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My youngest son was born on the 4th of July, so every year we throw a party.
It gets bigger every year.
This year there are 80 people coming.
Most people buy food and drinks and clean their houses.
Some people hire a band or a DJ.
Some people hire professional caterers and rent tents.
I buy plants.
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Do you think it’s bad to pass prejudice on to your kids?
Well I’m sorry, but some things you’re just raised with, and they’re ingrained in you, and, as much as you try to fight all those bad thought, they just bubble up to the surface.
I practice yoga on a regular basis. I have studied a little about Buddhism, but still, at times, my mind turns to hate. Yes, hate.
Sometimes, especially on one of those warm summer nights after I just watered because I was too busy during the day to do so, the bad thoughts come.
I try to think of other things—but I just get overcome.
When night falls, I stand up, toss my ten-year-old son a flashlight, and say “Let’s go kill some snails.”
They love digitalis.
At least now my son can find his baseball.
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They pitched a tent in my snapdragons—icky.
After spending two hours on the internet trying to figure out what the creepy caterpillars in my flowers were, I went to bed. My husband got on my computer to download some photos. I was just snugling down in my soft, comfy bed when my husband walked in and said “Why do you have a picture of tent caterpillars on your computer?”
Thank you, dear.
I always tell my kids “daddy knows everything, go ask him.” (He went to one of those fancy-shmancy ivy-league colleges, you know the one—it’s big and old, it’s in Cambridge, starts with an H.) I went to a state college with all the other mere mortals.
Anyhoo.
Yes, we have yet another infestation of yet another pest. This one was easy to cure though, all it took was a pair of Felco clippers and Voila!—good-bye creepy, black, hairy things.
I don’t know what they were doing in my snapdragons, because for the most part, tent caterpillars like deciduous trees.
On the East coast, they can be a problem. They overpopulate and decimate the trembling aspen. Even though trembling aspen is their favorite host, they can also defoliate most other species of deciduous trees, such as, elm, oak, ash, basswood, maple, birch, poplar, and birch.
A defoliated tree will grow new leaves late in the summer. If they are severly defoliated their growth may be stunted for a couple of years.
If you have them in your yard, you can cut them out and just drop them in soapy water.
In the wild, they will overpopulate quickly, but soon disease and natual preditors will bring their population down. They repeat this cycle every several years.
Common parasites of the species are the flesh fly (Sarcophaga aldrichi) and the ichneumonid wasp (Itoplectis conquisitor).
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I used to have this Shrimp plant (Justicia brandegeana) hedge in the courtyard at my old house.
Justica is a genus of about 420 species of flowering plants native mostly to the tropical and warmer parts of the Americas. Some grow in the desert of Arizona and California. The species Justicia brandegeana is named after the American botanist Townshend Stith Brandegee (1843-1925). It is an evergreen perennial shrub Native to Mexico.
The Shrimp plant gets it’s name from the pinkish bracts that surround their less conspicuoous white flower. They are best in partial shade to shade. They like their soil kept moist but not wet.. They do best in well-drained sandy or loamy soil. (Does anyone know of plants that do best in hard packed clay soil?) They can grow up to 4 feet tall and are generallly low maintenance and drought-tolerant.
I use to trim my shrimpy with a hedge trimmer. This worked great because the stems are soft. It cut like butter. The Shrimp plant love to be pinched back. It thrived and was easily shaped.
I bought this Shrimp plant from a store on the coast (which used to be my favorite nursery/store but something weird happened which will be discussed in another post.) It is not as pretty as my old Shrimpy plant but I thought it was interesting looking so I bought it.
I finally got around to potting it and it already has new growth on it.
This Shrimp plant did not come with a species name. So I’m going to call it Shrimpy II
By the way, humming birds love Shrimp plants.
Happy summer solstice
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Thank you.
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I should never buy plants from a catalog again. I need to keep repeating this mantra. Never buy plants from a catalog again. A while back I wrote about the mail order coneflowers I received. I planted them and snails immediately mowed them down. Now this isn’t the catalog company’s fault but I never have good luck with mail order plants.
I decided to put some of the coneflowers in larger pots, instead of the potlets they were shipped in, until they were big enough to fend for themselves. They grew bigger but now they have white flies. I know I should probably just throw them out but I have so much time and energy invested in them that I’m going to try to get rid of the flies first.
Besides I read that throwing out the infested plant doesn’t cure the problem. Although this was information from an online store trying to sell chemical remedies.
In order to get rid of them, I needed to learn a little about these tiny tenacious creatures.
It seems that there are two main types of white flies: citrus and greenhouse.
Citrus can be found on just about any plant and greenhouse white flies are mostly found in greenhouses.
The Citrus type are harder to get rid of because they hang around all year long. The Greenhouse type are a little easier because they go dormant as winter sets in.
I hope I have the greenhouse kind, but I don’t know.
Both types develop from eggs and go through a series of instars (a phase between two periods of molting). Once fully developed, the adult white flies will lay eggs in less than a week. They lay their eggs on the undersides of leaves in hard-to-see locations.
Once the young emerge they start eating—and the damage begins.
White flies have piercing mouthparts that allow them to suck the sap out of plants. This causes leaf damage, sap drainage, which in turn causes fungus, bacteria and heat stress. On top of all this, white flies excret honeydew, which lures other nuisance insects onto the host plant. Some of these insects protect the white flies and harvest the honeydew. The honeydew also promotes growth of sooty mold.
White flies are very prolific and will make their home on any plant that has plenty of sap.
I read that you can control white flies before they start by setting out white fly traps. White fly traps are bright yellow glue traps, which attract the white flies.
They catch the white flies as well as serve as an alarm system to alert you to white fly activity.
You are supposed to place them near any plant that you want to protect. This doesn’t seem feasible to me since I want to protect all my plants and my yard is about an acre in size. That’s a lot of little yellow sticky strips.
I can just see my dogs now walking around with little pieces of paper stuck to their paws and noses. No worky.
I was looking into a safe non-chemical remedy for the stupid flies and insecticidal soap came up. It is really the only safe method beside natural predators.
Insecticidal soap works by preventing adults from flying. It stops colonies from laying more eggs and it suffocates some of the flies. I guess insecticidal soap is a chemical but it’s safe for the plant, animals, kids, adults, aliens, and teenagers. So I am considering this option.
Then I read in my Master Gardener Handbook that chemical methods are not effective.
They recommend natural predators. The best being Encarsia formosa, a teeny tiny little wasp that loves to chow down on white flies. Yeah for parasitic wasps. (I happen to have one named after me.)
You can have some success ridding your plants of white flies by using praying mantises, but they don’t do nearly as good a job as E. formosa.
After all this chit chat about Encarsia, I decided to conduct another experiment, mostly out of laziness and tight-waddedness. I made my own soap spray last year that seemed to work wonders on wooly aphids. So I made another batch for the pesky white flies.
I make it out of 1 part Dr. Bronner’s Pure-Castile Soap and 10 parts water (or thereabout). I’ve been using it for two days now and it seems to be working.
I will keep you posted.
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Happy Father's Day Dad.
Thank you for the tree house.
You're the best.
Love,
Liam and Dash
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I snagged a piece of this succulent from somewhere a while back and now I have at least twenty plants.
This is the first time one has flowered.
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This is the second year in a row that a house finch couple made a nest in my bird feeder.
I remember last year watching this busy very hardworking little finch and her mate start their nest. I thought, “That’s what I get for not filling the feeder fast enough.”
I thought, “What a stupid bird. Doesn’t she know that that’s a bird feeder?”
Then I thought about it.
The feeder is a dome-type feeder designed to keep squirrels and large aggressive birds like Blue Jays out. Hmmm.
And it happens to be located right next to a large tube feeder that I keep filled most of the time. And the dome feeder is right around the corner from my little pond. Maybe the finch wasn’t so stupid after all. Maybe she was downright smart.
I’m the one who decided to get a house in the mountains, away from modern conveniences like Starbucks and Peet’s.
Surrounded by little tweety birds. We aren’t even hooked up to city water or sewer. I can’t even get a pizza delivered up here. Who’s the stupid one?
Last year she laid five eggs: she and hubby saw that all hatched, all survived, and all fledged.
Déjà vu this year all over again: five eggs, five babies, five fledglings.
Now they are gone.
What do I do now?
I guess I’ll clean it and turn their bedroom back into a kitchen once again.
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Is that a delphinium in your garden, or are you just happy to see me?
I really, really tried to look at this flower with maturity and objectivety, but anyone who knows me knows that I’m not very mature or objective.
Sorry.
Normally, only a few types of cactus can evoke this sixth grade humor from me. But there’s something about this delphinium.
Sadly this flower does not belong to me. It resides in my friend Patricia’s garden “Garden Party”.
I asked Patricia her secret to such a, “eh-hem”, healthy specimen. She told me that she sometimes uses Miracle Grow to achieve such “large” blooms.
In this case, Miracle Grow with just a quarter of a Viagra, worked wonders.
And the blossom lasts and lasts.
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