Mesclun Coming Up

The 'Paris Market Mix' mesclun from Renee's Garden is coming up. This mixture contains arugula, red lettuce, escarole, chervil, and endive.

Last year, I grew the same variety of mesclun, but I never fertilized, which means I never got a harvest. This year, though, things will be different!

Freshwater Spring

Cool, clear water emits from the ground at this spring. The water comes out from under the rocks in the top right-hand portion of the photo.

Holes in the story

At my sister's house, insects lined up for dinner in order of descending appetites.

At my sister's house, mice held a Scherenschnitte party, but it was interrupted at an early stage.

At my sister's house, pixies were unhappy with their needlework, and unthreaded all the leaves.

Natural lines

Lines from a walk by the river Spey. Above, the high water mark from a recent spate.
Below, a very orderly mole.

Catch-up Info

A week ago, I rode with friend's neighbor before driving to Mackinaw City. We rode to Harrington State Park. Jim gave me a tour of the park roads. Good ride - great start for the drive.
When I made it to Mackinaw City, I decided I wanted to drive the car as little as possible - preferring to ride my bike. Spent some time riding around the city to acquaint myself. I did have to drive the car to rake photos at the golf tournament.
Wednesday we toured Mackinac Island. After lunch, I grabbed my bike and rode around the island. The ride around the Island is 8 miles. Would have liked to ride more - explore some of the interior of the Island. Just not time that day, and did not have another day to ride there.
Thursday I was going to ride some dirt at Wilderness State Park. I wanted to check out the trails, buy any needed pass(es). Well, the park HQ was closed - and it was after 10am! What is it with DNR (Wisconsin and Michigan). Is there a conspiracy again me riding in the dirt?

My Gardens ~ My Environment

Carol of May Dreams Garden invites us to share buds and blossoms on the fifteenth of each month, calling it Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. October 15th of this year has been named Blog Action Day with bloggers invited to post on the environment. I thought about both of these concepts as I wandered around with the camera, then flipped through old photo albums.
Philo & I enjoyed our first vacation as a family in 1970, driving from our small apartment in a Chicago suburb to a cottage in Wisconsin. We liked the lake, the trees and the hikes through the hills, and our toddlers had fun with their Tonka trucks, making roads in the soil around the porch, studding the ground with rocks and sticks. We were saving money to buy a house, one with soil for tomatoes and flowers, with shrubs and trees around it. It would be our own chunk of the greater environment...what Webster defines as the "air, water, minerals, organisms, and all other external factors surrounding and affecting a given organism at any time".
1970 was a year filled with war, destruction, monsoons, Kent State, space exploration, strikes, explosions and the break-up of the Beatles, but in ecology and the environment there were signs of hope: Mother Earth News was first published in 1970, Earth Day was declared for Sunday, April 22, 1970 and in December the Environmental Protection Agency was founded. The focus on insecticides and weedkillers intensified and by the time we had the down payment for that house the weedkiller DDT had been banned. The US government stopped using Agent Orange in Vietnam, and the connection to lawn weedkillers like 2 4-D became public. Robert Rodale spread the word on organic gardening in press and on television.

By the time we moved into our first house in 1973, it seemed logical to avoid pesticides and weedkillers on the land where our children would play, to use compost, to grow vegetables and fruit and to plant lots of trees, shrubs and flowers. It still seems logical 35 years later. I like to read about everyone's gardens and it usually doesn't matter that we don't grow the same things, or live in the same zone or dig in similar soil. We can share a love of gardening without needing much in common.
But when it comes to advice about how to garden responsibly in a specific garden, something positive is needed - advice based in personal experience focusing on local information. Clipped and pasted pronouncements intended for general distribution may work in one place, and be useless somewhere else. Allen Lacy told us, "It is impossible to write a book on gardening that is universal. Everyone gardens in the highly particular, on one spot of home ground at the intersection of this degree of latitude and that degree of longitude."
I miss those highway signs in Texas that encouraged us to 'Drive Friendly'. They seemed positive rather than negative, implying that people knew what was right if they followed their best instincts and were flexible about who got to the stopsign first. So I won't give you orders on what you should do in your garden, but let's look at some flowers as I share my attempts to 'Plant Friendly' on my little spot of home ground here in the NW part of Austin, Texas.
To have beauty without spraying I can choose plants with some built-in disease resistence - like the 'Julia Child' rose, with a bloom or bud in evidence every day since April.
It's not in my power to remove and replace every plant on the City of Austin's invasive list, but I can cut the flowers off nandina to prevent seed development and clip any berries I can reach from the ligustrum where it hangs over the fence from my neighbors' yard. I do this so the birds won't eat them and spread seeds in natural areas. I think a certain amount of flat green grass is necessary for comfort, as a design element, and for my sanity, so I won't dig up all of my casual, seldom watered, but acceptable-to-me lawn. [And like Carol of May Dreams, I actually like to mow.]
But I can and will shrink the lawn - we've already replaced some of it with plants for people, birds, bees and butterflies. Here's a garden for birds and butterflies, planted in the footprint where the Arizona Ash used to grow. Another thing I can do is to try out environmental ideas that take effort rather than money - like my in-progress seep garden to slow down storm runoff. Native plants Rivina humilis/pigeon-berry and White mistflower/Ageratina havanensis are young and still getting established.
I can learn to be flexible and take advantage of the unexpected in the garden - when a huge limb fell off the pecan last month all the shade plants were suddenly in sunlight.
The impatiens found space in shade near the Cast Iron plants and now the native Barbados Cherry/Malpighia glabra has enough sun to make buds.

I can try to water with care and attention and respect, appreciating the labor of those who came before us to this land of violent floods and killing drought to build the dams and reservoirs which make it possible for our city to thrive.
I'm willing to handwater my tropicals and other beautiful plants - like the clematis - this is a small garden and I think beauty is worth the trouble. But when choosing permanent landscape plants for the harsher western exposures, I'll look for tougher plants - native and adapted ones that need less supplemental water. That's what we did in a triangular area where the lawn turned brown too easily - the flowers in the pink entrance garden are doing well and are more fun. When I talk to my neighbors I can tell them the reasons we won't use things like weed and feed while sharing divisions of plants from my borders. My neighbors may never be reconciled to the way I keep the lawn, but they may not be able to resist flowers, butterflies and hummingbirds.
Blooming off camera:
Lantanas
Pentas
Moon Vine
Buddlejas
Angel's Trumpet
Plumbago
Salvias greggii, leucantha and 'Nuevo Leon',
Cupheas
White ginger
Oxalis
Evolvolus
Rock rose/ Pavonia
Portulaca
Dianthus
Plumerias

Edited October 23 - Mr Brown Thumb has gathered links to other garden blogs with posts for Blog Action Day.

Spiny caterpillars

I've been seeing a lot of spiny caterpillars this spring.
It seems simplistic, but googling what something looks like, in very basic terms -- in this case, "black spiny caterpillar" -- works amazingly well, most of the time.

It brings up the site What's this North American Caterpillar, which spiffily shows my caterpillar on the front page.
And how exciting that this scary goth individual will turn into a Mourning Cloak butterfly!
This bristly guy below was a little more difficult.

But I think he becomes one of my favorites, a Question Mark butterfly.
I wasn't tempted in the least to touch either one of them!
Visit Wayne to see his spiny caterpillar siting too.

Turk's Cap or Malvaviscus drummondii

Ever since I read about turk's cap over at Zanthan Gardens
I've wanted one.
I pass them everyday on my way to and from work.
They have been blooming up and down Old Shell for months now.
How pretty it would be blooming next to our bedroom window!
I could have gone and bought one from Plant Delights for $11 (plus shipping),
but when someone called it a weed online
it was all I could take.
I made a plan to go steal a cutting this weekend.
I loaded up the babe, the stroller, and some clippers
(who knows how woody this thing might be)
and headed out for the great heist.
Actually it didn't turn out to be all that exciting.
It just happend to be growing down an alleyway,
not in front of anyone's house,
with a bunch of other weedy plants.
Underneath the large mother plants were little babies.
I pulled one up.
Probably not a great example for Alex,
if he even knew what his crazy mother was doing.
Anyways...
I got my weed, Yay!!

In a Funk

I'm grouchy this morning, because I have too much stuff! After spending a few days in Rugby, TN and the Appalachian Museum in Norris, TN, I've realized on a deeper level that the things I own are keeping me from the kind of life I want; even desperately desire. I'm paralyzed by the unpacking and accumulation of mail and e-mails that stacked up during the week we were gone. It almost makes it not worth it to go away!
I'm really sick of 'stuff'. I'm looking in my jelly cupboard and see 26 different kinds of tea! I would like to keep about five: An Earl Grey decaf, Yorkshire Gold, Sleepytime, Chamomile, and a green tea. It's the cute tins that lure me in to buy. Resolution: I won't buy any more tea until I run out. And then it'll be replacement tea to put in the cute tins I already have.
The house at the top is one at the Appalachian Museum that belonged to one man. It's less than 100 sq. feet; a little bigger than Darcie's playhouse. He had a bed, stove, shelves for his few belongings, and a calendar with a picture of a cheerleader on it. That cracked me up. He had room for everything he needed. He just didn't need much.
Going through the museum, I noticed that whatever the settlers needed they made. If they couldn't make it, they'd trade for it or do without. Their handiwork and craftsmanship were beautiful. These were my ancestors. It makes me proud to come from such hardy and handy folk.
It also makes me ashamed that I've come so far from my roots. I really want to be more like them and start making useful things again. To get rid of all this superfluous junk and have wide spaces inside the house and inside my mind.
This book, Shed Your Stuff, Change Your Life, is excellent. She goes way beyond the usual decluttering and focuses on the WHY of your stuff. We keep things for emotional reasons. Once you can figure that out, you're much more likely to kiss it goodbye for good.
I'm going to spend today, Saturday, and Monday asking myself some hard questions and trying my best to let go. I'll let you know how I do.