The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

June-uary

My son coined the term June-uary this morning 

Did  you looked outside yesterday?

Yeah, that was rain. It wasn't sprinkling, it was raining. 

I knew it was going to rain because I just washed my car and took my patio furniture out of storage. I also hadn't turned off the sprinklers. 

I felt a little light rain on my shoulders; I stepped inside for a moment and then turned around to grab my back door’s handle. Looking through the window I thought I was looking at a Hollywood movie set. 

It was dumping—dumping rain on June 28^th 2011—the day rain total records were shattered, easily done since there usually aren’t rain totals on June 28^th.

We saw about an inch and a half of rain here in the Santa Cruz Mountains yesterday.

This is what the rain left behind.

Love in the Mist (Nigella)

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.

Spiraling Into Control

It was a good idea at the time, my spiral garden. 

I just didn’t want to do the same old boring raised planter boxes. I like the idea of raised beds, and yes, it’s pathetic that I had to hire someone to build this raised spiral bed. 

I did it myself the first time, and it didn’t quite work out. Mostly because of the evil gophers that turned my beautiful curved plot into Swiss cheese—the plants were disappearing fast right before my eyes—I felt like I was playing a game of whack-a-mole with none of the rewards. 

This time I made the spiral bed higher, lined it with gopher wire, and hired people to make it look way better than I ever could.

For some unexplainable reason I have developed tennis elbow, so lifting, pulling, or digging is very agonizing to say the least. BTW the last time I played tennis was 1988. 

So, why plant in raised beds? 

Because walking through your veggie garden compacts your soil, which is bad for your veggie roots. And planting in raised beds is easier on your back, because you don’t have to bend down so far. Raised beds also supposedly yield more produce and extend the planting season.

For me one of the most important reasons for raised beds, is the height of the beds can be a deterrent in keeping my dogs out of the veggie garden.

All good, right? 

The stones that top my veggie beds are flat, so I can sit on their edges. This gives me the opportunity to sit while I work in the garden, and it makes a nice garden bench. 

The stones are dry stacked, so they are not held together by mortar. They other night I sat down in my garden with an iced tea to relax, something I rarely do. I sat down on my new raised bed wall. 

I ended up splayed out on the ground, lying in a puddle of iced-tea-induced mud. 

I opened my eyes to see the two wet noses of Moondoggie and Willie looking down at me from atop my raised beds...Doh! 

What To Do If A Rattlesnake Bites You

My leg one week after the bite.

The chances are very remote that you will ever be bitten—unless you decide to pick up or handle a rattlesnake. 

But it pays to know what to do.

If The chances are very remote that you will ever be bitten—unless the perfect storm happens, as it did for me a year ago when I stepped on a rattlesnake while photographing wildflowers, this is what you need to know. 

Most people who receive a legitimate bite from a rattlesnake (not from doing something stupid like handling one) do not hear the snake rattle before being bitten.

They may rattle. They may not. Snakes blend into their surroundings as their first line of defense. So, most people don’t even realize what has happened when they are first bitten.

When bitten, you have just received two injections of poison venom. The venom is already in your bloodstream. Stay calm.

You’ll feel the effects in 1-2 minutes.

The most important thing is to stay calm. Move away from the snake. The snake will probably be rattling by now. It will be just as interested in getting away from you as you are from it. 

Step away from the snake. Get a safe distance, sit down and relax.

You have some time. 

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.