Nature Ideas, Tips & Guides

PROJECT FEEDER WATCH, at a mere $15 donation the cheapest ticket to an optimistic view on winter, kicked off its season this week. It’s what it sounds like: you watch your feeders (or in my case I watch my garden loaded with fruits and seed-bearing plants), and count who shows up two short periods each week.

THE FIRST REAL SNOW CAME SATURDAY NIGHT, December 5, depositing 4 or 5 inches of heavy stuff on an evening followed by the most brilliant day, the kind where the sun and moon were both in the sky. But all I could see at first when I looked outside: the pots that hadn’t made it into the safety of the shed or barn yet.

IKNOW IT’S TOO LATE FOR HELP with the freakish October storm that flattened the woody plants here last weekend, but I have a hunch those of us in snow country will be needing tips for helping the garden through storms to come. After all, winter hasn’t even started yet (evidence outside my window, where it hasn’t melted yet, to the contrary).

(They’re also really beautiful, if you look at them up close–but beautiful in the way that Japanese beetles are beautiful, meaning not enough for me to count them as beloved pets and keep them around or anything.) Squish!The cross-striped cabbage worm larvae are sort of blue-gray, and as their name suggests striped across their bodies. Not so many years back, it was more a pest in Southern farms and gardens, but has gradually made its way to southern New England, at least. I read up on them in various places–U-Mass Amherst; at the University of Georgia, and so on–and what I conc

AGIANT FLOCK OF REDPOLLS–BIRDS I NEVER SEE HERE–landed on the newly revealed patio outside my window, looking for nibbles in the cracks and crevices just hours after a little snow finally melted. Only hours after the white stuff gave way on the stones by the frogpond, out climbed three friends, looking no worse for the winter wear.

I count birds on ebird and with projects like FeederWatch (which runs every November through early April) because being a citizen scientist—that is being a real person without scientific training who collects and shares data so it can be used by scientists—is the only way the vast work of observing and recording the goings-on of the earth’s species can ever happen. Efforts by citizen scientists give experts a population baseline to work against to gauge impact when an oil spill or other catastrophe occurs. Data from citizen scientists has provided a basis for evaluating declines in populations and identifying which species are at highest risk (on the so-called watch list or in the annual State of the Birds report). It is important (and also immensely pleasurable).Which points to the fact that some of the reasons I count birds are entirely selfish. I count birds because I find it relaxing and also exhilarating: the meditative aspect of just staring out the window or up into the trees from below; the ever-present possibility something unusual will happen

In nature, Ilex verticillata or winterberry hollies inhabit the edge of the woods or even wetlands—not typically choosing to make their home where they’d suffer extra-dry conditions like the ones this year.Even with the occasional off year, I would not be without winterberries (or at least not intentionally). I hope the birds can make do with a quarter-crop, feasting instead on a bumper lot of crabapples and many seed-bearing things, from grasses to conifers. Fingers crossed.Learn more:Pretty, pretty: A gallery of winterberry hollies What birds like: 11 steps to making a bird garden Listen ins

Let this excerpt from my recent book, “And I Shall Have Some Peace There,” tell the rest of  the story of what happened next as I drove faster and faster north toward my weekend home, the place I now live fulltime, a story of finding some measure of peace and comfort even in unspeakably uncomfortable times:Postscript:BLOODLETTING HAS ALWAYS BEEN n one of Jack’s trademarks. It was many years, at least the first seven or eight together, before he stopped attacking me and drawing blood, seemingly for no reason other than to show who was boss.Then, after a middle-of-the-night injury one year ago this month inflicted by some prey he thought he’d subdued but hadn’t quite—the first nick of his long, violent hunting career—Jack had to stay inside for a month while a shredded paw healed after surgery.  It was the first time he’d ever spent more than a few hours in the house, a bit uncomfortable for both of us.At first.Then he cau

Yup. All the paving here is littered with “slightly used” aralia fruit. It’s raining purple drops; the stains won’t be gone until a good rain washes it all down. Hilarious. A recap of some of my favorite plants, as promised:AraliasThese prolific late-fruiting woody and herbaceous plants, some native and others not, are an annual magnet for thrushes (including robins) and their relatives, as well as waxwings here.  I grow the perennials Aralia cordata and Aralia racemosa, and Aralia spinosa (the latter a large shrub/small tree).CrabapplesI couldn’t make a garden, or a bird garden, without these prolific beauties, as you have heard me say repeatedly.  From the small gold fruit of ‘Bo

IN OUR CHAT on my public-radio program, I learned why not to till when prepping a planting; how to help a desired species outpace an unwanted one by learning to manage and influence natural processes; and what the word “naturalistic” means today.what’s ‘naturalistic,’ anyway?Q. How did the native and natural become your specialty, Larry—did the education in landscape design come first, or the nature and science?A. My first experience in the landscape world was working in traditional horticulture—first a job, and then going to school for it. However my interest in it always came from the naturalistic end.As a kid, I grew up in the urban Philadelphia and I don’t think I even knew there was such as thing as a garden designer, until I got a job with a landscape firm, in the summer between high school and college.But the thing that always interested me was na

In a December 20, 2010 release, new observations by the university’s astronomers were said to “add weight to the theory that the most massive stars in the universe could form essentially anywhere, including in near isolation; they don’t need a large stellar cluster nursery.”It’s a charming little (vast?) story, and written so that we laypersons can understand it—including a big-fish-small-pond analogy, and more. Have a read.AuthorKatrina Kenison says this on solitude:So the next time someone tells me I should get out more and mingle, I’m using this tongue-in-cheek retort:No, thanks; I’m busy burning bright in isolation. :)You?(1904 drawing of the Aurora Bor

Yes, said my friend Ellen Blackstone of the BirdNote public-radio program, who has been the tour guide for our ongoing series of bird stories here on the blog. (Browse all past installments.)The part of the bird’s brain that’s used for singing shrinks to lighten the bird’s body mass in the offseason, she explained (and here’s the link to hear more on that). In fall and winter, there is no mating ritual; no need to stake out a territory.Many birds can still s

The less scientific part first: When I picked up my mail Friday, there was a box from Shandell’s, a store not far from me whose owner, Susan Schneider, makes astonishing lampshades out of vintage wallpaper and handmade papers and fabrics…or at least that’s her primary business. I was expecting a lampshade I’d ordered not long ago, but unless she’d dehydrated it, no way my big shade was in that little Priority Mail box.Susan’s business motto is: “Things that make you smile,” and she could not be more correct.  Imagine how big my smile was when out of the mystery box came her surprise, no-special-occasion gift: my own custom tissue-box cover, made from decoupaged, downloaded images of my dollface frogboys from A Way to Garden, where Susan is a regular visitor. You can have a memo

I gave L. sempervirens (Zones 4-9), whose woody stems twist around the corner post on my back porch the last decade, a serious pruning last year, after it seemed to have a lot of leggy growth that was especially appealing to the aphids. It has responded really favorably: heavy bloom and stronger growth after a year of recovery.Its far more subtle yellow-flowered cousin (above), L.s. ‘Flava’ or ‘Sulphurea,’ hasn’t really been troubled by insects here in all the years I’ve had it, and seems content to grow in part shade, not just full sun, an added blessing. If you will only have one sempervirens, maybe this should be it? (Hint, hint.)The L. heckrottii hybrid called ‘Goldflame’ (above, Zone 5-9) has been around for years and is also sold as ‘Pink Lemona

BROWN PATCHES of lawn and garden widen daily, and the “grass” is now a minefield of yellow-jacket nests. Ouch! But the hummingbirds dance around me while I weed, and the tadpoles have suddenly hatched into dozens of tiny frogs (boing, boing, boing!) and an older frog poses on a begonia leaf…and I’m grateful to be here, anyhow, if a little tired and crispy.My Gratitude List, in PodcastLISTEN TO my Dog Days Gratitude List on the latest podcast I do each week with Robin Hood Radio, WHDD in Sharon, Connecticut, the smallest NPR station in the nation.

I LIKE CONTRASTS, the yin and the yang of it all. And surprises.

I garden because I cannot help myself.I garden because I cannot look out the window and see the shaggy bits any longer, and have to go “fix it” (as if it will ever be “fixed”).I garden because I do not know what my life would be without plants, truth be told. They speak to me at some level I can’t explain, each one in a slightly different voice.I garden because it’s the only

WHETHER IT WAS THE ELECTION NEWS, THE 60-PLUS TEMPERATURES, a question from a commenter named Mars about photographing the sleeping frogboys…or the fact that I had just told you they were spending the winter in a tissue box, the frogboys made themselves known the last two days, after two weeks AWOL. “We hear you,” they said with their eyes as they bobbed to the top again.

LIKE CLOCKWORK THEY START TO APPEAR ABOUT NOW: A first harvest of cucumbers, and also one of Japanese beetles. Into separate and quite different “brines” they go as fast as they develop, one a vinegar-salt formula, the latter a bit bubbly.

“Last year [2012] at the overwintering sites, the area occupied was at only 60 percent of its previous low,” she says. “It had been declining, but that was astonishingly low.”The migration-monitoring program Journey North also reported lower stats in 2013’s cold spring. And though the numbers were only preliminary when we spoke that fall, University of Minnesota’s Monarch Larva Monitoring Program seems to indicate that “we’re at about 20 to 30 percent of our average,” Oberhauser says, acknowledging that these drastically lower numbers might be a “new normal.” But she’s not sounding defeated, by any means.A big positive: A lot of people are interested in monarchs. “Though it will be difficult to make up for all the habitat we’ve lost, we can make that ‘new normal’ as good as we can.”  (Ways to help are father down this page.)what going wrong for monarchs?MONARCH

EXPLODING Eremurus, why vulnerability is good for us, and the answer to why bird poop is white—all, and more, in the latest collections of links I’ve loved lately while staring into my computer screen (which I alternately do between long gazes out the window). Five links worth exploring:

DID I MENTION THAT I COUNT BIRDS? (…4 tree swallows, 2 pileated, 5 turkey vultures, 4 bluebirds…no partridge in a pear tree but close. I could go on and on.) Everybody’s returning as fast as the plants are blooming: warblers, catbirds, hummingbirds are all here, with voices (and nests) galore.

It usually starts out innocently enough, like this: Besides the stocking cap (top photo), he’s got a toque and a beret, too (below), not to mention various scarves and cloaks:He and I and the garden are hoping for more snow cover before long; it’s way too early to be without our blanket (or a cozy hat). Categorie

WE’RE LIVING ON THE EDGE HERE at A Way to Garden, literally: the edge of seasonal change. These two youngsters sat on the lip of one of the water gardens all day yesterday, sunning themselves like it was summer, taking the occasional lap around the pool.

WHEN I REMINDED THEM ABOUT MY SLIDESHOW OF SPRING in all its yellow shades, smart readers over on A Way to Garden’s Facebook page reminded me of Robert Frost’s gleaming line: “Nature’s first green is gold,” he wrote, in “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” See the slideshow of springtime’s favorite color, or click to read the poem first.Slideshow and Etc.Golden Days Spring Slideshow A Way to Garden on Facebook The leaf up top is a golden elm.

IDIDN’T WASH MY WINDOWS all spring and summer one year, and though I hated looking out through dust and rain splatters and my cat’s many pawprints, it was part of an experiment to see what—if anything—might help reduce the horrible event of window strikes by songbirds, a leading cause of their death.

The Red-Spotted Newt starts his life in the water, hatched from one of 300-400 eggs his mother lays, becoming a tadpole-like larvae, gills and all. After several months he sheds them and becomes terrestrial, and is called an eft (the term for the red juvenile stage). This stage lasts a couple of years or up to seven, according to some references, before the next metamorphosis in the salamander’s life occurs and he once again changes colors…and habitats…returning to the water. Now I know why some of the salamanders swimming in my garden ponds are slightly different from others: some are tadpoles, some adults back from their years on land.  The University of Michigan says these creatures can live 12-15 years!Of course as with everything in nature, there are exceptions: populations that skip the red eft stage (in some coastal areas) and others that never undergo the second metamorphosis back into the water. I think my pals are cut from the classic mold, but I am not a scientist.In all this reading sinc

Michael Wojtech of Know Your Trees dot com and author of “Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast” (Amazon affiliate link) can answer those questions, plus this one: Can you actually learn to identify trees by their bark (an especially useful skill now through spring, when many are leafless)? Hint: The answer is yes.Michael left a 15-year business career to pursue his love of natural history and writing, and earned his Master’s in Conservation Biology from Antioch University New England. His thesis, on tree bark, became the basis for the field guide. Though the book’s plant ID section covers trees of the Northeast, much of the ma

FROGBOY IS HANDSOME, isn’t he? I’m pretty sure I’m really in love this time.Categoriesfrogboys slideshowsTagsfrogs

SUNSHINE BRINGS OUT THE BEST IN PEOPLE–AND IN FROGS. That’s the word out back at poolside, where the annual Amphibian Assembly of America is starting to convene.

In March, I outlined tactics–such as making sure things are well-watered before a dip in temperatures–and offered links to detailed frost-minimizing strategies in this story that would be a helpful read if you’re gardening in a blue zone as I am on the current National Weather Service map.This weekend, I pulled out all the stops (and empty pots, tomato cages, bed linens, garden carts, you name it…) like in the slideshow below, and got help to wheel my big potted Japanese maples–whose leaves are very sensitive to frost–back into the barn, where I overwinter them, but had set them free a week ago. Oops.(Click on the first thumbnail to start the slideshow, then toggle from side to slide with the arrow keys on your computer, or using the arrows next to each caption.)Always be sure to remove covers before the sun hits the plants the next day, even if another night of frost or freeze is forecast. Which means out I go before supper to re-cover everything and hope aga

EVERY SUMMER, SOMEONE OF THE AMPHIBIAN PERSUASION sets up housekeeping in the seasonal water gardens by my kitchen door–a pair of big glazed clay troughs I fill with water and floating plants. This year’s renter: a female green frog who’s inclined to wearing something skimpy in green velveteen at poolside.

Perhaps it’s Omphalotus olearius–the jack-o-lantern mushroom. Silly me: I forgot to photograph the underside–to see if there were true gills beneath the cap and how the stem and cap attached to each other–but it had disappeared before I realized my oversight a couple of weeks later. (UPDATE 9/10/11: From commenter Kristy, the suggestion is that these could be honey fungus, or Armillaria; read about those here. The colony was about 20 feet from the nearest tree, a spruce, but I’m still going with Omphalotus.)I’ll hope for its return next year, and if it ever stops raining, I’ll be sure to be more detail-oriented when admiring the growing collection of fungi who have joined me in my garden.You may recall my fascination with (yup!) fungus: read all about it.Categoriesmushrooms & other fungi

If you mark down observations about nature year to year—what blooms when, what the weather is doing at the time, what birds or other animals and insects appear or depart on certain dates—and compare them, then you are at least informally practicing phenology. Phenology is the study of recurring life-cycle stages among plants and animals, and also of their timing and relationships with weather and climate, according to the USA National Phenology Network, which also calls this system of interactions “nature’s calendar.”It’s not the actual dates on a calendar, of course—not things like “plant peas at St. Patrick’s Day,” or “sow tomatoes indoors at tax time” that I use as approximate guidelines when writing my monthly chores lists—but factors including daylength, temperature, and rainfall that affect what happens when year to year, and can serve as cues for the gardener. Nature doesn’t read the printed calendar like we do; I’m not sure what the hellebores and snowdrops (top photo) are trying to tell me out back t

Bullfrogs (about 3 1/2 to 6 inches in body length) are true aquatic animals, meaning they need a watery environment, period, unlike the Green Frogs (2 to 3 1/2 inches) I am left with (including the sexed-up adult male, above, whose intentions and gender I discern from his yellow throat coloration and the raucous behavior he’s been exhibiting lately). I think he has (bug) eyes for the lady up top. Green Frogs can deal with a terrestrial environment, at least part of the time; bulls cannot…except in big rains, when the opportunity to move presents itself. So off they went, in search of greener pastures, I suppose, perhaps singin’ in the rain.When it’s wet out, the normally aquatic Bullfrogs can move much longer distances: “They have been anecdotally recorded to move about 1.5 km or more, astonishing as that may sound,” says Megan Gahl, an environmental scientist and co-author of a

THE LAST OF THE FEMALE HUMMINGBIRDS have just departed for points south, following the males who left well ahead of time as if to set up camp. But onward bloom three of my favorite hummingbird plants, three red-flowered salvias I always include in the garden somewhere, year to year.