column.  One that is far more appealing than the gypsy moth, is the Daddy Longlegs. He is a predator with olfactory organs in some of his eight legs that help him smell nearby prey.  Those legs are designed to release a squirt of foul-smelling substance to repel  enemies.  If that doesn't work he can shed a leg if it is seized by an enemy, who is then left holding this useless appendage while Daddy escapes. 

Ever heard of burying beetles? This genus, Necrophorus, which means "corpse bearer" in Greek, contains nature's grave diggers. They're anything but funereal looking, having bright orange spots on their black bodies. These beetles are able to detect the faintest smell of death, even before the body of a bird or small animal has cooled. If one of these colorful grave diggers discovers a corpse, he sets to work making a hole right under the carcass, or if the soil is too hard, shifts it to a softer spot. Soon other funeral helpers  arrive and join in the work until the deceased is totally buried. 

OK, just one more invertebrate, a weird looking insect with big bug-eyes, the praying mantis.Unlike her close relations - grasshoppers, cockroaches, crickets and walking sticks, who are all benign vegetarians, the mantis is a predator, and on top of that, a cannibal. She's not praying, she's preying, searching for the next meal. Like all insects, she has six legs., the back four used for walking, the front two , lined with razor-sharp spines and ready to seize her next meal, function  functioning like a swimmer doing the crawl.

Those bulging eyes of hers are always on the lookout for the next meal - moths, beetles, flies, even hornets and bumblebees. She doesn't bother to kill them, just happily eats them live.  Imagine being a hapless ladybug seeing this ogre ready to grasp you in her arms and knowing she will eat you up as if you're a
nice tasty ear of corn. 

What's even scarier is what Mrs. Mantis does when it's mating time at the end of August.  Mr. Mantis clasps his bride in an embrace that can last five hours.  But when they're done, instead of scuttling away, he hangs around, so the Cannibal Queen, as the naturalists have nicknamed her, gobbles him up.

Surprising as it might seem, this vicious female cannibal is terrified of ants.  She must have a good memory because it is only when a mantis is a nymph, a tiny newborn just out of the egg, that ants are a hazard.  They swarm around the egg case, devouring the babies as they wiggle out from the mass of foam that is their nest. 

How or why these nymphs retain this frightening experience through all their life cycles is a mystery, but even a hungry full-grown mantis will not try and catch an ant to eat.  In fact mantises will actually turn and flee in the other direction. 

I think we've all learned enough about the invertebrates,  don't you? But now you may at least have more fun knowing who is who when you meet up with one in your garden next summer. 

A Woodland Berry Walk

I think Weeds and Wisdom has been so rampant with weeds lately that there’s not been a bit of wisdom.  But I’m  in good company - my favorite newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, had an article on weeds just last week.

 I’m sure you’re all as sick of this subject as I am, so let’s take a nice wildflower walk today. Fall is such a peaceful time in the woods, and so many of the wildflowers that have rather inconspicuous spring flowers are full of colorful berries.  I thought we’d head up to the Falcon Forest, an area we named in honor of the old Ford Falcon we  dragged up there when it stopped running so that future grandsons could play race car driver in it.

.

It’s quite a trek, and having not been  here in many years I was amazed  to see how it’s changed. The pines are now so tall there’s hardly any sun and  not a single wildflower to be found, just a few patches of emerald moss. We should have better luck if we head over to the Dead Horse Field which is close by.

Yes, we actually found the skeleton of a horse in this field the first year we lived on Locust Hill, but never solved the mystery of who had owned the horse or why it had died.  We won’t find old bones today,  just wildflowers, hopefully two  closely related ones, the red and white baneberries.  

In the spring these comparatively tall stalks, sometimes two feet high, are hard to tell apart. Their  blooms are so similar,  delicate clusters of white flowers called  terminal racemes. But now it’s easy. The red baneberry obviously has red berries, while the white has white with a black dot in the center of each, so they're known as Doll's Eyes.

Children love these funny little berries,  but make sure they don’t try and eat them as they’re poisonous.

The section of woodland that borders this field we call the Gypsy Cut, named for the wretched gypsy moths that stripped the leaves of every oak in this area  way back in the 1960s. We should be able to find  a wildflower here that we call blue  beads,  a highly appropriate name at this time of year, as its small yellow flowers have turned into conspicuous blue berries.  

Its formal name, Clintonia, might appear to be inappropriate.  Why give DeWitt Clinton,  a governor of  New York, this honor?  Well,  Mr. Clinton was also an avid naturalist.  According to Neltje Blanchan, one of my favorite wildflower authors, who explains  “were  it not for this plant keeping his memory green, we should be in danger of forgetting the weary, overworked governor, fleeing from care to the woods and fields; pursuing  the study which above all others delighted and refreshed him.”

Miss Blanchan wrote close to a dozen books on wildflowers and birds.  They are full of not only scientific facts, but charming poetic comments, making them a delight to read compared to the factual books limited to nothing but scientific  information.

Oh, what luck!  Here is a beautiful patch of one of my favorite wildflowers,  the partridge berry.  Look at all those bright red berries!  In the spring it has tiny white blooms, always born in pairs at the end of each vine-like stem.  The result is that each pair produces a single red berry. 

You know how an apple has a stem at one end and opposite is the calyx, the remains of the blossom?   If you look carefully at a partridge berry you’ll find two calyxes, the remains of the two blossoms that joined to make a single berry.  You can clearly see the two caylixes on one berry.

As we head home we can probably find one more wildflower with conspicuous berries, the bunchberry, a miniature copycat of the dogwood tree, Cornus florida.   Its Latin name, Cornus Canadensis, hints at the relationship.  Its flowers have the same four notched white bracts surrounding the true flowers and the same cluster of red berries.  Yes, they're bunched berries, but  I call this plant  the little dogwood.

There are many more wildflowers with  berries at this time of year, but we’re almost home and it’s lunchtime.  This was much more fun than weeding though,  wasn’t it?

A Summer of Difficulties

Don't those elderberry blossoms look lovely?  But what followed were berries so small and dry there was no hope of making a batch of elderberry  jelly. My red raspberry bushes were equally pathetic, producing so few berries there were hardly enough to put on my cereal, much less make a dozen jars of raspberry jam. And my Fall Gold  raspberries that normally are not ready to pick until late September, came and went in early August. All these failures are painful for someone who loves homemade jam and jelly. I hope you've had a more fruitful summer than I've had here on Locust Hill.

Another disappointment was feverfew, one of my favorite flowers, a most reliable little daisy which usually blooms for weeks.  But this summer its blossoms turned an ugly brown  in a matter of days.  When I mentioned this to a good garden friend, she claimed her feverfew had done the same thing.  Are we gardeners all having this problem? I've cut mine all off, so you can't see how unattractive they were.

Because of the moles that had filled the vegetable garden with tunnels, I didn’t plant anything until I’d gotten rid of them by adding pounds of lime to the soil.  It worked, killing the grubs that moles adore, so these varmints got discouraged and left. Unfortunately many of my vegetables don't care for all that lime any more than the moles did. I asked the Ag department could I mix something like pine needles in the soil, but I've had no reply..  

My bean seedlings, which have always produced enough string beans to freeze,  mysteriously wilted and died without producing a single bean.  My cucumber vines have been just sitting, loaded with tiny cukes no bigger than my little finger.  They're still that small so I circled them for you to see.

My pepper plants are enormous, but the peppers are no bigger than pingpong balls.  Carrots, lettuce, onions and tomatoes are thriving however,  and believe it or not, the peas, their seeds planted in mid-June, are doing so well I've snacked on sweet raw peas every day.

Another nasty problem has been crab grass.  Unlike most weeds that come up easily when pulled,  crab grass requires a trowel to release its roots.  And they're not just in the vegetable garden.  They're sprouting in every flower bed as well. Are the weeds in your gardens as prolific this summer as mine? I love weeding, but I can't keep up with it when they're everywhere I look.  The bank of flowering shrubs is being choked by bindweed, a nasty relation of the morning glory.    I couldn't even identify one of the shrubs on the bank until I ripped off all those vines wrapped around it and found a nice little lilac bush that had been strangled. 

Even my animals are causing me grief.  Intrepid, one of my new ewes, kept getting out of the lower pasture even though all the fences seemed to be in good shape.  It took several weeks to discover her escape route, a gate lose enough to wiggle under, now fixed.  My other new ewe, Valiant,, is a delight, very well behaved.  But the Ford cows, who all escaped from their pasture one rainy day last week just about did me in.  Did you know that cows can be racist?

I woke up that morning to see seven fat black heifers in the big meadow, having discovered a poorly shut pasture gate.  When I got downstairs and looked out the front window I saw eight more heifers, all brown,  in the front meadow heading down to visit the neighbors.  Imagine that - Racist cows! It was raining too hard to get a photo, but the Ford boys finally got all those prejudiced  beasts  back in their pasture.  No real harm was done unless some of them were the culprits who knocked down the apple tree’s biggest limb, the one that supported great grandfather’s beautiful swing. 

My apologies for offering you such a negative column.   I guess I should stop complaining and end with a few cheerful notes. The limb of the apple tree has been sawed up and stacked for next winter’s wood stove.    The dogwood tree I  planted at least nine years ago, has never bloomed, so this spring I decided to give it a dose of “Spray N' Grow,” that miracle vitamin concoction I once wrote a column about.  I sprayed the the tree heavily, but couldn't reach the highest branches. You can see in the photo that all the lower branches are white with blossoms, but the ones I couldn't reach haven't got a single bloom.  If you'd like to try this great spray, just Google "Spray N' Grow" to order a bottle. 

The reason this column is being published today is because the Norfolk Library’s Gala weekend starts on Friday night 6 to 8, with a special celebration for children. There'l be a magic show, face painting, a cake decorating contest, and much more, including beautiful children's books for sale  to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Eileen Fitzgibbon's Programs for children.

Another great Auction will be held on Saturday night, 6 to 8.  As usual, there'll be wine and  delicious hors d'oeurves, and all sorts of exciting items to bid on,- a dinner for 12 followed by bridge, tennis lessons or golf lessons, even a week's stay in France!  And on Sunday the Annual Book Sale will start at 10 am.  There will be the standard  23 categories - Art, History, Cooking, Gardening, Social Science -  too many to name,  thousands of books priced at almost give-away prices.     Hope I'll see you there.  

Odors - Fragrant or Foul

Today’s  photos have nothing to do with this column, I just thought they’d be  much nicer to use  than photos of pestiferous insects.  

The day I publish this column will be my birthday.  At my age I don’t celebrate,  I just groan.  Sad to say, my memory is getting dim, my eyes are getting weak and my ears now require hearing aids.  About the only thing still in good working order is my nose, but even that isn’t as good as that of a bloodhound or even a deer.  

Good old Homo sapiens is supposed to be superior to all other animals,  but not  when it  comes to our sense of smell.  Imagine having the nose of a hound  dog who can sniff out the odor of a melt-in-your-mouth truffle. Life would be very different if our olfactory organs were that good.   One big intake of air and we’d instantly be able to detect whether the spaghetti was al dente,  the wild strawberries were ready to pick or possibly even what kind of mood our spouse was in.

Think about it.  Wouldn’t it be grand if our reading glasses contained a distinctive perfume so when we’d  misplaced them we could just sniff around from room to room until we got a whiff of them?  How handy to be able to catch the odor of burning cookies if  you’d forgotten they were baking in the oven.     

        

The vegetable garden is a place where a superior sense of smell would be a distinct asset.  You could draw a large drought of air into your nostrils as you opened the gate and know just which vegetables were ready to pick, which were rotting and which were riddled with disease.

Few garden pests visit  my garden, and  I think it’s because  along with my vegetables I plant a variety of flowers and herbs that insects don’t like.  Almost all the bad garden bugs dislike garlic, onions, leaks and shallots which I intersperse with lettuce and carrots.  Mint keeps pests away from members of the cabbage family.  If you plant this invasive , however, keep it in a container so it won’t be able to spread.

I have marigolds, which have a very distinctive odor,  all along the garden fence, another good deterrent. I plant parsley close to tomato plants. It also deters insects from the asparagus bed.  Thyme does wonders in protecting strawberries. And geraniums help to keep the Japanese beetles out of my raspberry bed.

With all these strong odors wafting through the garden, maybe it’s a good thing our noses can’t perform as well as those of animals or insects.  To have that many smells assail the nostrils at the same time would be overpowering, wouldn’t it?

The one pest that I suspect can’t smell much of anything is the slug.  I often find a slime of slugs in my vegetable garden.  In case you are unaware of  how to get rid of  slugs, here’s an easy solution.  Offer them saucers of beer each summer. Slugs love beer.  And they can’t swim, so they  usually drown in the saucer, probably dying drunk and happy. 

Summer Wildflowers

June and July were so full of rain, weren't they?  The local farmers had a terrible time getting in their hay, I was feeling totally hemmed in by the five-foot high grass in Locust Hill’s meadows. August was almost here when the Ford boys finally appeared. It took three days to cut, rake, and bale Locust Hill's twenty acres of hayland.  What a comforting sound, the rhythmic "kathunk-kathunk"of the baler was as it swept up the raked hay and turned it into bales. And not a drop of rain fell before they were all safe in the barn. 

Since I’m sick of weeding, edging, sawing up the dead limbs of the maple tree for firewood,  and other hard jobs, let's take a nice leisurely walk up to the pasture today and see what field flowers are blooming. I’ve often taken my readers on wildflower walks in the spring when the small delicate woodland plants are in flower, but I thought it would be fun to tell you about some of the many mid-summer wildflowers  

The most prominent wildflower right now is Queen Anne’s Lace.  With herbal remedies all the rage, it's too bad somebody can't think of a good use for this wildflower, but it isn't even edible, despite its being known as wild carrot.  Because of its tiny centered red dot  it got its most common name as Queen Anne supposedly pricked her finger while sewing lace. That red dot turns black so quickly that I've never seen it.  Its other common name, Bird’s nest, comes from its spent flowers which curl up into a cup shape that would make a perfect home for a hummingbird.

Farmers consider this wildflower its worst pest, being prolific and hard to eradicate, but I consider the  bedstraw plants much worse.  How well I remember trying to pull off this perennial's sticky tangle of stems that wrapped itself around the axles of the hay rake, back in the days when we cut our own field.                                           .

Cows will eat bedstraw and most other field flowers, but there's one they definitely are smart enough to not care for, thistles. Locust Hill's hay fields and pastures are full of these painfully prickly perennials. Here’s one in full bloom.  Look down at its base and you always see hundreds of tiny ants.  They’d like to climb up and feast on all the sweet nectar, but very few manage to get past the prickles.   The thistle welcomes only insects on wings that will properly pollinate it.

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According to an old Scottish  legend, hundreds of years ago the Danes secretly  invaded Scotland in the middle of the night, and took off their big boots in order to be very quiet.  One big burly

Dane stepped on a thistled yelped "JEG FOLER SA SMERTEFULDT!" All the Scots woke up and rushed out, saving their country from the Danes.  Shortly after, in appreciation they chose the thiustle as their national flower.  

 Field flowers can be as dull or as absorbing as people at a cocktail party.  You might ignore   the woman in double knit with a voice like a rusty hinge, but if you knew she’d written four best sellers and had just adopted an orphan from Vietnam, you’d most likely find her pretty interesting.  And who’d talk to that owly-eyed  old man wearing knickers, for heaven’s sake? But if he’s an old friend you haven’t seen since he came back from climbing in the Himalayas you’d be delighted to spot him across the room.

Flowers may not be as fascinating as people, but just knowing the name of a flower makes it more appealing.  You’re probably familiar with this tall stalk of yellow blooms below called mullein with its velvety soft gray-green leaves, but I like its more descriptive names – beggar’s blanket and flannel flower.  As kids we used its sturdy stalks as swords for mock battles, but in olden times they were dipped in fat and used as funeral torches. 

Oh, look.  This is a really pretty flower that you may not have even noticed. It’s a moth mullein.  Look closely at the blossoms spaced so nicely up the stem, each one almost an inch across.  Aren’t they beautiful?  Their centers are made up of tiny anthers covered with purple fuzz, surrounded by orangey yellow stamens, and each one set against a pale yellow background of petals.  Such a fantastic color scheme.  The photo doesn’t do it justice.  

Are you familiar with the Self-heal? This low growing plant with a rusty greenish cone sports one or two small purple blooms today, another one or two a few days later,  a couple more in a week.  It’s a pretty homely flower with an equally homely Latin name, Prunella vulgaris, which reminds me of one of Hank’s old girlfriends who could never quite get it all together.  Vulgaris is the Latin word for common.

There are many more flowers in this pasture, but here’s a delicious spot where nothing grows but moss.  How long since you’ve lain on your back in an open meadow and felt the earth’s pull vanish in a floating cloud?  Let’s just sink down for a few minutes and drink in the vastness of the universe.  We can meet more flower another time.