God's Christmas trees

Christmas is over, the decorations are packed away and the gloomy weather in central Alabama seems to produce nothing but gray skies and dark days. 

But have you noticed the holly bushes and trees all over town?  They are gloriously bright with glossy deep green leaves and the most abundant crop of rich red berries I have ever seen. 

Apparently our summer and fall weather was perfect for the production of holly berries--moderate heat and plenty of rainfall.

According to British folklore, (where our holly bushes originated) an abundant crop of holly berries signals a cold, long winter. 

I prefer to rejoice in God's gift of Christmas trees that keep on giving right through a dark, gloomy and wet holiday.

Christmas colors

One of the nicest benefits of living in the south at Christmas time is the amazing greenery available for decorations.  Every year I fill my home with fresh greens in glorious shades and textures, mingled with bright red holly berries and huge pine cones from my southern long leaf pine.   These baskets will last three to four weeks, filling our home with the colors and fragrance of the outdoors the entire holiday season.

We've moved

The USDA has revised its official Plant Hardiness Zone Map using more accurate data and my backyard has now been officially moved from zone 7b to zone 8a.  If you've been reading my blog you know that I have always considered my backyard to be on the border between the two zones because I have had pretty good success with growing plants that are considered hardy for zone 8a.

There are some interesting changes with the new map.  One is that they used 30 years of data rather than just 15 years of data on the previous map, which creates a more accurate picture of cold hardiness.   Agricultural scientists now know that weather patterns cycle over 10-15 year periods of time so using a broader scope of data created a more accurate picture of  temperature patterns.

New technology also allowed for more detailed evaluation within zones.  You can actually request the hardiness zone for your zip code on the USDA website (planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/Default.aspx) to find the hardiness zone for your own backyard.  This is a wonderful feature because there are often geographical considerations that may affect the hardiness just in your specific location.

I enjoy my new location.  Check out the website to find out if you have moved too.

(Almost) everyone loves pumpkin

I don't grow pumpkins but we always purchase one to decorate our front yard in the fall.  When Thanksgiving rolls around, my grandchildren help me smash the pumpkin on the driveway so we can use it for our holiday feast.

This year's pumpkin was huge.  I roasted two cups of pumpkin seeds and froze 15 cups of pumpkin puree to make pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I've read that pumpkin is a good food source for our sulcata tortoise so I set some aside for Mordecai.  He "said" it tastes fabulous.

I've also read that horses enjoy raw pumpkin as a treat so my granddaughter, Olivia, and I took some chunks of pumpkin to the barn for Lily.  Lily took one bite and spit it out on the ground.  The other horses more than happy to eat her pumpkin.

I made two big pumpkin pies for our Thanksgiving feast today.  The humans in our family will heap on the whipped cream and make short work of devouring them.

There is nothing more fun than a good pumpkin!

Tropical sunset

Just when fall was beginning to fade,  the gloxinia on my back deck burst into brilliant orange.  I have two pots of gloxinia given to me by two different friends.  They require consistent watering all summer long and I sometimes wonder if these little nondescript plants are worth the effort.   However, when those cold, damp, dreary days of late autumn started to feel a little depressing, the almost neon orange blaze of these blossoms made my day.

It took some research to discover that my gloxinia are a variety that is well named as Bolivian Sunset!   While it is definitely an exotic tropical, some growers claim that with good mulch, these plants function well as perennials in Zone 8.   This spring, I plan to divide one of my pots in order to plant some of it in the ground (in a location close to my hose, of course).  They claim that given the opportunity to spread its roots in the ground, the blooms are so dense that they hide the foliage. 

Meanwhile, I've carried my little tropical sunset indoors to enjoy.

The boys love turnip greens

I've been told that its important to harvest turnip greens before a frost so that they don't turn bitter.  Not being a native to the south, I have never developed a taste for them.  However, two of the men in our house love them dearly.  Bob likes his boiled up in a big pot with lots of bacon.  Mordecai the sulcata tortoise, likes his raw.  It would be hard to say which one enjoys his greens more.

Perfect timing

Everyone knows that a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich created with tomatoes still warm from the sun and crispy lettuce cut straight from the garden tastes like a little bit of heaven.  Sadly, in my corner of the world, this heavenly experience is just not possible.  The best tomatoes  ripen during the early summer and lettuce can only be grown in the fall and winter.   Because these two crops don't grow together in my backyard, I've just never bothered to grow lettuce in my fall garden.

However, I was give some lettuce seeds this summer so I just tossed them out to see what would happen.   Only three plants managed to survive my casual planting, but boy, oh boy!   I was able to harvest the first lettuce cutting and the last tomatoes on the same day.

Those BLTs were the best ones we have ever tasted at our house!  Heaven can happen on earth.

Its the little things

We just returned from a fabulous vacation on the gulf coast of Florida.  Every day, I spent hours on the beach, not because I wanted to get a tan, but because for me sitting on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico is a feast to my senses.  I am amazed at the intense blue of the sky and crystal green of the water.   My skin is caressed by the powder soft sand and cleansing sea water.  The sound of the surf, whether pounding or sliding onto the shore is like a lullaby that gently lulls me to relax.  There is nothing like the fragrance of the sea or the subtle taste of salt on my lips as I rest on the shore. 

The wildlife that share their space with us were a constant source of joy.  We were always on the lookout for the bright flash of sun reflecting on the fins of the dolphins or the sun shining through a wave that revealed a school of fish as vividly as if they were swimming in an aquarium.  The ghost crabs peeping out from the safety of their tunnels never ceased to delight us.  We were awestruck at the way the shore birds never were caught by an unexpected wave as they the manically searched for treats or the pelicans as they skimmed inches above the surface of the rolling waves.

But this year, it was the unexpected delight of the tiny fall wildflowers that captured my attention.  I counted five different blooming plants growing in the sand along the boardwalk leading to the beach.  With the exception of the beach morning glory, I have no idea what these flowers are.  They grow in the most hostile of environments, nutrient deprived, salty soil, at risk of trampling feet, brutal sun, and limited water and yet every day they formed a brightly colored border, guiding me to my gulf adventure.

Liquid sunshine

I don't grow grapes.  Although they are native to Alabama, muscadine grapes are just too much work for a laid back gardener like myself.  The vines require a sturdy trellis and careful annual pruning to guarantee a good harvest each year.  After harvesting, these grapes must be processed in some way to preserve them.  Their skins are tough and they have big seeds which make them less than ideal for munching.

All that being said, there is nothing that tastes quite like a muscadine grape, still warm from the sun, in spite of all the work involved.

Some good friends gave me a grocery sack filled with scuppernongs (a variety of muscadine).  Since we are not preserve fans in this house, I decided to make homemade grape juice. 

I mashed the grapes with a potato masher, simmered them in a large pot with a little sugar to help release the flavors, and then ran them through my tomato strainer.  The juice was still a little pulpy for my taste so I squeezed it through some cheese cloth. 

Voila!  I ended up with about three cups of super concentrated grape juice.  After all this work, my sweet husband informed me that he doesn't care for the flavor of muscadines; more for me!!  Two or three tablespoons of concentrate in a glass of iced water tastes just like sunshine to me.

Seek and find

My three year old granddaughter, Olivia, likes to read "seek and find" books; the ones with the elaborate pictures in which you search endlessly for tiny images.

Our back deck has become a three dimensional "seek and find" adventure.  Once again, the purple hyacinth bean vine grew over the top of the deck railings and engulfed the bench, chair, a planter and has started on the table. 

Your task is to "seek and find" the above objects in the photo!

In addition to being just plain fun to watch the vine take over the deck each summer, the flowers lure some of our favorite butterflies and humming birds right onto our deck for us to enjoy out the kitchen window.

Butterfly season

Eastern black swallowtail

It is butterfly season in my backyard!  We think of butterflies as summer visitors to our gardens, but in my backyard, the butterflies arrive in September. 

My favorites are the large swallowtails.  In my garden, I've seen both the Eastern tiger swallowtails and the Eastern black swallowtails. 

Eastern black swallowtail caterpillar

The black swallowtails have turned my flat leaf parsley patch into their nursery.  About a dozen cute little caterpillars have nearly stripped the parsley clean.  I don't mind because they will turn into fabulous butterflies in a few weeks and the parsley will grow right back.

I also enjoy seeing the gulf fritillary families growing out on the passion flower vines.  Their little caterpillars keep the vines pruned back for me so I don't have to do it after the frost.  Their golden brown parents look pretty awesome in the garden too.

Passion flower vine, host plant for gulf fritillary

Of course, no garden landscape should ever be without cloudless sulphur butterflies.  They flit about the garden, enjoying the taste of just about everything that is in bloom. 

There are many other butterflies visiting my gardens these days, most of them are tiny and barely noticeable, but all the butterflies and their offspring are welcome here.

Mystery solved!

Back in May, I posted the photo of a lovely mystery plant that had made a home for itself in my rain garden.  No one could positively identify it.  I just enjoyed its lovely purple flowers as it bloomed all summer long.

This past week, I was privileged to attend the Alabama Master Gardeners Fall Conference.  Since the mystery plant was still blooming, I decided that this would be a good opportunity to once again attempt to identify it. 

Within 15 minutes of arriving at the conference with my cutting, three experts quickly identified this delightful flower as . . . drum roll please . . . rigid verbena!  Some of my blog friends had suggested some type of verbena back in May so kudos to you, as well.

Rigid verbena is supposedly a fairly common wild flower, that happily makes its home in just about any sunny location.  Some experts even consider it invasive. 

This mystery invader is more than welcome in my backyard!

Winning the war

Wildlife is generally welcome in my backyard;  my gardens have even been registered with the National Wildlife Federation as a "Certified Wildlife Habitat."   When I'm harvesting edibles, my wildlife partners and I sometimes have "discussions" about what is mine and what is theirs, but we usually get along pretty well.

This year, however, has been a different story.  It started with the small water garden.  Some creature was climbing in and completely digging up my water lily, even gnawing on the roots.  At first I suspected a cat might be trying to catch the fish but soon realized it had to be something much stronger and more determined than a cat.  It took repeated failed efforts but finally I used yards of fishing line to tie a metal rack held down by some heavy yard art to  save my water lily from total destruction.  I technically won the battle but my water garden looked a little strange all summer.

At the same time, I was repeatedly planting my corn patch, only to find that something was methodically following behind me, eating all the corn kernels.  Was it the same animal that was ravaging the water lily?  I never found foot prints but I was highly suspicious.

The next line of battle was my hanging finch feeder.  I successfully kept squirrels out that feeder by hanging it with fishing line that is too fine for a squirrel to climb down on.  My new wildlife nemesis was chewing the line, dropping the feeder to the ground and then popping the lid off to get to the sunflower seed.  After three nasty falls, the bird feeder exploded.  The mystery creature won the battle.

The last straw for me came with its invasion into my pole bird feeder.  It was climbing up the pole, around the 15" squirrel baffle, removing the wire latch holding the cover in place, throwing the cover off the top of the feeder, and devouring all of the bird seed. 

I never saw this animal but it's talented determination to get to anything edible lead me to the conclusion that this must be a raccoon.   Research revealed that raccoons in a suburban environment  are bad news for everyone concerned.  They often carry disease and are extremely dangerous when cornered; they have been known to kill dogs three times their size.  They are opportunistic feeders with destructive tendencies (no surprise to me).  There are only two ways to solve the problem, one is to capture and release in a rural setting.  The recommended method for suburban raccoons is to trap and destroy. 

You won't want to read the details, so I'll just say that I lost some battles this summer, but I've won the war. 

Making progress

Two years ago, I posted a photo of my flower bed.  It was a visual mess.  Tall flowers stuck up randomly all over the bed with no sense of cohesion.  It was just as if I had tossed my pillows and blankets all over the place.  It was just a little embarrassing.

2015

In these intervening summer seasons I've made some progress on making my bed.  Medium height Unwin dahlias are the "pillows" at the head of the bed.  The "quilt" is made up of low-growing New Gold lantana.  Just for fun, I've added a "throw" of cypress vine over the footboard.  My flower bed feels neatly "made."

2013

I would like to grow a "dust ruffle" of creeping jenny.  I've repeatedly sprigged it around the perimeter of the bed but for some reason, the sprigs aren't taking hold.  This amazes me since creeping jenny roots anywhere I accidentally drop it.  One of my theories is that the chemical in the treated boards is interfering with the rooting process in some way. 

I'll keep working on making my bed nicely for next year.

Friend or foe

There are literally millions of insects living in my gardens.   I tend to label each one as a "good" insect or a "bad" one based on their eating habits;  if they are eating my plants, they are bad!  However, sometimes the line between friend and enemy blurs.

For the first time in my memory I have deliberately left a fire ant mound to flourish in my yard.  This mound is next to my pea patch and those ants are devouring the aphids that can plague pea vines.  I barely see any aphids this year because the ants are eating them.  Of course, once the pea patch is finished for the year, the ants will have to go too.  They are still on my "bad" insect list.

Paper wasps are another of those garden "pests" that has earned a spot on the "good" list this year.  They are also busily consuming aphids on the pea vines and they are also containing the scale population that has tried to establish itself on our satsuma tree. 

Of course, both of these insect populations require a certain amount of care on my part.  When picking peas, I give the vines a little shake before I start picking to let my pest control friends know I'm there.  While I have gotten an ant bite or two, the wasps are perfectly willing to give me some space and I haven't been stung.

I don't have a problem using chemicals to control pest problems but it pleases me to let the natural cycle that God designed take care of it for me, especially on my food sources.   When God created them, I don't think he labeled the insects as friends or foes.  Each one has a place in his gardens. 

Pea paradise

One of the flavors of summer we look forward to all year is the delicate, nutty taste of fresh cream peas.  I pick them a little green and boil them gently with some bacon crumbles;  without a doubt they are my favorite southern vegetable.

For native southerners, growing any variety of field peas seems to be a talent instilled at birth, but as a northern transplant, I struggle every year to get it right.  This year has been no exception.

I thought I would be very clever and create a trellis system at planting time.  I attached it to the chain link fence to give it an extra measure of stability.  The pea seeds germinated at nearly 100% and vigorously filled the space I planned for them, all before creating the first blossom.  I knew I was going to be in trouble.

Sure enough, as soon as the vines began making peas, the trellis system failed.  It collapsed right into the chain link fence.  The pea vines are running everywhere; into the lawn, onto the perennials that anchor the bed, over the fence and onto the rose bushes behind the fence.

The good news is that even though I seem to lack basic field pea growing skills, the pea vines have forgiven me and we are enjoying a bumper crop.  Its a little corner of pea paradise.

Guest in my garden

My neighbor and I recently had a surprise visitor in our shared garden--a large yellow bellied slider turtle.  We live about half a mile from Buck Creek as the turtle would crawl but we have never had a turtle come up from the creek this far.  It had crossed my front yard but then was trapped by the chain link fence dividing our front yards from the back.   After a week, we decided that this poor turtle was "lost" and needed help to find its way back to the creek.  A yellow slider needs access to water in which it can submerge. 

I borrowed my tortoise's bathtub (plastic totes have many uses) and dechlorinated bath water to transport it.  It seemed quite pleased to be wet and back home where it belongs.

Disappointed

My husband and I love fresh corn on the cob.   Eating corn, slathered in real butter is an essential component of a perfect summer. 

Usually, we purchase our fresh corn but this year I decided that I would grow our corn.  I did my research to learn how to grow corn in small spaces, prepared my soil, and trotted on down to the farmer's co-op to purchase the right seed for our neck of the woods.

Only a few seeds germinated; puzzled by the poor showing of my corn crop, I decided to fill in with a second planting.  Much to my surprise, I found many fragments of chewed up corn kernels all through my garden.  My second planting didn't germinate any better than the first.  I tried again, with a third failure.  It was plain to see that a critter was treating my garden like its personal pantry.

It was clearly a lost cause.  I left the 15 corn stalks to do the best they could but corn needs dense and plentiful planting in order to pollinate all the kernels on the cobs, something that wasn't happening in my backyard.

This morning, I picked what we got--not much to show for $5 worth of silver king corn seed and an entire bed of my gardens. 

I've experienced some other damage in my gardens this year and have a suspicion that my culprit is a raccoon.  I'm working on a permanent solution to this problem.

But I think I'm done trying to grow corn.  Summer will still be perfect even if I can't grow fresh corn myself.

Grandchildren and gardens

It is a precious and rare occasion to have all my grandchildren with us.  To honor them,  I've displayed a garden statue in the front garden representing each child.  Even when they are not with me, I enjoy their representative art in my garden.

Recently, we were privileged to have all five of our grands together for their grandpa's birthday celebration.  I took photos of each of them posing with their statue, with the exception of Caleb who wanted to pose with Mordecai, the real tortoise.

I would like to introduce to you my amazing grandchildren.

Gabriel Fitzgerald, Olivia Whitenite

Caleb Fitzgerald; Mordecai

Christiana Fitzgerald

Rachel Fitzgerald

                               
                                 There is nothing better than grandchildren and gardens.

Best tomato for 2015

Every year I try different tomatoes; I'm always searching for that perfect tomato that seems to allude us all.

This year my best performing tomato is the Martinos roma.  I started some from seed and also purchased two from the Birmingham Botanical Garden sale. 

The plants are marvelous; compact and sturdy, resistant to blight (so far) and extremely productive.   One of my criteria for the perfect tomato plant is the ability to pollinate even during our hot summer and these romas haven't missed a beat as our summer has stoked up.

The fruits are a good size for a roma and very meaty.  They are wonderful in salads and sliced on sandwiches.  I will be making tomato sauce soon and expect them to make a thick sauce.

I'll be growing these tomatoes again next year.