Organic Weed and Pest Control Through Soil Sterilization

Please enjoy my latest organic gardening article -

Organic Weed and Pest Control Through Soil Sterilization

I'm actually using big sheets of newspaper on the garden paths in the flower garden to the same effect. While not sterilizing the soil, it is starving the weeds of light, and preventing germination until we can get the landscape fabric, pebbles and stepping stones to that particular potion of the pathway. I plan to try solar sterilization next year on sections that right now are lost to weeds.

Weeds, weeds, weeds....seems like I'm always in a battle with them!

Easy Care Plants for a Simple Butterfly Garden

I wrote the following article today, and it's one in which I truly recommend plants I love - in fact, each one grows in my own butterfly garden. There were two I did not mention in the article because a) the colors didn't go with the others and b) their growth habit makes them look kind of weedy, which when coupled with the Buddleias that take over the bed, may not be everyone's cup of tea.  I also have Geum and Cardinal Flower in my butterfly garden. I enjoy both, but for attracting butterflies, really nothing beats Buddleia.  Clouds of them rise up from the bushes every day and perch among the pine trees here. It's quite a sight.

 

Click the link below to enjoy my latest gardening article - 

Easy Care Plants for a Simple Butterfly Garden

The Gospel of Matthew and My Garden

Visitors surprising me in the garden often comment on the fact that I'm singing psalms as I weed, usually practicing the alto part of the psalms we go over for next Sunday's Mass during choir practice. I don't know if my plants enjoy it, but I tend to sing under my breath while I work anyway, so why not psalms? This weekend, however, my plants were treated not just to psalms but to portions of the Gospel according to Matthew.





 It happened like this. On Saturday morning, I was ankle deep in mud, sweating like a pig, and pulling up gigantic masses of matted weeds that had crept from the gravel driveway into the flower beds.  A car crunched down the driveway and out hopped my neighbor, Jo, and her friend Marie.  Jo is a Jehovah's Witness, otherwise known as a "Witness", and about once a month she and her friend Marie stop by to drop off Watchtower magazines, chat, and read the Bible. Now all of this is fine by me. It does make me laugh that Jo seems to assume that I know nothing of Witnesses, but back in New York, we were close with a couple who lived across the street who were Witnesses and I worked at Teachers College Columbia University with a very lovely woman who was a devout Witness, so I am very familiar with their teachings and don't mind their visits a bit. It also makes me laugh to see her face when I start discussing scripture with her. She once blurted out, "I didn't know that Catholics read the Bible!"  Turns out she assumed we sat like dummies in church and had people tell us what to do, sort of like animated robots.  I feel like her visits to my house are a cultural exchange and I am the ambassador for the local Catholics.  I  completely understand why she needs to stop by and discuss her views with me each month, and I welcome the opportunity to chat with her.  I like her and get where she's coming from, although I'm not sure she welcomes hearing my point of view!

Anyway, because I was so muddy and filthy I didn't want to go back into the house, but Jo said it was fine by her if I kept on working. So we hung out in the driveway and caught up on just life stuff before she introduced her Witness teachings.  She asked if she could read something from the Bible to me and I said sure. So while I worked, she read to me from the Gospel of Matthew.

She seemed enchanted by the flower garden and several times, I saw the joy in her eyes when clouds of butterflies rose up from the butterfly garden.  She would stop in mid-sentence and exclaim over them. So before she left,  I ran up to the house, grabbed a Butterfly Bush I'd potted up, and we swapped. She gave me copies of the Watchtower, and I gave her a purple Butterfly Bush, an offspring of the giants in the flower garden.

Now I wonder if my plants will grow SUPER big now that they've heard the gospel? Probably better than my singing the psalms....my singing my have stunted their growth...

So now my flowers have had the gospel read to them too.  I told you this was a blog about home and garden, faith, family and friends!

Early Morning in Photos

I stepped outside to photograph the garden this morning and decided to take a walk through our woods. Some unexpected pleasures, including meeting another turtle friend and hearing the rapid chuckle of our creek running higher than normal thanks to the rains.  Enjoy the pictures - the flowers are all in the garden next to the driveway, then I will share photos of a walk through the woods on our farm and the creek.

The flower garden looks lively, and everything is gearing up for a second bloom thanks to the rain!

 

 

This butterfly sat as if posing for me.

I love our woods. A shaft of sunlight filtered through as I snapped this picture.

 

 

 

A new friend - Eastern painted box turtle (I think).

 

 

 

 

 

Clearwater Creek.  It looks narrow here because I am at a weird angle. The bank was too muddy to get closer.

Propagation Workshop in Prince Edward County

Barry Glick is running a workshop on Hellebores on Friday September 24 at the Prince Edward County (Virginia) Cooperative Extension office, then on Friday there is an all-day workshop on Plant Propagation.  I am hoping to attend. Liz Dun at the Cooperative Extension Office asked me to pass along this link to you. Register soon - it looks like an excellent workshop. Oh, and she says that Barry does not dress like a king when he teaches. He just likes to joke around.

Here is the link: Plant Propagation Workshop, September 25, 2010, Prince Edward County, Virginia.


I spent over two hours last night weeding the flower garden and finally made progress.  The weather has changed and it will only by in the 80's, plus we got nearly 3 inches of rain this week. That makes the weeds easier to pull. Already I am seeing life in plants that I thought were dead. New shoots, new greenery, and new buds....even my roses decided to try again. I am heading out into the garden now to take lots of pictures while the light is good.  The garden is still a bit of a mess, I warn you, but the butterflies don't mind and neither will I.

Funny New York City Fashion Week Memory

I've waxed poetic about the view out of my office windows now; I can see a sweep of lawn, pines, and the flower garden from my perch up here in the office. But several years ago when I was in graduate school at New York University, the view was quite different. 

The School of Continuing and Professional Studies which houses the Direct Marketing Master's degree program is at 11 West 42nd Street, directly across from Bryant Park and the massive and wonderful temple to books, the New York City Public Library, with its guardian lions and marble floors.  And Bryan Park is where many of the infamous Fashion Week runway shows are held.  From the city streets you can't see much; there are trailers and big lights for the television cameras and all sorts of barriers and such to keep the hoi polloi from gawking at the celebrities.

But from the building across the street, apparently you can see well...very well indeed.

It was our night class in Financials; heavy on the math, heavy on the yawns, and a grueling business class that involved big numbers and even bigger projects and homework.  We slogged through the first half of the night class and breathed a sigh of relief when the professor called for break. I left to get a cup of coffee. When I returned, nearly every male in the class was clustered at the windows. They weren't saying anything, just standing with their noses pressed to the windows.

"What's going on?"

One guy pointed out the 4th floor window and down into Bryant Park.  "Fashion Week."

Wondering why the guys were so interested in Fashion Week, I wandered closer. Ah. Mystery solved.

The Victoria's Secret fashion show was going on. And from our airy perch four stories up and across the street, we had a perfect bird's eye view down onto the catwalk...and the models.

Needless to say, I don't think many of them were concentrating on the balance sheets that night!

Garden Design: The Monochromatic Garden

New Article - 

Garden Design: The Monochromatic Garden

The link above will take you to my latest gardening article - the Monochromatic Garden. I plant an orange-yellow garden next to our patio. Dominated by marigolds with bronze and yellow snapdragons accenting the edges and a cheerful burst of chrysanthemums in the fall, it's a lovely garden that practically glows with light. Although the design and arrangement of plants in my own patio garden isn't great (I leave things more to chance than design, and I couldn't resist pink and bronze begonias - which don't match but I love them, so in they went) it's a start.

Enjoy the article!

Rosemary for Remembrance

I love rosemary as an herb for its fragrance; it makes me think of clean, fresh pine woods and the time just before dawn when the air holds the hint of promise. It has a long and venerable history in the plant kingdom. Among the ancient Greek and Roman cultures, rosemary symbolized fidelity. It was also thought to enhance memory - "rosemary for remembrance" is a common folk saying. Because of its associations with fidelity, loyalty and memory, it was used at both weddings and funerals. Brides wore wreaths of rosemary and one of Henry VIII's ill-fated brides, Anne of Cleves, wore a wreath of rosemary. Wedding guests were given a small bouquet of rosemary too, the way we give sugar coated almonds or other small gifts or favors to guests today. 

Among culinary herbs, rosemary is most often paired with lamb or in Mediterranean dishes. I offer my take on a Tuscan white bean and rosemary soup on Recipes from the Garden today.

To grow rosemary, full sun is a must, you need well drained soil. It's a Mediterranean plant and doesn't like the cold. I winter mine over in the raised beds here at Seven Oaks by using a simple homemade cloche.  Cloche is a french word for bell, and a cloche is a bell like covering in the garden. Fancy ones are made of glass but here's my frugal secret: I use empty soda pop bottles, the big 2 or 3 liter kind. I clean them will, remove the labels, and cut off the pouring and.  Then I have a nice little mini greenhouse to slip over my rosemary plants. Just remember to remove them on warmer winter days. Precooking rosemary is not recommend!

You can dry rosemary quite easily. I've hung up bunches of rosemary in the garage, let it air dry in the heat, then picked the thin needles off.  Best of all, tuck some fresh rosemary around the house.  If you enjoy the scent, it's a great treat.

My rosemary is tucked in between the chives and oregano and as always, the oregano threatens to consume it in its mad passion to take over the raised bed entirely. Not to be outdone, the lemon balm beside it also vies for prominence. The catnip all the while laughs; although I hacked it back to the ground, it has regained its vigor, believing in the motto "what does not kill me makes me stronger."  Even the catnip plants I pulled up by the roots and tossed into the woods managed to take hold and grow again.....I have enough catnip for Pierre and all his country cousins this year.

Enjoy your herb garden while you can.  The calendar tells me that despite the heat of summer, fall is quickly creeping in on golden feet, and soon I'll be sighing and wishing my herb garden was green again.

Two articles on rosemary for more folklore:

• Botanical

• Gomestic

Recipes from the Garden

Too many tomatoes? Bounty of basil? Prodigious peppers? Then pop over to and follow my second blog, Recipes from the Garden.  I blog recipes using the fruits, vegetables and herbs you've grown in your garden.  I hope you enjoy it!

Angels Among Us

This is a blog about home and garden to be sure, but I also promise stories about faith, family and friends. Today's post combines both faith and friends, so sit back with a cup of what gets you through the day and read on. It's the kind of story that will give believers goose bumps.  It's the kind of story that makes you think.

*   *   *

I've known Regina since college when we both attended Molloy College,  a Catholic college on Long Island.  My passions were English literature, writing and horseback riding; Regina's passions were English literature, writing and witticisms. Many an 8 a.m. lit class was made more delightful by Regina's constant presence in the seat next to me as she cracked jokes and exchanged hilarious comments with the professor on Dante's Inferno, for example .  We even worked together briefly when I got her a job interview with the publisher I worked for; we both wrote advertising copy, recorded voice mail scripts, and handled all the customer service problems together.

So you know that when I tell you Regina is an honest person, you know that I speak from experience and knowledge. She's given to practical jokes; this summer her favorite ploy was to change her birth date on her Facebook account so that her friends and students were constantly wishing her happy birthday.  But when it comes to her beliefs, she doesn't play practical jokes.  She's probably one of the most devoted and devout people I know, someone who defends the faith and teaches it daily not just to her six children but to all the students flowing in and out of her high school classes. Regina teaches English literature and Roman Catholic theology.  And ever the glutton for punishment, she volunteers to lead the Bible school during the summer.

It is here that I pick up our tale of what she believes was an encounter with an angel.

This July she took her Bible study students on a trip to attend a conference and religious retreat in Ohio.  With 10 youngsters and another adult chaperon in tow, the group made its way home from the retreat and decided to stop in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, to have a bite to eat on their way back to northern Virginia.  They were browsing the menu for an Italian restaurant through the plate glass window when a strange little woman appeared. Regina describes her as Hispanic but said her nationality was hard to place. So was her accent.

What was even odder, though was that the woman was walking backwards towards them on the street.

Here is where I will let Regina pick up the tale:

"The dark haired lady pointed to the menu and said "Food, no good." She then tried to direct us to the  second on the street and she said, "it's Catholic" (which they thought was a peculiar commentary on a restaurant). . .. .well, as some of you may know, I happen to BE a practicing Catholic. . .who happens to be with 10 other people, who, as chance would have also have been known to attend Mass on days other than on Sunday. . .who, as luck would have it. . .had just attended a seminar/retreat called "Defending the Faith" conference..."

Regina and the group decided to go to Maria's Garden Inn, a bed and breakfast and restaurant that the strange dark haired lady pointed to and said "It's Catholic."  The dark haired lady led them to the restaurant - still walking backwards.

Regina was surprised to find that the restaurant wasn't just a restaurant, but a museum dedicated to relics of the Virgin Mary - and the owners are particularly devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Apparently, people have reported healing and many grace-filled moments in the restaurant but Regina tells me nothing miraculous happened, except an excellent meal and a lovely place to relax and eat.


She inquired about the rates for holding events at the restaurant thinking it would be a great place to bring her high school students on future religious retreats.  The group returned to Virginia without anything special happening.

A week later, the restaurant owner telephoned  Regina to speak with her further about group events. The lady asked a question many business owners ask: "How did you hear about us?" Regina told Peg, the owner, about the peculiar dark haired woman who approached them on the street and led them to her door. 


"Did the dark haired lady who recommended the place walk backwards, by any chance, and disappear quite suddenly?" Peg asked.


Regina was startled by the question.  Yes, she said, the lady had walked backwards.  And when she asked the group whether any of them had seen where the lady had walked off to, no one had. She'd really vanished into thin air. She hasn't realized before how quickly the woman had appeared and disappeared.

Regina said, "According to Peg (the owner of the restaurant and a deeply devout Catholic) who claims she has had numerous encounters with angels . .whenever an angel brings someone to her restaurant. . .they always walk backwards. . .and then disappear. . . I can't say that the short woman disappeared, but it what struck me as odd, even as she was leading us was that she was walking backwards. . .so there you have it: Make your own judgments."

The rest of her conversation with Peg was private, but Regina says that talking to Peg has been a grace filled moment in her life and one filled with God's spirit.

So believe what you want. I find it interesting that when I went to the Maria Garden Inn's website, they post a lot about their devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe....and the little dark haired lady who walked backwards and pointed them to the restaurant appeared to be Hispanic. Our Lady of Guadalupe's miracle in the 1500's is said to have converted the Aztec people to Christianity. 

Who knows who the dark haired lady was? Was she one of those Aztec people from long ago, sent to help others find grace in Our Lady's presence?  Was it just a coincidence and they met a really weird woman?

All my friend knows is that the strange little woman walking backwards surprised her with what might be an angelic encounter and a grace-filled moment.

*   *   *

So that is Regina's tale, as she relayed through her Facebook account to me and her students and friends. It's up to you to decide what you think about it!

Cool Plant-y Happenings

Liz emailed me with the Heart of Virginia Master Gardener class list this fall and it sure looks like fun! They are offering free classes in rain gardening (very intriguing), water gardening, hellebores and more. The classes are free and isn't that the best price for gardening info? All classes are in the Cooperative Extension Building in Farmville, across the street from Lowe's.  For the complete calendar, here's the link to the Fall 2010 gardening classes flyer.(Oh, and this picture is a stock photo...it's neither Liz nor me).





Looking for more gardening information? Don't forget my book (shameless advertisement here).  For just $9.99 paperback and even less for the E book, it's a jam packed little gem filled with basic gardening information.

Even Mowing the Lawn Is an Adventure

This weekend both John and I had near misses with our respective lawn mowers. He's actually got the riding lawn tractor to mow the three acres, the easement (driveway) and a bit into the woods to keep the path clear for us to check on the timber.  I have the push-mower that I use to keep the grass in the vegetable garden trimmed. This was the first weekend in many weeks that the temperatures and humidity were reasonable, and the heavy rains earlier this week finally encouraged some growth among the grass. So....off we went on Saturday morning with our mowers, edgers and assorted gardening tools.

I was moving mulch down into the front garden to replace what washed away in the heavy rains last week when I realized that John had stopped the riding mower and hopped off. He'd begun mowing the path into the woods, which is a steep slope, and I always worry that he'll hit a rock or a hidden tree stump and tip the darn thing over onto himself.  But he was bending low to the ground and I could tell he'd found something interesting. He's always stopping to move turtles on the lawn when he's out mowing or Shadow's tennis balls which she leaves everywhere. I was hopeful he'd found another box turtle. I put down my rake and walked over to see what was going on.

Huddled along the pathway just inches from the lawn mower blade was a baby bird. A few feet away, we found a second, bedraggled looking baby. The first youngster had his eyes open and hopped up and down vigorously flapping his wings, but he couldn't fly. The second one had big chunks of feathers missing from his back; his eyes were still closed.

Judging by the frantic mockingbird that swooped and dive bombed us, we figured they were the mockingbird babies we'd suspected near that area this summer. We'd see the parents in the garden foraging for insects and always returning to a stand of pine trees near the forsythia at the end of the driveway. Sure enough, that's where we found the babies.

Did their nest get blown down in the big thunderstorm last week? We looked high and low but couldn't find the nest. The Cornell University Ornithology Laboratory website indicates that mockingbirds make nests anywhere from 3 feet above the ground in shrubs to 60 feet up in pine trees, so your guess is as good as mine where these babies came from.

We moved both babies off the path and after a careful search to make sure no other babies were in the path of the lawn mower, continued our chores.  It's three days later and both babies are, I'm glad to say, still alive. The parents continue to feed them and we sit on the porch and watch the adults bring them insects.  They certainly move around a lot for little ones who can't fly!  Shadow found one yesterday at least 10 feet from where we'd last spotted him. She was so gentle with it.....she alerted us that it was in the grass on the edge of the driveway and just hovered over it so protectively until we could move him safely back into the shrubs.  Our big German Shepherd is so gentle with tiny living creatures. It reminded us of the way she cared for Pierre when he was a 6 week old kitten!

And my near miss? I was pushing the lawn mower through the thick grass in the vegetable garden when a large toad - yes, another toad - hopped about frantically to get out of the way.  Fortunately I was able to scoop him up and into the raised bed among the safety of the peppers.

So this week we saved three lives.  Four, if you include the mouse Pierre stunned in the basement that I managed to scoop into a plastic container and carry out into the woods, still living, where he gratefully scampered under the leaves. 

Old Fashioned Customs

When I was growing up, my mother and grandmother always sent home grown vegetables with my dad to work or bouquets of flowers with us to bring to the teacher or up to church during the week. Home baked pies or cookies often accompanied someone to a meeting at school, work or church. Sharing was expected and many afternoons the doorbell would ring around 4 p.m. and Mrs. Allen, a dear friend of my parents and a former home economics teacher at the local high school, would be beaming at me from the porch, a piping hot apple pie in hand. This was what I grew up with and what I carried with me into adulthood.

Sometime in the last 10 years, however, the tenor changed whenever I'd bring something homemade or home grown into work. The first time I noticed this was at a certain job in Manhattan. I remember one of the editors poking at the tray of home made sugar cookies I'd put out in the break room and making a joke about me being a Martha Stewart wanna be. A few years later, I brought home made banana bread to another company. People made more than a little fun of it and I heard some snickers.  Someone actually told me to my face that I was weird. (Well, I am, but for bringing in snacks?)  That didn't stop them from devouring it, by the way. And it did come out pretty good.

What's changed? I'm not sure, but here in the countryside, people remain as generous with homemade, home grown and home baked things as always.

I walked into a local shop and the clerk had a big watermelon on the counter behind her.  That's not at all what her shop sold so I commented on the gigantic behemoth.

"Oh that," she smiled, "One of my customers brought it in for me. Isn't it a doozy?"

Can you imagine bringing a home grown watermelon into the local dry cleaners on Long Island, Manhattan or another major city? They'd probably call the police and assume you'd spiked it with poison or something.

Here, they were planning to dig into it and invited me back later to partake of it!

Waving the White Flag

Bidding My Squash Plants Goodbye

I surrender...the squash bugs have won. I just wrote this gardening essay for Main Line Gardening, but thought you might enjoy it too.

Weekend Visitors

One thing I still cannot adjust to about country life is how people treat hunting dogs. They spend hundreds of dollars to buy these dogs then let them run wild or abandon them. Deer hunting with dog packs is like the national sport here in the country.


This weekend, I was in my office working on Saturday morning when I spied two hounds trotting down my driveway. They were lovely liver and white mid sized hounds, an old female and a young male. Both had collars and radio tracking collars, a sure sign a hunter was near. Trouble is, it's not deer hunting season, and we don't allow hunting on our land. We guessed someone was exercising or training his dogs nearby. 

John went out to see if the dogs had any identification on them. The female was so friendly that she came over wagging her tail and whining for pats and attention.  The male was shy and would not come over. We were able to get the name and a telephone number off of the collar.

We decided to let the dogs alone and hope they would leave of their own accord.  Because they had identification, we assumed they were not wild or abandoned. If someone was exercising his hunting dogs on the neighbor's property (which is a huge several hundred acre parcel, and we know that the locals love to hunt it and have permission to hunt it) chances are his dogs just wandered over.  We don't mind if they leave of their own accord and in the fall it is not uncommon for a small pack of dog to trot through the yard, nose to the ground, as they follow a scent.  We just leave them alone. They're dogs. They can't read No Trespassing signs.

Yet this weekend, the hounds showed up and decided to move in.

The female plunked herself down on our front porch and took a snooze. Did I mention that Shadow hates other dogs? Shadow barked, whined, slammed herself against the windows, and generally went ballistic. I spent Monday cleaning dog nose prints off my dining room and kitchen windows where she spent Saturday shivering, whining and slobbering on the panes of glass, trying to kill the hounds peacefully sleeping a few feet away.

Those two hounds drank water from a dirty flower pot on my front porch, slept on the front porch, back deck, and my driveway, and refused to leave.  By 9 pm when it started to rain and they were still hanging about, I called the phone number on the collar to ask the owner to come and get his dogs, but got an answering machine.

The next morning the dogs were spotted by a neighbor who said they had crept away to the property across the road from us.  I finally got a return phone call from the dogs' owner around 3pm on Sunday afternoon, a good 36 hours after the animals first appeared. He said he would activate their radio collars and pick them up and apologized that they were a nuisance. I assumed the owner picked up his dogs. He said he had seven, which he let out on Friday. I talked to him on Sunday and he seemed totally unconcerned that his dogs were running loose across busy roads.

I just don't understand any of this.  These were valuable, purebred hounds of some sort.  The female had been injured while she was running around. She was limping badly the last time I saw her.  This isn't the first time we have seen packs of hounds roaming our land, running down the street, or crossing the highway.  We had a wild hound living in the cattle field for several months. He limped on three legs. The fourth appeared to have been broken, perhaps by a car, and set badly.  Animal control finally had to euthanize the poor creature. Is that any kind of life for a dog?

Our neighbors who have a large farm say that several times a year they pick up abandoned hunting hounds on their property or have to call animal control to come and get them. Many times the dogs are starved, frightened, or so unsocialized that they won't come near humans. The dogs can be dangerous too, for they form packs to survive and can then hunt down livestock.


Call me sentimental, but I don't think it is right to allow dogs - the kindest, best natured, most giving creatures on the planet - to roam free where they can be hit by cars and get into all sorts of trouble just for the sake of exercising them for a sport.  I don't understand why people pay hundreds of dollars for these purebred animals only to abandon them or treat them so casually. It makes no sense to me.

This is one area where I retain my city sensibilities...I still don't understand this mindset when it comes to the hunting dogs.