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.