Archive for April, 2007
There are certain things about gardening that do not change, regardless of where you live, on what scale you garden or what you are growing.
I call them Robin’s Immutable Laws of Gardening…
I know you’re familiar with some of them, because you’ve likely bumped up against them regardless of your level of involvement with the great outdoors. These include:
- Plants Die. Some die of old age. Some die of neglect. Some die of trauma. But eventually, all plants die.
- Weeds are Inevitable. Weeds rate right up there with cockroaches in their superhuman powers to overcome all odds to succeed. Witness the fact that weeds have been seeing growing out of rocks, in the frozen tundra…anywhere.
- Weather is Your Friend…and Your Enemy. The sun warms the earth and helps plants grow. Hurricane Katrina moves in and mows them down.
- Critters Will Inevitably Invite Themselves to Dinner. Remember Peter Rabbit?
There are some other Immutable Laws that you may be less familiar with. Let me introduce you to Robin’s Immutable Laws.
- Cats Think Newly Hoed Garden Beds Are Litter Boxes. You may never, ever, see a cat on your property. But if you spend a Saturday morning lovingly hoeing a square of earth, the earth somehow puts out a homing beacon that can only be heard by felines. And they come a calling with little presents.
- There is a One-Third Chance that Garden and Landscape Contractors will Show up As Promised. Part II of this Law States: There is a one-third chance that those who DO show up will actually show up when they say they will. There is an equation for this and it looks like this:
1 x .333… x .333 = .111…
That means that there is only about an 11% chance that you’ll get done what you had planned to get done.
- The Tool That You Absolutely Need Right Now Is Always In The Garage. Trust me on this. It is.
- Despite What Fitness Experts Say. You Cannot Lose Weight by Gardening. Depending on what source you consult, the experts say you can burn a significant number of calories by doing lawn and garden work. My sources tell me I can burn 170 calories just riding around on the old John Deer mowing the lawn for an hour. In that time I can also burn 292 calories raking leaves in the fall. Or 306 calories weeding. I’m here to tell you that your body in no way recognizes the efforts as work and, therefore, does not allow fat to melt off your body. How do I know this as a fact? Well, think about this. I figure if I work about 10 hours in the summertime on any given weekend at an average of 300 calories, that would be 3,000 calories burned. Over the course of the summer, taking off a couple of weekends for vacations and slothfulness, that would amount to about 40,000 calories, which divided by the 3600 calories to make a pound equals more than 11 lbs. I can unequivocally state that I DO NOT LOSE 11 pounds over the course of a summer. Ergo, my law is true.
- You Will Ruin Your Manicure. It doesn’t matter what hyper expensive brand of gloves you use, you will always look like a calloused farmhand if you even put a modicum of effort behind your gardening.
- The Japanese Beetle Invasion Forces Invade On Or Around June 1, Depending On When You Are On Vacation. Do not, I repeat, do not fall for the myth that those unsightly little collection bags do any good. (This is a topic for another day.)
- Just As the Lawn is Looking Truly Fine, the UPS Guy (or Fed Ex Guy) Backs Over It and Does a Wheelie. And do you REALLY want to make the guy who brings all your cool Internet shopping spree merchandise angry by yelling at him?
- You Will Never…Ever…Be Finished. I’m tired just thinking about it all.
Robin
Starting plants from seeds isn’t really difficult. But as with almost everything that should be simple, I find a way to make it difficult and stressful…
I fret, water, re-pot, worry about whether I started to early…too late. I feel guilty when a seedling dies. I feel guilty when I can’t start all the seeds I buy. (All that wasted potential!) I feel terrible when I have to thin out the seedlings so that some can survive. (Seems so cruel!) Obviously, it also takes up a lot of room. (My seedlings are threatening to take over my office!)
I “invested” (AKA spent a lot of money) in this light garden from the National Gardening Association. As you can see, I have a lot of seeds going–vegetables, herbs and flowers. Do I have a plan for where they’re going? I sure do. When the time comes, I plan to go outside, take look around and plunk them where they seem to want to go.
Once the seedlings move out of the house, I plan to raise a wider variety of exotic house plants from places like Logee’s. Today I adopted a chenille plant and a pocket book plant from Behnke’s.
The hardening off process for these seedlings has started. Right now I’m blowing a fan at the little babies to toughen them up. First warm day, they get to sit outside on the front sidewalk for a couple of hours. I’ll gradually build up their time outside until they can make it on their own in the big outdoors without trauma, lugging them outside, then inside, then outside, then inside.
Maybe I should talk to them? Play them music? Give them names? Nothing is easy.
Robin
Perhaps I’m just being simple, but I’m delighted with the diversity of birds our little backyard bird feeders attract.
This morning, while drinking my coffee and enjoying the wildlife show, I made a list of the birds I have seen at the feeders thus far:
American Goldfinch
Cowbird
Tufted Titmouse
Black Capped Chickadee
Northern Cardinal
Dark-Eyed Junco
Red Bellied Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Nuthatch
Mourning Dove
House Finch
Sparrows
Bluebird (just spotted on April 18, 2007)
We have also spotted and identified the following around the property:
Turkey Vulture
Great Horned Owl
Blue Jay
Baltimore Oriole
Wild Turkey
American Robin
Canada Goose
Ruby Throated Hummingbird
Coopers Hawk
Indigo Bunting
Crows
No doubt there are others we just haven’t yet spotted or identified, or just plain forgotten, but it has taken some work to identify some of these.
Over the years I have purchased many bird books. Some, most notably the Audubon books, took such a scientific and complex approach to identifying birds that I just threw up my hands in frustration of ever figuring it out with what little time I can devote to the endeavor.
Then I happened on the best little book yet. I have found Birds of Maryland and Delaware, by Stan Tekiela, the most valuable and best resource for identifying birds. He presents excellent photos, many with male and female comparisons, and short descriptions of their size, habits, etc. The page edges are color tabbed with the predominant color of the bird. The book is small, so it’ll slip right into your pocket. And it was only $14.95, a lot less expensive than most of the other bird identification books I’ve tried.
Of course, a good part of the attraction of this book is that it significantly narrows the scope of birds you need to consider to identify what’s in your back yard. I don’t have to wade through pages and pages of birds that have never considered visiting our state.
Another book I’m just wild about is Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song. This clever book has a little sound mechanism that lets you select a number that corresponds with the birds in the book. Push the button and you can hear a sample of the bird’s song. How cool is that? Aside from being extremely informative, it’s also entertaining for the little dogs!
“Where’s the birdie? Where’s the birdie?”
Robin
I’m headed out tomorrow to mulch some more branches, sticks and twigs with my new Mighty Mack Mulcher…
I bought this baby back in the fall to help deal with the constant avalanche of debris from the woods surrounding our home. Not satisfied with just ANY mulcher, I headed down to Lusby Hardware to consult with Morris about what would be a nice, ladylike mulcher that could do some serious damage to hardwood.
Morris fixed me up with the Mighty Mack. It weighs 300 lbs, can chew up branches up to 3″ in diameter like they were #2 pencils and it also has an electric start. Just push the button and–Voila!–she starts! (There are a bunch of other technical specs that I could quote, but this is not an engineering blog, so I will refrain.)
When I ordered the machine, Morris said, “The first time you drop in some twigs, it’s going to sound like the world is coming to an end! So be prepared.”
How right he was. But I wasn’t prepared for all the smoke and sparks!
Yep. On its maiden voyage, I was mulching up leaves we had raked back in the fall. Things were going along swimmingly and I was down to my last bag when there was a little technical difficulty. The stick I had been using to stir up the leaves to keep them from getting compacted and jamming up the mulcher went too far into the machine.
Oh, my God. The noise! The smoke!
That baby started to moan and groan so loudly, I backed up a few feet in case it blew. I kept thinking that it would work its way through its difficulties and we could get on with our business. But no! It just got worse. Suddenly, a CLOUD of smoke was POURING out of the machine, which was lurching and grinding and making the most hideous of noises. Of course, by this time, I was AFRAID to go near the machine cause I was pretty sure she was gonna blow.
Then the fire started. Okay, maybe not fire, but sparks that LOOKED like fire. I was really not going near the machine now.
Unfortunately, I was in a real dilemma. The machine didn’t stop of its own accord and there was no able-bodied man around to brave the beast, as they had both de-camped to the movies and left me to do the yard work by myself. (Figures.)
So I screwed up my courage and scampered over, switched it off and grabbed the key. I scrambled back to my hiding place by the fence.
Whew! Major explosion and forest fire averted!
The bad news is that after just an hour or so of work on its virgin cruise, the Mighty Mack had to head off to the small equipment hospital.
So, on top of the purchase of a mulcher that equaled about 1,000 bags of mulch I could purchase, I had to pay a $250 repair bill.
I’m going to need to grow a LOT of vegetables to make this equation balance.
Robin
Glug…glug…twerp twerp! Glug…glug…twerp twerp! What a strange sound for a bird. After doing some research, we found that the song was that of the brown headed cowbird–the bullies of the bird world!
The brown headed cowbird is a medium sized bird with a shiny black body and a brown head. The name comes from the fact that they often hang around livestock that kick up the ground, unearthing bugs and such that provide the bird with food.
But despite this dopey pastoral name, the cowbird is actually quite aggressive and they are the only parasitic bird that is common in Maryland. (There are about 750 types of parasitic birds worldwide.) Each spring, they forego the usual nest building ritual of other birds and instead deposit their eggs into the nests of other birds. What’s more, a recent news article reported that if the “host” bird refuses to feed and raise the baby cowbird, the mamma and daddy cowbird go back and TEAR UP THE NEST of the hostbird.
Mon Dieu! Mafia birds in my back yard! Eating my birdseed!
We have observed that they also seem to travel in mean little cowbird packs and shove around the chickadees. I’m going to give them biker names–Boris, Crazy Eddie, Weird Frank, Pissant and Smoker. I can hear them plotting their assaults…
“Yo, Crazy Eddie. Tell that lady to fill these flippin’ feeders before I get mad and do sumtin’ she’s gonna regret.”
“Hehehe, you’re the boss, Boris. I’ll get the guys and we’ll do a flyby of her Acura. Give her a small deposit of what she can expect if she don’t sees things our way.”
“You bird brains! To really get her attention, you need to show some muskle. Go for the little dogs! I’ll get the fluffy one. Youse guys take out the little silky one. We’ll see if she wants to mess with us guys!”
It’s a harsh world out there.
Robin
