Do as I Say, Not as I Do

This was a favorite expression of my Mother's - and one that I like when it's coming from me.

Below are a few hints from my lessons learned. I am sure this list will continue to grow as I recall past experiences and continue to learn (the hard way).

1. Don't just buy what looks pretty in the garden center. Take a piece of paper and pen with you. Write down the name of the plant. Go home and research it. It will still be there when you go back.
2. If you buy a plant and learn that it can be "invasive", plant it in a pot - not the ground. Otherwise, one morning you will wake up and realize it has taken over your entire yard.
3. If someone offers to share their plants with you and then proceeds to pull out big clumps of them, graciously accept and then plant them in a pot. (see Hint # 2)
4. Don't be a pessimist. Plan for your plant or tree to get as big as stated on the product description that comes with it. Otherwise, you will spend the rest of your life pruning limbs from the sides and top of your house.
5. Just because the plants look great in the garden center, it does not mean that they will grow where you live or, even if it does, that it is the time of the year to plant them. Do not plant impatiens in Florida in September. Do not plant petunias in Florida in April. Do not plant lavender at any time - it's just too humid.
6. Reference local resources. Most newspapers publish an annual garden calendar and weekly gardening section. These will provide information that is specific to your location and will prevent you from planting petunias in April.
7. If a plant looks unhappy, first determine if it is getting enough water, is diseased or is infected with insects. If not, move it. It obviously needs something it is not getting.
8. Experiment with the unknown. You might be pleased. Otherwise, the plant will die and you will forget it was ever there. Or, you can always pull out big clumps and share with your neighbors.
9. If you want it to rain, water.
10. Try to tackle disease or insect problems early on - otherwise they will tackle you.
11. Things that attract birds (seed, water) also attract squirrels, raccoons and possums.
12. You will see snakes. Learn about them and make an agreement with them to stay out of your way in exchange for keeping their head attached to their body.
13. Unless you are in a hurry or have absolutely no friends, there are some plants you should never have to buy. In my area, these include: liriope, yarrow, sago palms, society garlic, African iris, Mexican petunia, salvia, Boston fern, elephant ears, Mexican bush sage.
14. If you have no idea where to start, take a walk or ride your bike around the neighborhood and take note of what grows well. If you see someone out working in their yard, ask them what they have planted. Most gardeners are proud and happy to share their knowledge - a maybe even a few plants. (See #3 - be appreciative but leery if they are too happy to share).
15. On the same note, if you plant something and it is "too happy", watch it for a year of two before you divide it spread it all over your yard.
16. If you do spread it all over your yard, you can always pull up big clumps and share with your friends.
17. Round-up is your friend. I wish I had bought stock. I could probably go organic if not for my addiction to Round-up.
18. Google is also your friend. The wealth of information that is available at your fingertips is priceless.
19. When you buy a plant, save the little plastic ID tag that comes with it. Date it. Throw it in a drawer. A year from now, when the plant is struggling or going berserk, you will want to know what it is so you can research appropriate needs or propagation techniques .
20. Share -whether it be fruits, vegetables, cut flowers or off-springs of what you have growing.
21. Take time to appreciate the fruits of your labor. It's not as easy as it sounds. Too often I take a walk and take mental note of just what needs to be done. Then I take a step back and look at what progress has been made and how beautiful it all is.

My Bottle Tree

I can't remember where I first saw or heard of the “bottle tree”. I know it was about six or seven years ago. I am thinking it was a story in Southern Living magazine featuring Felder Rushing. I was fascinated and just knew that I had to have one.

I did a little bit of research at the time. The practice was most common for African Americans in the deep south. It is thought to have originated as an ancient African custom going back as far as ninth century Congo when natives hung hand-blown glass on trees to ward off evil. I personally do not remember them in the rural community in which I was raised. I think they were more popular in the Mississippi Delta region and perhaps along the Carolina Coast. Blue bottles are best for attracting and entrapping the evil spirits. Milk of Magnesia bottles were commonly used, likely because that was what was most abundant. The limbs on the tree should “point toward heaven”. Crepe Myrtle trees were often used.

Probably, the most well known reference to bottle trees comes from Eudora Welty in her short story “Livvie”, about a young African American woman. Livvie "knew that there could be a spell put in trees, and she was familiar from the time she was born with the way bottle trees kept evil spirits from coming into the house -- by luring them inside the colored bottles, where they cannot get out again." More recent appearances of bottle trees have been in the movies “Ray” and in the yard of the character played by Cicely Tyson in “Because of Winn Dixie”.

My first bottle tree was made from a limb that I needed to remove from a tree in my yard. It was somewhat symmetrical with upward pointing branches. I used hole diggers to plant it a couple feet in the ground and then started decorating with the bottles I had collected. It lasted a couple of years. My second tree came from a volunteer oak that I cut and buried in the original hole. I've had it for a few years, but I lost the top portion earlier this year during a wind storm. I've also seen bottle trees created from treated wood - something like a fence post with nails or dowels inserted to serve as branches. While I don't think these are as authentic, they are attractive and will certainly have a longer life span.

A few points:

• If you are using a cut tree or limb, it will not last forever. You can probably get a few years of life from your tree.


• If the bottles are not evenly dispersed on the tree, over time you will see it begin to bend and favor the more heavily weighted side.


• If your bottles do not 'point toward heaven', they will collect water – creating more weight on the limbs and also creating cute little condos for mosquitos.


• Blue bottles are best. You can find old Milk of Magnesia bottles on ebay and in antique shops. I've seen sports drinks, imported water and white wine in blue bottles. Since I mostly drink red wine, I have been know to give a bottle of Riesling as a gift and then ask for the empty bottle back! My dear family has even given me empty blue bottles for my birthday, much to my delight!

They must really work. I haven't had any evil spirits lurking around my house!

From the kitchen

No, I'm not sharing a favorite recipe. Anyone that has ever eaten my cooking is thankful. While I'm not an accomplished chef, I detest fast food, junk food and TV dinners. After years of being a road warrior, I prefer to eat in rather than eat out. Since my Mama lives too far away for me to pop in at supper time, I somehow manage to do okay in the kitchen - at least I can eat it.

This past winter, after cooking some beef stew, I saved the carrot tops. I tucked them into my garden in some of the more bare spots left from my unsuccessful attempt at growing lettuce and brussel sprouts. (I don't really think they are genetically designed to live happily in Coastal Zone 9). A few weeks later, I saw green peeping through and fortunately remembered the carrots before I hit them with Round-up. Now, I have one carrot plant this is almost as tall as I and several more that are trying to catch up with it.

I made one unsuccessful attempt at growing carrots before. I am not really sure when to harvest -if there is indeed anything to harvest (which I can't know without pulling them up out of the ground). I've decided to let them be until the foliage begins to deteriorate - and then see just what is growing under there. If anyone has, any advice, I welcome it!

One addiction I have learned to overcome is planting the seed from avocados. I absolutely love avocados and I like to plant what I love to eat. I didn't think any of them would survive. We get a hard freeze every couple of years -and it is usually enough to erode any progress any seed has every made. However, I went through a spell where I had avocado trees all over the place. Now, one must be at least 20 feet tall. A few didn't survive, but I have three trees in all. I quit planting the seed. My yard is not that big. I have yet to have any blooms or fruit, but I remain optimistic. Even if they never produce, there is a satisfaction that comes from seeing the results of minimal effort and my kitchen recycling.

My next goal is to start recycling my leftovers into a compost pile - or a worm farm, something I want to investigate and learn a little more about.

Chinch Bugs

It's funny. It's the same questions and same advise year after year. I read countless articles where people are looking for help to care for their lawns and to spot potential problems. Year after year, I take notes so I too can be prepared.

A few years ago, I obviously had a problem with my lawn in my front yard (the part that the Home Owner's Association, aka HOA, inspects). Was it a fungus? Was it chinch bugs? How was I to know for sure?

I tried the old coffee-can and soapy water trick (if you don' know what I am talking about, see http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/lh036). I didn't see anything float to the top of the suds, except for a few roaches and beetles. I concluded, my problem must be fungus related - so I treated it appropriately. A few weeks later, I noticed no improvement. Therefore, I concluded that my first conclusion was incorrect and the problem must really indeed be chinch bugs - and again, treated it appropriately. Time went on and there still were no improvements. By now I had two pretty big sections of brown grass. I knew it was a matter of time before I received the dreaded letter from the HOA.

I got a glass of wine to properly access the situation and think through my options. It is just against my religion to buy sod. I like grass and I think it is attractive. However, with the maintenance it requires, to me it just doesn't provide as much return on my investment as other planting materials. I refilled my glass of wine and got my sketch book and drew out two garden beds that somewhat harmonized with each other and the layout of my front yard. Of course, they also completely covered the chinch bug infested areas of my lawn.

I spent the weekend drawing out my beds with my edger, and then removing what was left of the grass. I bought a few plants and divided some others to get something going to authenticate these 'beds' as areas that were not intended to have grass. As with any gardening project, unless you spend big bucks and buy mature plants, it take some time to become established. It's been several years now. It's coming along quite nicely, although it still on my "five year plan" and has a ways to go before I am completely satisfied.

My letter from the HOA came the following Monday. I was thankful that I had beat them to it!

For anyone looking for a more conventional approach to treating chinch bugs, the link I referenced above has good information.

I might be a redneck

Don’t worry about what your neighbors think,

they are going to talk about you any way

--Felder Rushing

I love this quote and it is so true!

I live in the un-prestigious section of a somewhat prestigious golfing community. There are many advantages to having a Home Owners Association (HOA) to monitor grounds and the appearances of the houses in our community. On the other hand, they leave little room for imperfections and individual creativity!

I am so lucky that I have a tiny front yard where I can maintain appearances - and a backyard that is not overly visible from the street or to my neighbors. I'm just not sure that the HOA would appreciate my beer-bottle border, my gourd bird houses and my bottle tree. My backyard is my playground. If the grass dies, so be it. I just help it along and carve out a new area for more plants. My front yard is where I do my yard work. My back yard is where I garden.

Gardening vs.Yard Work

Just how do we distinguish the difference? Where do we draw the line?

When I was growing up, a "garden" was always for vegetables. One might have a "flower bed" for aesthetic purposes, but the garden was the productive part of the yard. Just this morning, my Daddy asked me had I planted anything in my garden. I knew what he was asking. ( I answered incorrectly in the past). He was strictly referring to vegetables.

So if my garden is where my vegetables are planted, what do I call the other defined areas of my yard? And what do I call all the work that I do in those other areas? Sometimes, to me, the word 'gardening' sounds a little too snooty and elevates my yard to a status that I am not sure that it deserves (yet). On the other hand, 'yard work' sounds too much like a list of chores that I just need to check off of my to-do list. Clearly, the ongoing maintenance like mowing, edging and such are the least pleasurable chores, but I really enjoy it all. (If nothing else, an ice cold beer never tastes as good as it does after pushing a mower on a hot summer day).

My conclusion is that gardening is when you enjoy what you are doing. Yard work is when you are just doing what needs to be done.

Rain Down On Me

As I am winding up this week, we received a nice little rain shower. It was a welcomed and pleasant surprise. This morning, the forecast called for an 80% of heavy rain. When I looked at the radar, there it was - a band of dark green moving across the Gulf Coast region and headed in our direction. But, as happens so frequently and sometimes to our advantage, the fronts often fall apart before they reach Northeast Florida.

By this afternoon, the forecast was for only a few scattered showers.Our region, as is much of the country, continues to suffer drought conditions. There are fires popping up all over the region. Watering restrictions - even water restrictions - are now commonplace throughout the country.At the same time, how many times do I see neighbors watering their lawn when we have a very good change of rain within 24 hours? I even see the sprinklers going during and right after rain. It just does not make sense to me.I grew up in a farming community and I so well remember everybody having a rain gauge. They were always a promotional give-away.

When livelihoods take a gamble on the climate, it was important to keep track of what Mother Nature poured upon us. This was a time well before irrigation and the best forecast came from the Old Farmers Almanac.I see many advertisements and articles attempting to educate the population on how much water a lawn needs and how often. It is often to the benefit of your plants and your lawn to let them get a little dry between their showers.....not to mention, it conserves our most valuable resource that we so often take for granted.Perhaps it is not a bad idea to bring back those rain gauges.