The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Green Fountain

My friend Jennifer planted her fountain and made this beautiful succulent sculpture.

It is magnificent. Think about it. Here’s a way to save on electricity and water. It’s a green fountain in more ways than one.

I saw something like this a couple of years ago at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show. It was my favorite thing there.

Since then I was lucky enough to find my own fountain (for a small sum) to turn into living art.

My fountain scavanged off Craigslist next to my urn

I have tried to use it as a fountain but it leaks and splashes and the pumped get plugged up. Really the only ones that benefit from that fountain are the mosquitoes.

And we all know that they suck. Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself. 

So, this spring, guess what? 

Yep, I’ll be following in Jennifer’s footsteps and filling in the mosquito village with dirt and plants and maybe even an alligator head or two.

 

Poppy Fair Farm

Nurseries are like crack to me.  Throw in some bluegrass music,

cute goats, 

wonderful vending booths with native plants,

great art,

hand made soaps,

specialty plants, home made beauty products and jewelry, beautiful original paintings, and cool crafts then you have Poppy Fair Farm.

 

And Happiness.

My friend Erin, who owns Native Revival Nursery in Aptos, put on her first annual Poppy Fair Farm last Saturday. I went over to be a part of the festivities, and they did not disappoint. There was something for everyone—and their five senses.

The bluegrass music—banjo, mandolin, guitar, and bass fiddle—was particularly good. 

When Erin was asking for information from the lead in the bluegrass band, Jimmy Chickenpants, for the poster, this is what he said: 

"Some people make the mistake of spelling Chickenpants as 2 words. That's just plain wrong"

 

Perfect.

An Appropriate Ending.

I have been asked by several people, “what happened to the lions?” 

Well, quite simply, they moved on. 

Mountain lions will stick around usually for 2-3 days after they have made a kill and will feed periodically until the kill starts to get icky. That is my scientific term for it—icky. Then other creatures have their turn, like bobcats, skunks, vultures, and insects.

Before the lions left Alicia’s house, they moved the buck to another location. One that seemed more appropriate.Nature is so interesting and mysterious. I couldn’t help but come up with my own scientific theory as to why they dragged their kill to Alicia and Bernie’s picnic table. 

I would like to believe they were trying to share. Perhaps to say “Hey, thanks for letting us stay in your front yard and scare the bejesus out of you these past few days.”

“Thanks for letting us slay a large deer in the middle of your driveway and pick at the carcass at our leisure.” “Thanks for not calling the sheriff so that we would become carcasses ourselves.” Above all Alicia and Bernie, thanks for being understanding—and not hysterical—humans.”

David from the Open Space Authority said it best: "The way Alicia and Bernie handled a couple of pumas in their front yard gives me hope that we have a chance to protect these animals."

 

Double the Fun In Alicia’s Wild Kingdom

The mountain lion left the carcass of the big buck at the base of Alicia’s backyard hill. 

The buck seemed too big for the lioness to drag any further. Alicia woke up before dawn and looked to see if the buck was still there 

She noticed that the carcass had been eaten further. She watched it and waited patiently to see if the lion would return. 

She didn’t have to wait long.  The lioness approached the carcass a few minutes later and Alicia almost snorted coffee out her nose when a second, smaller lion joined it.

Mama and teenager.

Holy Venison, Batman! 

The day before, when Alicia first reported to me from her Wild Kingdom, she said the mountain lion looked so big she thought for sure it was a male. I said, ”Well at least it’s not a mama with cubs, that might be a real dangerous situation.” 

Oh crap.

The cub seemed older, more of an adolescent than a baby. It was nearly the same size as its mother, probably about a year old.

The female lion is wearing a radio collar.

The pair of lions started to feed on the carcass. According to Alicia the meal was cooperative and carried out in a very orderly manner, unlike dinners at my house.

  Mountain lion doing the dishes

After the two mountain lions had finished their meal, they took turns burying the carcass, which, I guess, is the mountain lion’s version of the doing the dishes. My kids don’t do the dishes without a fight.

  Maybe tomorrow night I’ll give them a choice between washing plates and burying a dead deer. 

The Mid-Peninsula Open Space researchers came up in the afternoon and placed an infrared field camera near the carcass. 

In the next couple of days it should record some great insight into the everyday life of a mother lion and her offspring. 

Heaven knows I could use some tips.

Life and Death In The Garden of Alicia

In the late afternoon yesterday my neighbor Alicia was happily watering her deer-resistant garden. 

Unlike me, she allows deer to roam free on her property. She’s even given them names like “Rat With Hooves,” “Garden Destroyer,” and “Bambi-Pig,” 

Wait. Those are my names for deer. 

So there she was, sprinkling her lavender, happily surrounded by  her cloven-footed friends.

Cue the sounds of bucolic birdies chirping and flute music. Think “Bambi meets Godzilla.” 

According to Alicia, her deer friends suddenly scattered in a big cloud of dust. When the dust cleared, one of the largest bucks was being straddled by a mountain lion. 

The mountain lion had its jaws around the buck’s neck—and for the next eight minutes the buck fought for its life, dragging the lion around Alicia’s driveway kicking and struggling until it finally succumbed.

Abutilon with Mountain Lion and Fresh Kill. Photo by Alicia

Alicia’s first reaction was to try and save the buck by running at the lion and making loud noises. 

Wha? Alicia! 

She soon realized that with all those sharp teeth, she was outnumbered. So she turned tail (or not) and ran into her house. 

She called me while all this was going on.

I was jealous that I wasn’t watching this wildlife drama unfold live. She said it was like being in an episode of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

Abutilon Framing Wild Kingdom. Photo by Alicia.

From her living room window she watched as the exhausted lion stood next to the downed deer and panted for about forty minutes, catching it’s breath and preparing for dinner. 

Next, the mountain lion dragged the deer—which weighed at least as much as she did, thirty feet to the base of a small hill. Then she began to eat, stripping fur from its belly and tossing it aside.

The mountain lion ate for about 20 minutes, and then left the deer carcass at the base of the hill. 

Alicia decided to finish her watering some other day.

Broiled Bird

We had a short heat wave.

And these house finches decided to make their nest in my bird feeder under a plexiglass dome. So the mother bird was sitting on her nest, her wings spread out. 

She was literally panting. 

She looked like she was in a Lamaze class, practicing pushing out a chicken egg. Poor little thing.

I thought her and her mate were smart, building their nest in a place where the blue jays couldn’t go and it’s next to food and water.

Then I realized they had made their nest in a solar oven. Her eggs were going to be cooked. It was like one of those exotic Asian dishes, roasted bird in nest with broiled eggs. 

I couldn’t let this culinary calamity happen, so I decided to act fast. 

I waited until the mama bird flew the coop; with the stealth of Bigfoot I opened our double-hung window and pulled the feeder inside. There was a cluster of five small, light blue eggs at the bottom of the nest. 

I cleaned the plexiglass dome, wrapped a dishtowel around the top to block the sun and kept the finches from being fried.

I hung the feeder back where it had been and waited for mom to come back. 

At first she was a little suspicious of the weird shroud draped over her offspring. It took her about an hour to settle back down to the job at hand.

 

Busy Birdies

Female House Finch in Nest

My baby house finches have fledged and now the nest is empty.

I was about to take the nest out of the birdfeeder and use it as a feeder again, when another female finch flew into the feeder and did this little movement sort of like she was getting comfortable, settled into the nest—and then promptly flew away. 

Maybe it was the fact I grew up in the sixties and retain only a few precious brain cells, but my first thought was, oh how cute, a baby bird has returned back to it’s place of it birth, it’s first home. Kind of like a sappy children’s book-“Birdie’s First Bed” or “Birdie Comes Home.” 

I left the nest alone, and noticed the bird was back the next day and the same Hunky male finch with the bright red head I had grown to know over the last few weeks was at the feeder next to her. 

It was starting to look bad for my children’s book.

I soon learned that house finches have 1-3 broods a year. This will be the third brood for the busy couple. No wonder House Finches are one of the most common birds in the North America with populations somewhere around 1 billion birdies. 

They are highly social and do well with human encroachment, nesting in a wide variety of areas and items. I use plant saucers and bird feeders to attract house finches to my yard. 

Well, it was kind of an accident but that’s what they seem to like so I just go with it. 

Females are attracted to males with the reddest head, and the truly interesting thing about this is birds can’t make the bright red or yellow colors directly. They get the intense colors from pigment in their food, the more pigment the redder the male. I guess the chicks love the redheads because they know where the yummy food is. 

House finches are vegetarians. They eat mostly seeds and feed their young an exclusively vegetarian diet. This is somewhat rare in the bird world. 

It doesn’t seem that rare to me, but I’m not an ornithologist, I’m just a chick with a bird feeder.

Columbine (Aquilegia) Photos of My Garden

It’s columbine season in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and my girlfriend asked my how I get my columbine to grow so well.

Well, here’s my secret: I have no idea.

I didn’t plant them. They might have shown up in another plant’s pot or on the wind. Normally I would blame my friends the birds, but Columbine seeds are highly poisonous—their roots as well. 

I wont go so far as to say that they’re invasive, because I love them so much. My dirt just happens to be Nirvana for the beautiful aquilegia.

 

The Latin word “aquila” means eagle, and they have this name because the shape of the flower is supposed to look like an eagle’s claw.

 

I don’t just have one variety, but several. They just keep popping up year after year. I never know what kind or what color will show up next.

Columbine are perennials but they die back after they bloom.

They propagate by seed. When they go to seed, I collect them and broadcast them in other parts of my garden

 

Columbine prefer some altitude. I’m at about 700ft. They thrive here, however there are some varieties that thrive at 10,000 ft. I get altitude sickness at 10,000 ft. so I don’t really care.

  They are woodland plants, and they grow wild in woodland and mountainous areas. It is best to plant them in dappled shade or partial sun. Try to choose a spot that is sunny in the morning and lightly shaded in the afternoon, perhaps near trees. They don’t do well in the hot afternoon sun.

 
You can plant your columbine in average soil and it is so hardy that there is no need to mulch or protect it during winter.

To Chicken or Not to Chicken

Chicken or Eggs?

That is the question isn’t it?

I call it the great chicken debate. In a world where fresh homegrown organic chicken eggs are going for between $6 and $7 a carton, it’s hard to not think about raising your own chickens.

How hard could it be?

Fresh organic eggs taste way better than typical grocery store-bought eggs. Unlike regular white store-bought eggs their yolks are huge and bright yellow. The eggshells themselves come in a variety of colors—like the chickens themselves. They look like Easter eggs straight from the hens.

It would be great to have chickens running around the yard. They eat just about anything, which means that they will eat your kitchen scraps. They will even eat your neighbor’s scraps. They will also eat snails and slugs out of your garden.


Chickens are cheap to buy. You can drop a buck or two or three and get some cute little, even exotic chicks down at the local hardware store and they’re even sexed for you.

You can make an inexpensive pen for them and they live outside.

The downside: An egg laying chicken doesn’t lay very much in the colder winter months. An egg laying chicken is in it’s prime during the warm summer months, and lays about one egg every other day. In our family we go through about a dozen eggs every two days, more if I’m in a baking mood. In order to keep our family in eggs we would need approximately two-dozen chickens.

But chickens can’t exist on kitchen scraps alone, so you would need to buy chicken feed. You’d need to buy a chicken feeder, and a warming light. You might have to raise the chicks in your house until they’re old enough to stay warm outside or until the weather changes.

You might even have to watch TV with them.

Ode To Wellie-Part Three (Free Wellie)

One of the last photos of Wellie. Jacqueline took it while Wellie stuffed a piece of kibble in her shoe

Jacqueline took a walk, as she does every day with her dog and her daughter. As she passed the barn, she noticed a woman standing next to the main barn gate. Jacqueline had never seen this particular woman before so she changed direction and approached her.

The woman, whose back was to Jacqueline, turned around. When she turned, Jacqueline saw that Wellie was perched on the woman’s index finger.

The woman said, “Look at this bird. It landed on my finger. I can’t believe it.” Jacqueline burst her Dr. Doolittle bubble and told the woman that the bird’s name was Wellie and briefly explained why she was so tame. Jacqueline then continued on her walk.

All the time Jacqueline was on her walk, this strange woman was in the back of her mind. Who was she? She seemed a little off. She said she had birds. She said she had a budgie and a cockatiel and she said she wished she had a bird like Wellie.

Jacqueline wondered if she had made it clear that Wellie was hand-raised by her and that Wellie belonged in the neighborhood. But this woman seemed smitten with Wellie. She wouldn’t take Wellie, would she? She understood that Wellie was happy and free and should never live in a cage—didn’t she?

Jacqueline, feeling a bit panicky about her bird’s safety, walked swiftly back toward the barn.

The woman was gone and Wellie still flew like a happy lunatic dive bombing, shrieking and squawking. Jacqueline could breathe again. She had no idea that this was her last day with her beloved Wellie.

Wellie slept outside but came inside every morning for breakfast. The next morning Jacqueline opened up her kitchen door and there was no sign of Wellie anywhere. I was reading her blog that day and she had written a piece called “Worry.” I saw the title and decided not to read it. I had a feeling what it might be about and I didn’t want to know.

The same day Wellie went missing, the strange woman showed up again and inquired about her. Jacqueline told her that she hadn’t seen Wellie. Jacqueline talked with the woman, who had some silly excuse for being in the neighborhood, an excuse that made no sense. Again Jacqueline felt a weird vibe from the stranger. She thought it eerie that the woman showed up the very same day that Wellie went missing.

So as she searched for Wellie, she also did some sleuthing about the weird woman.

Jacqueline walked over to the sculptor’s studio down the drive, and learned that the woman had shown up unannounced at the studio the day before. She knew no one and gave the sculptor and his assistants a creepy feeling.

This gave Jacqueline a stomachache.

She called me later and told me the story. “Do you think she took Wellie?” I said. “I don’t know, it just seems strange that she showed up the day that Wellie disappeared.”

“I think so too.”