Almost done with winter

I still like looking at snow. I don't mind driving in it. But I am tired of slogging through it on dog walks and I'm tired of winter wear - long pants, long sleeves, wool socks, parkas, etc. By the end of the month, I should be completely over it.

Inside, the Thanksgiving cactus is blooming again. A pleasant surprise.

I almost submitted a purchase for some plants yesterday, but didn't pull the trigger. Not because I don't want the plants, but I could feel my decisions being influenced by the sales and groupings in the catalog. For example, there is a build-your-own-tray offer, but not all the plants I want are available for that option. I did not want to build a tray populated in part by plants I did not want or too many of the plants I do want. A more methodical method of shopping is required.

Leaving paw prints

Usually by February, I am sick of winter. The gray. The taupe. The blah. This year, however, we had some snow (never enough) that has actually stuck around for a while. It's so nice to see white, especially in moonlight.

Animals leave tracks in snow. These were on my front walk. I am guessing it was a fox, but it's difficult to tell, as each print is a double; the animal stepped into the same paw print with its hind leg that the front leg made.

I was hoping that Burpee would send my lettuce seeds ahead of the plants I ordered, but apparently not. I'm anxious to try growing lettuce inside. I may purchase some seed locally, just to get started.

I came across the following graphic somewhere (FB?) While the idea of growing plants in water is intriguing, I have questions.

I have taken cuttings from plants and rooted them in water, but then always transplant them into soil.

Imperfect

Last week I was happy to report that my whole house generator kicked on during a brief power outage. This week I am not very happy with it, as it lost its connection to the wi-fi and can't get it back. It has lost its connection before, but with the help of customer service, we were able to get it back. Not this time - it just can't find the wi-fi extender.

Generac sends me daily reminders, via email and text, to reconnect, but the weather has been frightful - very cold and windy. It has warmed up a bit, but it's now rainy and windy. Sorry, I am not standing out there fiddling with the damn thing until the weather becomes a bit more cooperative. The generator works fine without the wi-fi, and that is all I really care about.

It's gift exchange season, and I brought home a xmas cactus from one. As you may recall, I received one of these plants several years ago as a gift, but it pooped out after its second season of bloom. I'm hoping to take better care of this one.

This past week, I've been catching up on "Wiser than Me", one of my favorite podcasts. The interview with Alice Waters, founder of Chez Pannnise and promoter of "California Cuisine" and the farm-to-table philosophy, made me want to grow food again. I wrote about this urge before, but my follow-through has been pretty lame.

What would I grow? I have a growbag that fits into a milk crate, perfect for a few green bean plants (not a new idea on this blog; in fact, I think the seeds are in the fridge). Store-bought garlic has been particularly crappy this year, so maybe some of that. Strawberries? The ones in the grocery stores taste insipid, bred for shipping and keeping, NOT flavor. Those are all possibilities worth considering.

OR I could put on my granny pants and frequent farmers markets, at least for those things that I don't want to grow myself.

Roundup on Roundup

In the not-so-distant past, I was adamently organic. Growing all the vegetables for my family meant protecting them from the evils of herbicides and pesticides, especially Roundup. Back then, organic produce was difficult to find, and when found, prohibitively expensive. Hence, my organic garden.

Fast forward to the present day, when I no longer grow food except here and there. Instead, I have a large yard with large beds that provide room for weeds to grow. I now resort to Roundup to keep those weeds under control, especially the perennial and/or prolific ones like Canada thistle, pokeweed, trumpet vine, mulberry seedlings, etc.

Glyphosate is a systemic, non-selective herbicide that is absorbed by the plant and moves throughout the vascular system, ultimately killing the plant. Roundup used to be synomymous with glyphosate, but that is changing. Recently, Bayer announced that glyphosate would be phased out of consumer Roundup products.

So, what do I have? The product that I have been using on weeds in the mulched beds is Roundup Concentrate Plus. I dilute it with water at the heavier concentration, as I'm dealing with perennial weeds, vines, tree stubs, etc. The main ingredient is glyphosate, isopropylamine salt, with diquat dibromide added for quick burndown of the weeds. It works well. I just finished off a container of it. Should I buy more this season or wait? The formula may be different next year.

For the lawn, I use Roundup for Lawns. It targets primarily broadleaf weeds, plus crabgrass and yellow nutsedge. I posted about my nutsedge woes several weeks ago, thinking there was nothing I could do for where it grows in the lawn. Now I will have to try treating it with this product, even if it requires multiple applications. It pays to read the freakin' label! (The label does not mention mulberry seedlings, but the product works on them as well.)

One more product I use, straight from the bottle, is Ortho Groundclear Poison Ivy and Tough Brush Killer. Its main ingredients are triclopyr, triethylamine salt and diquat dibromide. Triclopyr is a systemic herbicide that affects actively growing plants by mimicking a specific type of plant growth hormone. Plants rapidly take in triclopyr through leaves and roots, which causes uncontrolled plant growth and plant death. When trying to eliminate something like yucca which keeps popping up in the middle of my 'October Skies' aster, I trim back the yucca and brush on this product so it touches only the yucca. Ditto mulberry and sumac seedlings that get beyond the seedling stage.

It may sound like I'm just covering my property with poisons, but that is not the case. Periodically, I patrol the yard, sprayer in hand, on a search-and-destroy mission. I spot treat the specific invaders. I'm careful about exposure to both myself and the pets. These products are tools that are effective and relatively safe when used in their intended manner. However, I would still not use them around food plants.

On a completely different topic, I visited Arbor Farms Nursery the other day, as their pottery was on sale for 50% off. I was looking for some new pots for some houseplants. I also checked out the ginkgo trees for future reference. The pottery was on tables near the butterfly bushes. And there were butterflies! It was all I could do to keep myself from adding a butterfly bush (or two or three) to my shopping, but I held myself in check. I admit I'm thinking of adding some to the landscape, to see if I have better luck attracting butterflies, but that can wait until next year.


I repotted two houseplants today.

Something new - floating farms

Locally, there is a big hoo-ha about someone wanting to create yet another "party boat" business on one of the three rivers that run through our fair city. Wouldn't it be amazing if our local people-in-charge would expand their thinking to include something like, say, floating farms?

The local paper ran this article about floating farms. What a unique idea! Each neighborhood along the water could have its own mini-farm market, geared for their culture and tastes. That would be forward thinking, instead of the same-old-same-old.

In other local news, the paper's gardening columnist wrote about how difficult it is to grow Norfolk pine (which isn't really a pine). I was a little surprised, because while mine doesn't always look its best, it does pretty well.

Otherwise, not much happening here. The grass is still rather green, but at least it is not growing. More birdfeeders are out - safflower and a "wreath" of various avian delectibles. While I haven't done as much backyard birdwatching as in the past, today I spotted a black capped chickadee and a downy woodpecker. Oh, and murmurations of starlings - beautiful but GAH!

Spring has sprung?

I was more than a little surprised to see these daffodils emerging from the mulch. Yes, it has been mild, and yes, these daffs are the first to appear each year. But January 15?!? That's just not right.

While there is no outside gardening to do right now, today I took care of some indoor gardening. Four houseplants needed to be repotted. I purchased cheap pots from Target (which came without saucers, so there is a pottery project for me) for this task. And despite my efforts to be careful, made a bit of a mess in the kitchen. Maybe next time I should do this in the laundry room where there is a utility sink.

There has been more bird activity lately, specifically a flicker (a rarity at the feeders) plus quite a few bluebirds, so I've been putting out mealworms. I don't know what it is about seeing those flashes of blue, but it really cheers me up. Not to be outdone, my SO spotted a bald eagle a few miles from my house, near the county fairgrounds. Now *that* is really something to see.

It's alive!

I have this theory. Most houseplants are tropical in nature. They may like it warm and humid, but they don't necessarily like strong sunlight. My theory is based on the behavior of my dracaena plants. One grew so tall that it pushed against my 8-foot ceilings. I eventually just whacked off the entire top and rooted it. It's in the livingroom where it gets mostly indirect light. And, surprise, surprise, it did not grow big and tall, but just sits there like a nicely behaving houseplant should.

Meanwhile, the naked stalk just sat there, too. I began to think that since it had no greenery, it had died. I moved it next to the fireplace where it appears to keep Beau the Feline Destroyer of All Things Nice from climbing onto the mantel. Today, I noticed a leaf bud! So it is not dead. Hopefully, it won't shoot up to the ceiling again.


Recently, the NYTimes published an article by Margaret Roach about Charley Eiseman and leaf miners. Of course, I had to go out and check my plants for leaf miners. I didn't find any, but I found a few other bugs.

I should get a book on insect identification. I don't know exactly what these bugs are, but I did determine that the wasp on the oak gall is not the oak gall wasp. What this one is doing is a mystery. And he wasn't alone. I'll have to pay more attention to the littlest creatures in my backyard.

While watering (hopefully for the last time) the new plants out front, I noticed this monarch crawling along the ground. It acted as though it had newly emerged from a cocoon (which I was unable to locate). I helped it over to one of the aromatic asters, but it wasn't interested. Instead, it took shelter under a wild geranium. The next day it was gone. I wondered if it was from one of the caterpillars I spotted a few weeks ago. Could be. That would be a native gardener's success story.

I have a date for my next shoulder replacement surgery: November 30. Like an ant, I am preparing for the ordeal: cooking batches of soup for the freezer, deep housecleaning, accumulating some new jigsaw puzzles, etc. The yard will basically be done for the season then, so no worries there. And I'll have an excuse to not do anything or go anywhere for a while.

Baby, it's cold outside!

Bitter cold, with a bitter wind. I'm back to long sleeved shirts, wool sweater, socks, etc. My son in northwest Indiana says a mourning dove is building a nest outside his kitchen window, but here they are trying to keep their tootsies warm on the heated birdbath. I wonder if this is the same pair I photographed a couple of weeks ago. (Notice the grass greening up in the background.)

The weather has also been very wet this past week, so nothing new has happened in the yard. I did repot several houseplants. My son and his girl friend gave me a planter with four plants in it, but it arrived in wonky shape. I transplanted them into a larger pot, but they still weren't very happy. Now each plant is in its own pot under a grow light on top of the freezer. The only ones that have been sort of identified are the dieffenbachia which is toxic to pets and the Flaming Katy which blooms in the fall and winter. Hopefully, they will eventually perk up.

BTW, the herbs I was growing under the light on top of the freezer did fine, but I kept forgetting to actually *use* them. Maybe I am no longer a fresh herb person.

Not quite what I expected

Sorry for my absence. A dear friend passed away from melanoma (get those moles checked!) and I came down with a bug of some sort (Covid test was negative). So besides recovering from surgery, I am also recovering from illness. At least I was able to abandon the brace this past week. While I can't do much yet, my shoulder is loosening up.

I received a first draft of the yard design. Even though I told the designer to treat the yard as a blank slate (except for the trees), I initially was not comfortable with the design. There are a lot of plants I am unfamiliar with (mostly ground covers), so had to research those a bit. Now I feel mostly okay about the front yard (except for the placement of a white oak where I don't think there is room), but the backyard looks like a lot of work to maintain. Also, I was hoping for more shrubs and vines in the back. We'll have a chance to sit down and discuss my misgivings, then he'll do a final draft.

There are a few new houseplants inside now. I purchased some cacti for a coiled pot and my son and his girl friend sent me a planter of plants for my birthday. I had to repot the latter, as the container they came in was not very practical. Also, providing the names of plants seems to have become a thing of the past, so I can't tell you what any of these are.


Speaking of plant names, I could not find the name of the arborvitae in the backyard. Apparently, I never entered it into my blog. Fortunately, I found it in an old spreadsheet. Just for the record, it is Thuja occidentalis 'Techny'.

Low means low

A while back, my ancient hand mixer started to go kaput. I bought a new one, and then another new one, neither of which were satisfactory. My complaint? Neither had any speed that could be considered "low", so no matter what one was mixing - mashed potatoes, cookie batter, etc. - the kitchen ended up a mess from flung food. I guess it was my own fault, for trying to save pennies. After consulting with a friend, I purchased a KitchenAid 9-speed hand mixer (directly from KitchenAid, to make sure I got the real thing). I *love* it! From what I read online, the dough hooks won't knead bread dough, though, so don't purchase one expecting to do that.

My house is very standard, with standard eight-foot ceilings. This is a problem for this houseplant, which I believe is a dracaena marginata. Both my SO and my daughter have houses with high ceilings, but I haven't been able to convince either of them to adopt this poor plant. I'm wondering if I can cut it back. Opinions?

There isn't much to do outside right now, besides pick up dog poop and fill the bird feeders and bird bath. Reaching for the peanut split feeder the other day, I almost grabbed a nuthatch. He didn't see me and I didn't see him until we came near to a close encounter of the third kind. My neighbor's ornamental pear tree is loaded with tiny orange fruit, which a flock of robins was enjoying a few days ago. Today a HUGE flock of starlings passed by overhead, heading... northwest? What's up with that?

The dogs aren't inclined to spend much time in the backyard these days, so we've been walking more. Without gardening, I need the exercise as much as they do. The trees and shrubs look naked without their foliage, giving me a good look at their "bones" so I can plan future pruning.

According to the NYTimes "hot spot" map, which shows the country's Covid hot spots, based on average number of new cases in the past week, per capita, Indiana is the hottest hot spot in the nation. It's crazy, almost as crazy as the people who keep flying their Trump flags. Beam me up, Scotty!

Doesn't feel like winter

The ground is barely frozen, and probably won't stay that way. This means the dogs are always bringing in dirt from the backyard. We spread straw around the worst areas, but there is still mud to be found. Fortunately, a friend gave me her Roomba (it didn't work well in her house). Right now, it isn't saving me much time as I tend to keep an eye on it. It's initial inefficiency is getting better, though, and I'm learning from others how best to take advantage of it. Now I need something that will dust and clean bathrooms.

I repotted the ivy houseplants. One of my potted plant tricks is to line the bottom of the pots with coffee filters. Water can seep through but not soil. The ivy is already showing new growth, so they must be happy. Or happy enough.

There are new blue flags around the neighborhood, marking where water lines and such are located. Since the ground is not frozen, I wonder if the contractors will begin to work on the drainage project early. Like most infrastructure improvements, it will be a pain to live through but I'll be glad when it is done... if it achieves its goal of improving the drainage here.

The end is in sight... maybe

I've posted before about how my front yard turns into a lake after a heavy rain and/or heavy snow melt and/or the ground is frozen and/or saturated. Last Saturday was no exception. Since the city water engineers asked me to report when the flooding occurs, I did that. They actually sent someone out to take photos and tell me they would not be installing a pump. My garage has a floor drain and my crawl shows no signs of ever being wet, so I was okay with that. However, my neighbor across the street set up an old pool pump he had, to send some of the water to another storm drain. That probably helped keep the rising waters from my garage.

Meanwhile, the city council okayed the contract for fixing the drainage issues in my addition, work to begin this spring. They don't plan to tear up my yard (thank goodness! I have a lot of shrubs planted in the utility easement), but the swale out front by the street will be deepened. Elsewhere, the storm water will be redirected, hopefully away from my house. We'll see how successful they are.

Indoors, my new houseplants are root bound. Since I don't believe in potting up unless it is absolutely necessary, I plan to trim the roots, refresh the soil, and stick the newbies right back in their old pots. Once I feel comfortable hobbling around my messy garage, that is. I overdid the exercise last Friday, which resulted in a bit of a setback re recovery from my hip surgery. I want to be completely healed RIGHT NOW!

Houseplant hunting frustration

In a previous lifetime, I tried to be a houseplant person. This was the time of spider plants and aloe vera and rubber trees and wandering Jew (not a very PC name) and Boston fern. I do have a few tropicals, some of which actually thrive despite my neglect. Maybe because I missed out on gardening last summer I am feeling the urge for some fresh foliage around the house.

I had this giant, sad looking mother-in-law tongue plant that I kept planning to divide and repot. It just kept looking worse and worse, until I decided to just chuck it and start over. I did a little research regarding different varieties of Sansevieria trifasciata, hoping to find one just as erect but not quite so tall. Well, lotsa luck with that.

For one thing, I am not sure where one buys houseplants anymore. They used to be so ubiquitous. I knew both Lowe's and the Home Depot have some, so we started there. The selection was rather slim, but my primary complaint was the labeling, or lack thereof. As a gardener, I found the dearth of information very odd, and the information that was supplied was incomplete and/or questionable.

In the end, I purchased a couple of plants that were simply labeled "Foliage". Their web site Wild Interiors was not much help, either. I think I bought Hedera Ivy. Maybe. The plants are pretty and (right now) quite compact. They will get indirect light. We'll see whether they thrive.