Something's buggin me

I do not use pesticides in my garden.  Period.  Close paragraph.

Because of my complete avoidance of pesticides my garden is full of life.  Bees, ants, beetles and the birds that eat them.

Usually my garden gets into a balance.  I have a little insect damage to some plants but I can live with that if it means I get all of the other insects and birds that bring movement and activity to my garden.

This year I'm having more than normal damage to my plants.  And it's not on the expected ones.  My hostas have little damage (and they are like crack to the deer, rabbits and slugs!).

My Echinacea purpura is loosing it's petals to something.  Not the leaves.  Just the petals.  I found this little inchworm on one of the blooms.  The culprit?

One of my Heucheras (coral bells, this one is called Stoplight) has major insect damage.  The others right next to it?  Not so much.

This one is weird.  Tricolor sage.  Usually herbs are left alone by most herbivores and insects.  The strong flavors and smells are part of their defenses.  But this one is just being eaten alive.  Insects or the new batch of baby bunnies I've been spotting?  (yes, even at four inches they can be on their own. And it doesn't take much to hide them - they're hiding under my perennials!)

And this one - Aster (Symphotrichium?) October skies.  Eaten to the stem.  Another plant with aromatic foliage.

I'm not even considering a pesticide but I'm hopeful that they'll survive the summer onslaught and return next year, bigger and stronger.  And maybe the rabbits will nest somewhere else so my yard isn't filled with cute little eating machines.

[Sorry no pictures of the baby bunnies - they flee if they even think I'm reaching for a camera.  Try here for an example of what they look like.  Could you turn this little guy out of your garden?  I don't think so!]

The Tactile Garden

Lots of gardeners garden for Sight.  Pretty flowers, pleasing color combinations, visually interesting foliage. 

Some garden for Taste.  Home grown tomatoes anyone?  Fresh herbs for the kitchen?

There are even gardeners who focus on Scent (can you focus your sense of smell?  I can't. It's always a bit blurry to me).

And there are the ubiquitous sellers of fountains trying to convince us to add Sound to the garden.  I haven't seen the appeal.  A fountain in the garden means more trips to the bathroom and my bathroom isn't in my garden.

What about the neglected sense - Touch.  An Historian was over yesterday and had her hands all over my plants.  She wants...

Stachys byzantina nana (Lamb's Ear.  Can spread aggressively so I have mine in the Hell Strip)

Artemesia schmidtiana silver mound (Wormwood.  I didn't know that's what wormwood was!  Does anyone actually call it wormwood?)

Nassella tenuissima (Mexican feather grass - a nasty invasive in some parts of the country.  Not here.  It's not warm enough here.  I have mine in a warm microclimate or it wouldn't survive the winters)

Of course I also have plants that please multiple senses.  It may be hard to tell right now but this area contains several Russian Sage.  Sight, Touch, and Smell.  Scrumptious.

Look at this row of lavender (Lavandula angustifolias, or English lavender) (that's a Hyssop in front - not sure if it's a Hyssopus or an Agestache).  Sight, check.  If you Touch it your hands will Smell, check.  Listen to the bees buzz about as the pollinate - Sound, check.  And, yes, lavender is edible so you can Taste it.  That's a big five senses all stimulated by this one humble plant.

Biology Day Problems

Today is Biology Day here at The Edge.  This is the day where I take care of all living things that live under my roof and are not primates (that rules out The Husband.  He can fend for himself).  The major chores involve house plant maintenance and indoor water garden (nee aquarium) maintenance. 

I will water all of the houseplants, fertilize those that need it, repot as needed, prune out dead as needed.  This week the problem is with the hanging baskets.  See, when I water I let the water flow all the way through the pot.  With my non-hanging plants this is not a problem since I use over-sized saucers and can stop watering as soon as the water appears in the saucer.  Hanging baskets either have small, close fitting saucers or none at all.  Normally I haul them into the main floor bathroom, set them in the tub and water like I do everything else.

This is what the main floor bathroom tub area looks like today. 

If I tried to water the hanging baskets the overflow would drip between the boards and into the basement.  Not exactly how I want to do things.

So I'm improvising.  The hanging baskets are going into the kitchen sink one by one.  It's a much slower process.

Hmmm, what did you ask?  Yes, yes, I do have another shower, upstairs, but it is TINY and would require hauling the hanging baskets upstairs, watering them (and only one or maybe two would fit in the shower at a time.  It's THAT tiny).  [I don't smell THAT bad today, do I?  So bad you can smell me over the internet?  I guess I'm better find a stronger deodorant.]

This process of watering hanging baskets should explain the stainless steel rod I'm trying to get installed down the length of the new tub/shower on the main floor.  So I can water my hanging baskets while they are HANGING and not run the risk of damaging foliage.  It makes perfect sense to me, I'm not sure why The Husband is fighting it.  He just has to remember to duck when he uses the shower.

The OTHER big issue is with the indoor water gardens.  I have two large tanks filled with live aquatic plants (and a few fish, too).  One tank is 55 gallons and the other contains 120 gallons.  I change out half the water each week.  This chore is actually not too bad.  I  have a looooong, specialized hose that can run out the window into the gardens ("free" water for the plants that comes with a small nitrogen boost from fish waste).  When we picked out the faucet for the bathroom we made sure to get one that I could connect the hose to so that I can fill the tanks straight from the bathroom sink. 

Guess what else I don't have right now.  

I can still use the hose to drain water from the tanks but the process of refilling them now requires hauling five gallon buckets.  I'm thinking the 120 gallon tank is not going to be cleaned as often as normal.  Hauling 60 gallons of water in buckets is not my idea of fun!

And now for a gratuitous photo of a Panicum virgatum (switchgrass)  'Heavy Metal'

Wednesday Weeds and Wine

Sunlight is at a premium in my neighborhood.  Specifically, enough sunlight to grow a vegetable garden.  Most of the houses have mature trees that make for pleasant yards but not so great for high-light requiring veggies.  

My next door neighbor does have a raised bed that gets a lot of light.  They aren't gardeners - this was put in by previous homeowners.  It has laid fallow (a term that means full of mint and weeds) for years.  This year several of us who don't have much veggie garden space asked to use this patch of land.

Here it is.  The Community Garden.

We're mostly growing tomatoes this year.  We pulled out weeds and added cow manure and set up irrigation.

Since this is a community effort we agreed to weed on Wednesday nights.  This week I brought the wine.

We invited some supervisors.  The one on the left is Everyone Loves Ann.  The one on the right is Trouble.

This is The Mayor.

Many hands make light work.  And wine and good company makes the work fun.

And, now, because this is my blog and I can do what I want, a picture of the World's Cutest Cat.

Getting to Know the Neighbors

More accurately this post is about the neighbors getting to know me...

As my regular reader (hi, mom!) knows my main gardening area is in the front yard.  This means that every neighbor who regularly walks their dog, their kid or themselves has at least said hi to me.  Often they stop to chat.  This is a blessing and a curse.  A blessing because it's a great way to get to know the neighbors.  A curse because it can slow down my work in the garden when every person walking by stops to chat.

The street I live on has a very low turn over rate.  Most of the people have been here for years or decades.  So when they see me in the garden they ask lots of questions about who we are, where we work, where we're from.  I can't remember what everyone else does but it seems to have sunk in to the neighborhood consciousness that I am a Biologist.

I'm starting to get biology questions.

Don't get me wrong - I love being the Neighborhood Biologist.  I was a bit of a know-it-all as a kid and I never quite outgrow that.  I love learning new things and assume that other people do as well (what?  You aren't interested in the mating habits of slugs?  Seriously?  But it's COOL!).

I'm starting to have neighbors come to my door and call my name...  There's a snake...  I found an injured bird...  I think a rabbit got hit by a car...

Amazingly (to them) I actually DO know what to do about all of these events.  Snake?  Leave it alone or if it's in a bad spot I'll move it for you.  Injured bird?  There's a vet about 20 minutes from here who'll take injured wildlife.  Rabbit hit by car?  Sorry, by the time I got there it was too late.  Yes, it's sad.  Poor thing.  At least it didn't suffer.

Best of all is because I have years of experience dealing with wild animals I can help them.  The snake can be safely moved with minimum handling, reducing it's stress level.  The bird can be caught quickly and transported in a dark, quiet box to the vet.  The rabbit.  Well, I was just too late to do anything.

More importantly I can hopefully prevent human caused problems. 

If you store your bird food in a metal bin the mice can't get into it and if the mouse population goes down you'll have fewer snakes.

No, that's a fledgling bird.  It's normal for them to not be able to fly well.  The parents are around - you can just leave it be.

The skunk keeps visiting your yard because you feed your dogs outside and they leave food in their bowls.

Now if I can just find a neighborhood expert on plumbing...

Pretty picture of Coreopsis Zagreb for the heck of it.

Visitors to The Edge

We had quite a few visitors to The Edge this weekend.  The Queen Bee and her Entourage came up for a visit.  She normally buzzes around the Experimental Garden down in zone 7 (North Carolina).  It's nice to have another gardener visit.  Not only can you get rid of pass along some plants but you also get a different perspective.  If you're like me you go out in the garden and see weeds, flowers that need deadheading, empty spaces that need filling, plants that are too big for their britches locations.  The Queen Bee saw wonderful color combinations, healthy plants and several plants she requested seeds from.  Oh, yeah, my garden does look pretty good, huh?

In the past couple of weeks we've been having to refill our bird feeders frequently.  I was thinking that it was the grackles and red-wing blackbirds so I adjusted the perches to reduce their ability to use the feeder.  Today I spotted another possible culprit.  She definitely enjoyed the seeds under the feeder and is too big to perch on the feeders but I wonder if she can hop up and knock seeds out by jostling the feeder.  She could empty a feeder pretty quick.

[sorry for the quality.  Pict taken through window]

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

I got back last night from a trip to California and I'm seriously jet lagged so this month's Garden Bloggers Bloom Day is being combined with (mostly) Wordless Wednesday.  Thanks to Carol at May Dream's for this meme.