The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Ode to Wellie (Part Two)

The days that followed the unfortunate hearing-aid incident (as it became known at the barn) were filled with ladders and ropes and tree climbing and metal detectors and hours and hours of walking around the area between the barn and walnut tree staring at the ground.

Photo by Jacqueline
I learned a lot in those few days, like, metal detectors usually detect lots of useless metal garbage.

I also learned that there are many places in a walnut tree for a bird to hide a hearing aid, and that oak leaves look just like flesh-colored hearing aids.

During the many hours Jacqueline and her family climbed trees, searched trees, shook trees, walked carefully round and round and round in circles staring at oak leaves and listened to the incessant beeping and buzzing of the metal detector.

Photo by Jacqueline
Wellie sat on their shoulders or climbed on their backs or sat in the next branch squawking loudly as if to say, “You guys are wasting your time. You’ll never find that hearing aid.”

As is turns out, Wellie was right. The hearing aid never turned up.

Wellie seemed to get sassier by the day.

I would take my dogs for walks past the barn and before she would hop on my shoulder and say hello, she would wait for me and dive past my head screeching her scrub jay cry as she flew past. She would also dive bomb the dogs and the cats and anything else that moved or breathed.

I started to warn people in the neighborhood about Wellie, especially people who were afraid of birds. The last thing I wanted was to have some unsuspecting human to take a swipe at Wellie out of shock or surprise.

I never realized that fear of birds was so common. It turns out I have three girlfriends with ornithophobia. The day after I told Jodi about Wellie, she called me and said that a scrub jay was sitting on her hot tub cover pestering her three little girls for food. She lived 1/8 of a mile from Jacqueline’s house.

Jacqueline and her family were gone for the day and Wellie must have been looking for them.

Or maybe she was just looking for a handout.

Photo by Jacqueline
I knew it had to be Wellie, and I knew that my friend was probably freaking out having the bird hovering over her and her daughters, so I walked over. She lives right around the corner.

My sons and I went over to Jodi’s house and there sat Wellie screaming, “Feed me. Feed me!” at her three young daughters. My son and I lured her back to our house.

I kept Wellie at our house as long as I could, and then off she went to find her human family.

After Wellie’s big adventure up to my part of the neighborhood, Jacqueline sent out an email warning the other unsuspecting souls who lived near this cheeky little bird.

Jacqueline started to receive calls as soon as the email went out from people sharing their “Wellie experiences.”

It seemed that Wellie had no fear of humans at all.

Wellie was giving our neighborhood sculptor, whose studio is located three doors away from Jacqueline’s house, regular visits. She would buzz around the sculptor and his assistants while they were welding and while engaged in other similarly dangerous activities.

Wellie would regularly fly into the some of the nearby neighbor’s houses and steal small trinkets.

Who knew that a little 3 oz. bird could wreak so much havoc on a whole neighborhood.

No one really seemed to mind. She could be so clever and fun and impudent and saucy and full of life.

But what made her so enjoyable would eventually be her downfall.

Do I speak Parseltongue?

Last May, a rattlesnake bit me.



Today I picked up my first snake since then.
 
I stepped from the side door of my garage (into the part of my garden I call the plant hospital—a place where dead and dying plants go to rest—my plant hospice, if you will).

My husband was standing outside the door; lips parted to ask me a question, instead something caught his eye. He looked down on the ground near my foot and he said “A snake.”

I am very proud of myself for not jumping like a cat and hanging by my fingernails from the gutter of the garage. Instead, I looked down at the small serpent, noticing that the coloring was oh so similar to a rattlesnake.

Keeping my frayed wits about me I looked a little further and noticed the head was not in the shape of a triangle.

“It’s a baby gopher snake.”

My husband let out the breath he was holding, while he conjured up the image of my giant blue leg and the rest of my body hooked up to the tubes and wires of the ICU.

Much to my own surprise, I reached down and picked up the little snake. And the little gopher snake let me pick him up.

Most gophersnakes, when they are frightened, will inflate their bodies, hiss loudly and shake their tails back and forth to imitate a rattlesnake. This little snake was very relaxed and docile. I held onto it for a few minutes, giving it a tour of my yard.

I brought it into my house.

Ode to Wellie, Part One.

Last 4th of July a friend of mine left my very fun, very crazy party and went home to feed her cats.

When she arrived home with her two kids and husband, she found that her cats had decided to make their own dinner, they had a small fuzzy baby scrub jay cornered in the window well.

The two sibling felines were just tucking their napkins into their laps when Jacqueline came to the little jay’s rescue.

Jacqueline has had much experience with taking in wild animals and domesticated animals and rescue animals and animals that lie somewhere in between. I could make a list of all the animals that have graced Jacqueline and her family’s doorway but that’s another story: that is Jacqueline’s story.

This is Welllie’s story.

photo by Jacqueline of Our Road Side Attraction
Wellie gets a lecture from Gerald after "the incident"

Wellie is short for Wellington; a name Jacqueline gave the little scrub jay in honor of the place in which she was rescued.

Jacqueline took the frightened little bird and tucked her away for the night in a flowerpot lined with a soft cloth inside a cage.

The next day Jacqueline hung up this little birdie hammock lined with alpaca wool in Wellie’s cage. It was reminiscent of her nest and she loved to lounge in it.

A couple days after my party coma had worn off, when my head stopped throbbing and my vision cleared, I came down to see Wellie, so cute and loud.

The first thing Jacqueline’s daughter showed me was how tame Wellie was—already. The bird had spent 95% of her short life with birds and here she was in the home of humans already perching on our fingers and yelling madly in our faces to feed her.

And so I fed her. I picked up a lump of gushy bird gruel and shoved it down her frantic birdie gullet and she noisily, happily gulped it down. I repeated this again and again until I thought she would pop.

How fun and rewarding it was to feed her. Something about the fact that she was wild made it that much more amusing.

Wellie first dined on chicken started crumble soaked in water and soon graduated onto everything. Some of her favorite meals included yogurt, fruit, pasta, toast and jam. Really for Wellie, it was all about the jam.

In Wellie’s eyes, toast was just a vehicle for the jam.

Her other favorite food turned out to be dog kibble, which she would routinely steal from Jacqueline’s boxer, Sadie.

One Way To Kill The Evil Tomato Russet Mites

The path to Markene's veggie garden.
I love making up my own home remedies. It makes me feel smart, even if they don’t work. There is just something seemingly scientific about pouring one liquid into a bottle and then pouring another on top and mixing it with something else, oooh it’s so, so, Frankenstein-y.

Well, my friend Markene commented on my last post that she had a home remedy for the dreaded Tomato Russet Mites.

She told me that her solution is actually a squash bug treatment and that she usually uses it to treat her squash plants. In my post, I neglected to add that the Tomato Russet Mites have devastated my squash plants as well.

I only have two squashes in my entire garden—and their days are probably numbered.
 
This is Markene’s recipe for squash and tomato mite death:
 
She says to soak garlic in mineral oil overnight, then add Seventh Generation laundry soap, and water. She sprays early morning or late afternoon, to avoid angering the bees.

She mixes up a new batch and douses the squash blossoms and tomato leaves a couple of times each week.

When the garlic solution clogs up her drugstore spray-bottle nozzle, she removes the sprayer nozzle and pours the garlic/mineral oil/soap and water mixture directly on leaves and buds that look salvageable.

She continually prunes away any dead, brown leaves and buds. Not wanting to breed new generations of evil bugs she disposes of infested foliage into the garbage, not the compost pile or yard waste bin.

If the plant is entirely brown, she removes the whole thing, including any brown leaves it may have dropped, so it doesn't infect neighboring plants.

Markene's fabulous veggie garden.
It’s a lot of work. But anything to kill the evil, dreaded Tomato Russet Mites.

Two Bird Blindness

I am a bird lover and observer. I have a multitude of feeders set up all around my house—close to my windows—so I can sit and work or cook or sip my coffee and watch these fascinating creatures.

Birds are extremely beneficial to my garden also, so I like to keep them around even if I have to bribe them with a little food.

Several years ago I saw a fabulous bird at my hummingbird feeder. It wasn’t a small bird at all, it was about the size of a starling, but the most fabulous bright yellow/orange color.

I didn’t know any bird like that existed in our area. It was so exotic looking.

I later found out it was an oriole. I also learned they feed on nectar and show up here to breed in spring and summer. How fabulous. I was so excited I purchased an oriole feeder.

After I got it home and set it up, I felt sort of silly.

It was exactly like my hummingbird feeder except it was orange and the feeding holes were a little bigger. How would this attract anything other than hummers?

But I decided to give it a shot.

Well, what do you know, another one of them fancy shmancy birds started hanging out at my feeder.

It was short-lived though, it stopped showing up at the end of May.

The next year the same thing happened–they Started to show up at the beginning of May and stopped almost June First, on the dot.

Last year, the pretty birdie stayed a little longer.

This year, I can’t get rid of the little things.

Here is living proof that even though I like to watch birds I am not the most astute birdwatcher there is.

Dog Sitting and Gardening

Sadie sitting on wall watching over the garden

Dog sitting and gardening.

What do they have in common?

Nothing.

I was dog sitting my friend’s dog and I was gardening at the same time today.

It had been a long time since I spent any time outside gardening for two reasons:

1. My son’s play.
2. It has been raining and raining and raining so much that I was spending way more time making sketches of ark designs than gardens.

Today the sun came out. The temperature rose to about 67 degrees and I started to clean up my garden after the winter deluge.

My friend’s dog had a great time, lying on my discarded sweatshirt and basking in the elusive sun.

Tomorrow there will be more gardening and dog sitting.

My husband told me that this article needed an ending. I told him that gardening never ends.

Stumble It!

Sharing My Mountain With Lions

I live among mountain lions.

I share my neighborhood with them.

Did you know that mountain lions (also known as cougars) are the fouth largest cats in the world? Siberian Tigers are first, followed by African lions, then Jaguars, mountain lions are fourth, Leopards are fifth.

The fourth largest of all the cats lives just up our street. Eat your heart out, Isak Dinesen.

Even though their size makes them “big cats,” mountain lions are genetically related more closely to the house cat.

“Here kitty, kitty.”

The sad news is that the only time I’ve ever seen a mountain lion was on the side of the road.

Yes, that’s right. Someone hit and killed a mountain lion. I drove my kids to school the other day and there it was. Someone had obviously hit and killed it in the early hours of the morning.

Mountain lions are crepuscular. (I bet you think I’m smart because I know that word. I do know a few words and that is one of my favorites.) It means mountain lions are active at dawn and dusk—the times when they hunt.

They eat mostly deer, which, as a gardener, makes me very happy because even though deer are cute they are just giant hoofed rats. They harbor ticks with Lyme disease, and they eat my roses.

The only good thing about deer is they provide snacks for the beautiful mountain lions that live near me. Did you know that deer kill on average about 150 people a year?

I say snack away, Mr. Lion.

Now don’t get all worked up. Mountain lions don’t generally lie around my roses waiting for a pesky deer to graze by. They are solitary and shy and they don’t like gardens.

Or people.

Coyote Beautiful

young female coyote in my neighbor's yard

I’ve heard stories that coyotes can be aggressive and I know to be wary of them, but I’ve always been one of those people who give wild animals the benefit of the doubt. Of course I do own a maniacal dog that is part dingo, maybe this is why I feel such kinship with coyotes.

Proof that wild animals can live side by side with humans

My dog even looks like a coyote–see?

 
coyote

                maniacal dingo-dog

I live in the country just outside suburbia, which is an ideal place for the coyotes. But did you know that coyotes do very well in suburban areas. Did you know that coyotes eat mostly rodents and scavenge roadkill? Which means they keep the rodent population down and they act like hairy street sweepers.

Yes, they have been know to nosh on beloved family pets like cats but, excuse me cat lovers, cats aren’t indigenous. As a matter of fact they have been know to wreak havoc on the environment. Please don’t send me any hate mail, just keep your cats in at night if you love them.

Even though coyotes have been known to attack humans, attacks are rare. For one thing coyotes are about the same size as my dog. She weighs about 42 pounds soaking wet after eating a large bean burrito. Of course a coyote may weigh a little more because of the whole tail thing.

Did you know that coyotes sometimes mate with wolves and some of the coyotes that live in the Northeast and Canada are a hybrid of the two?

Did you know that coyotes have been known to mate with dogs and that the resulting offspring are known as coydogs? Personally, I prefer the term dogotes. I think this name is catchier and that if I market the dogote. I could ask $1,000 apiece. It would be right up there with Labradoodles. Hey, what about a poodle and a coyote? The Coyoodle. Just remember, you heard it here first.

Wake Up and Smell the Free Crepe Myrtle

Life can get us all down sometimes.

No matter how blessed and lucky we are, sometimes (especially with the current state of the economy) we get just plain sad.

Well I have been just plain sad. So sad that I haven’t even felt like gardening or blogging—or blogging about gardening.

But an act of generosity by a friend helped to snap me out of my funk and back into the garden,

My girlfriend Smitha is going through a home remodel and has had to tear up her entire garden. She had a beautiful crepe myrtle that was going to be destroyed so she asked me if I wanted it.

I said, “Yes!” My landscape guys removed it for me and planted it, and voila, a beautiful new tree.

During the tree wrangling process I started to pull weeds and cut back straggly plants and the next things I knew I was gardening again and all was right with the world.

Renew, reuse, recycle—rejoice.

Stumble It!

Keeyla And Me

Something strange happened the other day.

I went for a walk with my girlfriend.

I wasn’t going to go because I was wearing platform sandals and she wanted to walk up into the hill to this winery with our dogs.

My dog just happened to be in my car and I had an hour before I was to pick up my kids, so I decided to hike up the hill.

On the way up it started to rain, which was weird in itself.

We kept walking up toward the winery. We made it all the way up and strolled around with the dogs. We looked at the views, at the fountains, the gardens and then we turned and started back. We talked. We asked each other what the weekend held. I told my friend that I wanted to visit the Keeyla Meadows garden in Albany.

Keeyla Meadows is my absolute favorite garden designer/ artist. Keeyla’s gardens incorporate her art, her sculptures, her ceramics and her mosaics.  She uses brightly colored plants and flowers. Her designs are always interesting, engaging and amusing.

 

I have been meaning to visit her gardens for months, but, Keeyla’s garden is in Albany and Albany is at least an hour away and I have two kids, a psycho dog and a skinny husband. Oh yeah—and two acres of my own gardens.

I may never get there.

So my friend and I were walking our dogs through the foothills and I happen to glance down this driveway and who is standing there directing some workers who are placing plants? Keeyla Meadows.

I am not kidding.

I stopped dead in my tracks, giving my dog whiplash. My girlfriend stopped and looked back at me. “What’s wrong?” She says. I look up at her and say, “That’s Keeyla Meadows.” She asks, “Are you going to go say hi?”