Falling Leaves

"the leaves believe/such letting go is love.../

The poem by Lucille Clifton affirms how I feel about Autumn. While I love the mystery and surprise of early Spring, fall makes me feel restful and hopeful at once. The hours of daylight hours always seem slanted, urging me to value my day, either for work or for leisure.


























Read the full poem at :
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124113507

Save the Lady Beetles!

Saw some lady "bugs" last week in the house. They're not a big problem, but you will notice certain times of the year they like to come in the house.

Their proper name is lady "beetle" and there are over 450 species of them in North America (native and introduced). Remember that insects outnumber almost every other type of critter in the world.


The point I want to emphasize here is that lady beetles are very beneficial in the garden and landscape, and even when they invade the home are basically harmless. If you feel you must eradicate them read the following article first.


Some in depth information can be found at http://www.utextension.utk.edu/publications/spfiles/SP503-C.pdf


Back to saving the lady beetles. Multicolored Asian lady beetles , the type we see most often in Tennessee, eat aphids. Aphids eat our perennials and fruit plants. Let's keep the lady beetles around. Some folk buy them at the garden center or from a catalog to release in the garden.

Or you can trap the ones in your home and save them in the refrigerator until warm weather and aphid problems return.

Here's how: (from the above publication) Trap or gently collect the lady beetles on a piece of carbdoard, put in a jar with holes in the lids and store in the refrigerator. Once a week take the jar out and sprinkle a little water into the jar. The beetles will warm up, become active, drink the water. Give them about 30-60 minutes. Don't place the jar in a very warm place, just out of the fridge. Later, in spring you can release these predators. Wait til daytime temperatures stay above 55 degrees F, the beetles will feed on pollen from plants or better yet, the aphids that otherwise would feed on your flowers.

Here comes yellow...

This is an interesting time of the winter. Everyone is looking for signs of spring. Down the street a few blocks is a burst of forysthia blooms, and my other neighbor around the corner has a full stand of daffodil blooms, fully open.
My daffodils are pushing up, I can see the flower buds, but they look like they are a day or two away from really opening. I look at them daily now but I'm sure I will still feel surprised and pleased when I notice them opening.

However, there are dozens of sly crocus flowers spotting the lawn, yellow, thus the continuing theme here. I cannot recall if there are other colors in my lawn. And as predicted, my hellebores are fully blooming now. I don't know the variety as these were a hand-me-down from a relative but they are a creamy lime white, just gorgeous.

Before long, Nashville will be highlighted by mounds of forsythia, daffodils, hyacinth...then we'll start seeing the soulangiana magnolia and its light pink flowers. The dogwoods look ready to pop too. I am sure we will feel some more cold, but isn't it great we have these hopeful hints of spring. I can already see stunning gardens and blooming wildflowers in my mind's eye.

Still cold!

What a winter.
Sunday was an anomoly - 60s and sunny, hope everyone was able to get outside like I did. But now we're back to some reasonable cold. Reasonable I say because after the really cold bit in January, mid 40s is starting to feel nice.
The average temperatures in December were almost 10 degrees lower than last year, and January was about 5 degrees colder average than 08.

I'm seeing some delays ...my helleborus has been sending up new shoots for about 2 weeks, but not even starting to bloom yet. I recall full blooms in a January snow 2 years ago. Guess this might be a 'Valentine' Rose this year.

Also, I'm finally seeing shoots from my daffodils. I think the blooms are still about 2 weeks away or more. Mine are in a cooler spot, but in past years I have usually seen some daffodils full up in early to mid January.

Well, I'm going to go ahead and start some seeds for winter veggies ( greens, broccoli, onion sets) in late February...they will sprout when they are ready.

The happy part in all this....have you been noticing how the daylight is lasting later into the evening?
Have a good February!

2009 - a new year

Its a nice brisk morning with great sunshine and promises to warm up enough today to go for some outside activity.
This morning I was noticing the foliage of the grape hyacinths, bright and medium green, under a dogwood tree in the yard. The foliage has been up since late fall, but it stands out now as you wander around the yard and look for life in the cold garden. Don't mistake these for wild onions and pull them up. (Which is even easier to do when they arrive in the fall and you might be doing some energetic garden clean up.) The bulb is a similar size but the stems are narrower than onion, and of course lack the distinctive onion odor. They will bloom in the spring, small and purple, maybe neighboring with the daffodils.

It's January First 2009, the moon is in Pisces until early Saturday; the Farmers Almanac advises that Pisces is good for planting, transplanting and grafting.

Happy New Year!

Master Gardener Course -this winter

Now is the time to sign up:
The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, Extension Service provides a Master Gardener course in Spring 2009

http://mastergardener.tennessee.edu/index_about_mastergardeners.html

From the website: "Tennessee Master Gardeners (TMG's) are trained volunteers that help the Extension Service share the latest and greatest gardening information! All volunteers are trained with 40 hours of horticultural classes and return 40 hours of volunteer community service through their Extension office."

This is a great course with solid information. Check it out.

December Weather 08

Cool and rain...this is a Tennessee winter. We are fast approaching the Winter Solstice - December 21 at 1900 hours GMT - the longest night and the shortest daylight. After that, start noticing the minutes being added to your daylight activities.

Garden activities: planning and planting

Take some time on the couch to look at great perennial catalogs, review your 08 garden, think about what you want to do in the coming year.
Yes you can still plant trees and shrubs, as long as you can work the ground. The extra wet season makes it a great time to plant: plants are dormant, they are mostly putting activity into establishing strong root systems, the extra moisture from now through April means this is the easiest time of year to plant trees and shrubs. No worries about extra watering after the first couple of weeks of TLC.

Enjoy the winter.