A slightly belated Happy New Year

It was finally obvious that the solstice holidays were over a few days back when the last cookie was eaten, a sugared nutball.  They have excellent longevity and TPP had made a double batch.  Now there are still cookies around because people had purchased several varieties and gifted them to this writer.  Hmm, that might say something about the image he projects.  One variety was Newman's own, a mimic of oreos, but Newman's own should have stuck with salad dressing.  The mimics just don't have the deep dark chocolate flavor that the cookies should have.  And then the unevenly applied white filling is denser and not as creamy as the stuff in oreos.  NOs are not bad cookies but they are not nearly as good as the originals unless you are committed to organic flour and organic sugar, and want to spend more so that some of the profits go to a charity, TPP says don't bother.  
The January weather has been mild so far and only slightly wintry. Hellebore buds are beginning to poke up as are the shoots. It was windy the other day as this latest front arrived, so it will take some time to walk the gardens and pick up twigs and limbs.  It is a bit hard this time of year to be productive.  Don't much care what the British royals do.  And TPP doesn't like basketball.  The political posturing of both the inept POTUS and those that wish to replace him are not interesting beyond the worry they create.  This latest sword rattling episode with Iran clearly shows that trust and integrity is a WH problem, and the danger of such rash action is not understood.  2020 is not starting out well.  

Wildlife friendly yard - how friendly is too friendly?

It was a very nice morning.  TPP walked out to take a glance at the kitchen garden. In that short distance, a rabbit, a chipmunk, a squirrel, and several birds crossed his path.  Moments earlier the view from the bathroom window (a most excellent view) featured a very large, well-fed ground hog (whistlepig, woodchuck, Marmota monax).  Unfortunately, a well-fed ground hog is not a good thing for gardens, so this latter wildlife denizen may get relocated to a friendlier location.  The kitty girls are in love with the idea of chipmunks as playthings, but this will not happen as one of the reasons our gardens are wildlife friendly is that the cats are house cats (one is occasionally walked about on a leash).  All three (four) of our local swallowtail butterflies (black, tiger, giant, and probably spicebush too)  were hovering around Mrs. Phactor's perennial bed.  However, members of the rue family (notably Citrus), are the host trees for the larvae of the giant swallowtail (bird-dropping camouflaged), and they are generally in short supply here in north central USA. This is our largest butterfly.  The spicebush swallowtail has become more common because it's food plant does grow in our gardens.  It looks a great deal like the black swallowtail, but with less yellow and more blue on its lower wings especially.  Also happy to see some monarchs flitting about, although milkweeds have not been particularly successful in our gardens for reasons unknown.  

Tree rats ask for trouble

Over the weekend TPP planted quite a few new woodland perennials, and naturally a day later a very nice young plant was dug from the ground, had the major roots gnawed off, and discarded. And this was protected by a little fence too.  "Oh, here's a nice soft place, maybe I buried a nut here last fall." "This doesn't smell or taste like food, but let's dig it up and chomp it to pieces just to make sure." And it's not like we don't feed the buggers anyhow.  This can be very frustrating especially when the plant is somewhat uncommon and a bit difficult to come by.

Old homes

It was an old homes day. First of all, driving through several of the Erie Canal "port" towns let's you view a number of grand old homes from the era.  Then to check off one more of the 1001 gardens we should see before we die, the Phactors visited the George Eastman House on East Ave. in Rochester NY.  Historically, for both the man and photography, it is worth the visit.  And they had locally-made very good gelato to really excite Mrs. Phactor (let's see: blackberry, coconut, lemon sorbet, orange).  The gardens are only in part restored, but they certainly were nice enough looking, and you could see how they gardens were positioned to augment the house. The surrounding neighborhood is filled with pretty large houses with unique architectures. Many are multiple family residences now.  Some of the huge lots have been filled with condos and other criminal acts. On the way out of the city the huge Kodak ghost town loomed sadly beside our route.  Later we finished up by driving by 2 of the 3 houses TPP lived in as a child.  Gardens at the last one were in rough shape; no effort at all, although the stone smokehouse remains in good shape.  It isn't a heavy nostalgia trip, but a 50th HS reunion is sort of a heavy trip; how is it possible?  Also made a brief stop to find parents' and paternal grandparents' graves; it's a pretty enough, old cemetery in a little old town. Surprised how good the memory was to find such things and it underscored that this was nothing desirable. Now to see a bunch of classmates that haven't been seen in 50 years.  Only kept up with a couple of them; should be interesting.

Gardening by-products - butterflies

The Phactors did not set out to plant a butterfly garden, and yet we did as a consequence of trying to generate season long flower color and plant diversity. A number of butterflies have always been fairly common in particular painted ladies and red admirals, and the ubiquitous white cabbage butterflies. During the late afternoon, groups of red admirals dance in colorful tornadoes in sun spots that appear here and there in our gardens, undoubtably a behavior associated with reproduction. Monarchs have been fairly common this year, which is good because many biologists are concerned about their declining population levels. Milkweeds, their larval food plant, have never done well in our gardens although at least 3 species have been tried, but milkweeds are common enough in many places. The most common fairly spectacular butterfly is the tiger swallowtail, and tulip trees, their larval food plant, are quite common in our neighborhood. Black swallowtails are also fairly common and their very distinctive black-yellow-green larvae can be found eating your parsley and dill, another butterfly with a family level dietary restriction. This year a rare sighting of a giant swallowtail was a nice surprise, but TPP does not know their food plants. Now that several spice bushes, Lindera benzoin, have gotten to a decent size, as well as a largish Sassafras tree, spicebush swallowtails have become regular residents. Note the variable bluish-green coloring mostly on the lower wings, a marking that quickly distinguishes them from black swallowtails. Now all of the plants mentioned above are larval food plants, the adults are all nectar consumers patrolling the many different flowers, particularly mints, pinks, composites, and the like. Even from here in the kitchen the various butterflies can be seen flitting about the flower garden. This image of the spicebush swallowtail feeding on a blazing star is from the Ohio-nature website and you can find many more butterfly images there. 

This is war! Seriously! Bunnies beware!

"You don't tug on superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask from the old long ranger" and you don't mess around with Mrs. Phactor by sitting there outside the breakfast nook window and eating her fancy tulips.  So let this be a warning to all lagomorph rodents, Mrs. Phactor all riled up is not someone to be trifled with.  By the time you had finished your tulip entree she was looking in the adverts to see if any "retired" greyhounds were available, you know, dogs with a name like Zap, or Flash, or Zip, or Bullet, or Death to Rabbits.  Yes, it's bad enough that you consume her flowers in her absence, but to sit there in full view and eat a bouquet of her tulips for breakfast, oh, that's a brazen bunny.  It's hard to get higher on the garden hit list than squirrels, but the bunnies this year are giving it a real go.  And TPP hasn't told her about the row of tulips you polished off behind the garden shed yet.  That could be the last straw.  Our wildlife friendly garden might become a bit less friendly.  Obviously the top predators are not doing their job, and need some help.  The joys of seeing a fox in the yard almost daily seem like such distant history (3 years ago), and the red-tailed hawks have not been seen now for a week.  Is someone out there offering them a better deal?  Nothing, nothing is better than tulip-fattened rabbit.  Top predators may send their applications to TPP.  We have immediate openings. 

No ground hogs day celebration

No ground hogs saw their shadow today on the Phactors' estate.  There are two reasons for this.  One, if any ground hog was in residence, it would still be hibernating.  Two, there are no ground hogs in residence because when one takes up residence it gets relocated to a more rural venue.  TPP is quite happy for each and every no ground hogs day, although for obscure reasons, ground hogs were always called woodchucks in our part of the world.  And no one ever called them marmots.  In their proper place they are nice animals, rather like big guinea pigs.  A family acquaintance had a tame one as a pet, but they had orchards and therefore a lot of area for rodent grazing.  Their pet woodchuck liked being petted, but each spring upon emerging from his den under their barn he seemed a bit fuzzy about everything.  Their banishment is for simple reasons: they are such gluttons, they can eat you out of house and garden.  They do things like bend down the okra stalks to eat the leaves.  And light weight garden fencing that works to keep rabbits at bay can't stop these heavy weights.  So we celebrate not just February 2nd, but every no ground hogs day.

Issac waters our gardens

The remanents of hurricane Issac dumped rain on north central Lincolnland on Friday night and Saturday morning.  According to our trusty rain gauge Issac left us 4.3" of rain super filling our lily pond and actually requiring the excess to be dumped.  For the first time in more than 3 months, our plants look well watered, but the drought may have claimed another victim, a bush cherry (Prunus tomentosa).  Newly planted grass grew like crazy demonstrating our terrific timing for planting.  The rain seems to have made some late summer crops a possibility: pepper & eggplant are recovering, bush beans looking good, maybe some lettuce, maybe some bokchoi.  One bed of lettuce appears to have become slug fodder.  No complaints about the rain over the long weekend.  More on the KC weekend later.

Squirrel appreciation day - you must be joking

According to an authoritative source today, or yesterday, is Squirrel appreciation day. As this is being written about a half dozen well-fed fox squirrels are hanging, literally, around our bird feeders and this is after accepting corn and squash seeds as bribes to not do so. They are indeed handsome animals, and so the Phactor wishes to express his appreciation. Squirrels are appreciated when they don't gnaw the bark off tree limbs and the trunks of Japanese maples and bonsai trees. Squirrels are appreciated when they don't dig up bulbs and newly planted garden beds. Squirrels are appreciated when they don't eat your strawberries, all your strawberries, or your not yet mature squash. Squirrels are appreciated by our black and white "death to all squirrels" (in theory only, but her effort is appreciated) feline. Squirrels are truly appreciated by the purveyors of the hundreds of feet of fencing and stakes used to improve our squirrel appreciation. So the next time a hawk or fox dismembered squirrel carcass, or a squirrel pancake is in the road, it shall be very much appreciated, and not just today, but every day.