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.

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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. 

Avoiding Problems in the Garden

My Perennial  Border in 20009

I love almost every job I face in Locust Hill's various gardens, whether it’s weeding, dead-heading, staking tall blooms, even lugging heavy buckets of dirt to fill in a hole after transplanting  a large plant, or pruning the dead raspberry bushes at summer’s end. Usually there are one or two projects, however, that I will do anything to avoid. This year it’s to finish the job of making the 100-foot long  perennial border easier to maintain. 

This monumental task has been so ironic – to work almost daily for two entire summers to make something be less work. The first thing I did was to dig up the three thorny quince bushes took required constant pruning.  more than a week.  They’d been living in the border for more than 20 years, and had looked fine each April when they bloomed, but even a diet of constant pruning couldn’t control their obesity.  Pruning them encourages new sprouts.  When  half a dozen of these children pop up, they, too, can turn into obese shrubs.

Besides the toil and trouble of uprooting the quinces,  I also removed dozens of clumps of phlox and other misbehaving plants and replaced them with flowering shrubs and easy-care plants that require little work.  I  put protective shields between the border and the sheep pasture so grass can no longer creep into the bed, and replanted the clumps of iris and astilbe farther away from the border’s edge so the lawn mower won’t run over them any more.

Before I did all this, that perennial border was my pride and joy, everything arranged in an aesthetically  satisfying position.  Unfortunately aesthetics were far from my mind as I struggled to remove unwanted plants and fill their spaces with well-behaved ones.   Now what’s needed is an artistic gardener, and I don’t even know how to start. 

Wow! When I began this column I didn’t understand why I was avoiding this job.   Now, having written the paragraph above, it has suddenly become clear.  There is no way to figure out how to rearrange the plants until I’ve seen the border through an entire summer.  When I took the photo below there was hardly any color but green.   All those flowering shrubs I bought are still pathetically small when they need to fill the back edge with height. 

How delightful  to finally understand why I’ve been avoiding this job.  Now I can relax, knowing what’s the matter! Obviously the border will look very different as the summer progresses.  Hopefully the new shrubs will have gained height, and there will be lots of color as various plants begin to bloom. Then I can learn what’s good and what’s bad, and can formulate a plan for next summer.

 

I am so cheered at learning why I’ve been doing anything but tackling this problem.  I’m going to go get the camera and not even finish this column.  Taking photos has become essential for gardeners my age. We no longer have the ability to remember what’s where in a large  border any more.   I’m sorry you haven’t learned anything today, but I