winter!

It is winter. I am more cold tolerant than I used to be but still I have no patience for it being dark when I go to work and dark when I get home. Gardening in the cold and in the dark? Not gardening? Well, I can’t not garden! So it is time to sit down with the seed catalogues, maybe do some germination tests on old seeds to see if I need new seeds, and if daylight allows do some fall chores I just didn’t get around to. Like seeding the prairie! Our prairie bed (north of the art room east of the courtyard) is gradually being enlarged and gradually filling in, soon it will be a bird and butterfly magnet. South of Oklahoma it is definitely best to plant wildflower seeds in fall, north of us in spring but here, in the middle? I say plant native seeds when the native plants would plant native seeds. Most fell to the ground or blew in the wind around November but I still have many beautiful seed heads hanging on in “cold storage” in my garden. Some will be eaten by birds some will fall into dense plantings or onto rocks or be combed out of my dogs fur and some will find their way to fertile soil, that is why plants make so many seeds! But Sunday afternoon as it started to snow I knew it was time to seed the prairie, at least a little bit! With the cold wind biting my cheeks and my sensible dog snug in the car (giving me her best you must be out of your mind look) I raked bare bits of soil loose and scattered seeds of big bluestem ( Andropogon gerardii) little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) blackeyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta) cone flower (Echinacea purpurea) and rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) along with a prairie wildflower mix from Native American Seeds, (a very educational seed catalogue) raking them in, walking on them and trusting the snow to cover them with a gentle blanket that will eventually melt and wash them snug against the soil. Here’s to spring!

“Nature rests, yet she is working like mad. She has only shut up shop and pulled the shutters down; but behind them she is unpacking new goods, and the shelves are becoming so full that they bend under the load . This is the real spring; the future is not in front of us, for it is here already in the shape of a germ; already it is with us; and what is not with us will not be even in the future... We don’t know the future because it is within us. Sometimes we seem to smell of decay, encumbered by the faded remains of the past; but if only we could see how many fat and white shoots are pushing forward in the old tilled soil…if we could only see that secret swarming of the future within us we should say that our melancholy and distrust is silly and absurd, and that the best thing of all is to be a living man- that is a man who grows.“ Karel Capek in “The Gardeners Year” originally published in Prague in 1929, always a good winter read!

http://www.seedsource.com/catalog/detail.asp?PRODUCT_ID=1814

More Trees!

We have much to be thankful for in the Cherokee garden as Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Just around the corner from our color bed our future Monarch waystation has been seeded and planted with milkweed and our bird feeders are filled (except the yellow one I couldnt get it open, someone with a stronger grip might try) and the scouts from Troop one from First Presbyterian Church have planted 2 River Birch a Live Oak a Redbud and a cottonless Cottonwood, the latter with much heavy equipment! It was great fun to watch them work. These scouts obviously have great leaders and it was wonderful to watch them interact with mutual respect and encouragement as they learned about planting trees and community service. We were lucky to be a part of the 100th anniversary celebration of First Presbyterian and troop one which they celebrated by planting 100 trees from Up With Trees at schools around town. Also the Warren foundation donated the big Cottonwood which will provide a shady spot next summer. This area south of the school should become a haven for bird watchers so first it must become a haven for birds. The trees will provide shelter and food and a place for birds to perch as they take turns at the feeders. The bird seed is in an ice chest behind a shrub and help keeping the feeders full is welcomed. Also I recently planted a deciduous holly which provides food in late winter when birds are most desperate, when most seeds and berries are already gone and insects are not yet plentiful. I didnt do much bird watching while working on the bird garden but I did notice 2 mockingbirds watching me! I wonder if they recognized the birdseed bags or the feeders I was carrying, they seemed intent on watching me!
Benches, a cone flower bed for finches and a bed of hummingbird plants would be great additions to this area. Lets plan on participating in the Audubon Society bird counts in the future as well as doing our own wildlife surveys.

http://www.troop1tulsa.com
http://birds.audubon.org/christmas-bird-count
http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/kids

Insect Use Not Damage!

You may have noticed a new bed along the south wall of the school. We had a turf stripper for our neighborly task of installing an entry garden at Horace Greeley Elementary School and it seemed a shame to take it back without taking a few minutes to strip turf from a new bed around the corner from our colorful nectar garden. After reading Dr. Tallamy's book "Bringing Nature Home" I will never consider insect use of a plant as damage. Is it lettuce damage when I have a salad? Well of course it is but I would never think of it that way! And when the monarch caterpillars strip my swamp milkweed it does look quite messy but the beauty of the parent butterflies sipping nectar at the same milkweed weeks earlier more than makes up for the mess. And if I am lucky I will get to watch a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis, again payback for putting up with "insect damage". That is why we are dedicating a not so public space along the side of the school to insect use. These plants will be beautiful and common milkweed has a wonderful scent but eventually these plants will be chewed up by monarch caterpillars. Thus our new lesson, how to see the beauty in insects using "our" plants next to "our" school to complete their beautiful and informative life cycle. Long before any building was on this land monarchs and milkweeds were at home here, let's invite them back. Let's have a Monarch Waystation Garden!
https://shop.monarchwatch.org/certificate/waystationcert.aspx

Quiet Time in the Garden

Last time I was in the garden with children painting bird houses and making a toad abode. We did a little math, learned the word abode and talked about what toads and frogs need and why we need toads and frogs. This time I was alone in the garden and very aware that I needed to garden slowly and quietly instead of my usual “let’s get a lot done today” style. I added a lobelia cardinalis and a fern to the west side of the toad abode to provide more shade for the tadpoles and gave the whole area a long slow shower with the hose adding just a little water to the toad abode because I didn’t want to add too much chlorine. I watched a pair of beetles on the log we added to make it easier for frogs and toads to get in and out of the toad abode. I watched the tadpoles wriggle near the edge of the abode catching tiny things to eat and caught a glimpse of a half inch 4 legged frog! The first tadpole I have seen with all four legs ready to take its place in our garden! I added a couple more tomatos and realized our well mulched playhouse was actually too wet in spite of the dry weather. Don’t forget to put a finger in the soil before watering, the mulch may be working better than you expected and a plant can wilt from too much water as well as too little. So let’s learn math, vocabulary, integrated pest management, gardening for wildlife and how to sit quietly observe and appreciate all that is in our garden. Meditation, our next lesson?

Art In The Garden

We had a wonderful time this morning painting gourds to use for toad abodes and birdhouses and planting our toad abode. The tadpoles have been transferred with many cool damp places to hide under logs gourds and stones around their new toad abode,ready for when they hop out. Cattails and horsetail are planted in the garden tote we used for a pond and a water loving canna is planted southwest of the tote for evening shade with a fern to the east. More plants will be added for shade and hiding places for frogs and toads.

We still need more signs painted, we did paint a bright blue chalkboard we can use to announce future events so keep your eyes open and feel free to join us. We also put up our prairie sign so folks will know something grand is coming, I am afraid it won't look like much for a year or two but don't mow it, be patient!

The Tallamy Toad Tote

The Dr. Doug Tallamy Toad Tote

One minute into Dr. Tallamys talk at the Tulsa garden center (Thursday August 19th 2010) and I was picturing our tadpoles, turning into tiny toads or frogs leaping from the wheel barrow and landing… where? And can they jump that far when so tiny?

I know from my own yard that a small body of water can be greatly appreciated by frogs and toads; just an area where I water pots every day is populated with the hoppers. When I placed a plastic garden tote in the ground in my lawn, no plantings, nothing but a bucket of water in the ground I came home the next day to find a frog floating in it! How desperate does an amphibian have to be to move into a bucket or wheel barrow?

Dr Tallamy tells of moving into a new subdivision at age 9 and becoming determined to watch the tadpoles next door turn into toads which he did just minutes before the bulldozer showed up to turn the toad abode into a human home! See the second link below for more of his story.

Of course the home could have been built with a wetland intact (see the first link for why) but even now we just don’t think about giving back some of our yard to those who lived there before we built our home. But my task was clear, give the toads a chance to hop out of a ground level “pond” not a 3 foot high wheelbarrow and leave a little wetland available for them to return to and in exchange they will eat bugs in our vegetable garden.

That’s why I bought the Tallamy Toad Tote! A green plastic 20 gallon garden tote to bury near the wheel barrow and transfer the toads into and why one of our garden art projects (Saturday August 28 2010 8 am to noon) will be to build toad abodes. These can be as simple as a hollow log or a stone with space to creep under or as elaborate as a painted gourd or upside down flower pot with an opening to hop into covering a damp piece of earth. We just water the toads when we water the garden.

Join us Saturday for our art in the garden event and to celebrate our toads with our toad abodes. If you have something we can work into a project (wind chime, mosaic, sign etc.) bring it or just show up we have plenty of projects you can help with.

www.bringingnaturehome.net/native-gardening/gardening-for-life


http://books.google.com/books?id=JA45XbUm48gC&lpg=PP1&dq=douglas+tallamy+bringing+nature+home&pg=PA22#v=onepage&q&f=false

It Really Ought To Rain!

My dog Lizzie was not going to go out this morning no matter how much I insisted. It was going to rain! I haven't checked the weather for predictions of rain since I got my Lizzie, she is much more accurate. So the thunder in the distance was not just taunting me, it would rain. So there I was in a cool breeze listening to louder and louder thunder (did i mention the cool breeze?) planting Kentucky Wonder and Royal Burgandy beans, peas, and cucumbers on our garden playhouse (PHROG). As I was scattering radish seeds around the edge of the planting it started to rain. Perfect timing! Unfortunately by 9:30 Lizzie was happy to go outside. For a moment though, I thought I saw St Fiacre smile.

http://www.pittsburgpostgazette.com/garden/20001223clips4.asp