Nature Ideas, Tips & Guides

Andy is nursery manager of Broken Arrow in Hamden CT, a destination nursery with an extensive retail operation plus a giant mail-order catalog of unusual things. His 25-year-old personal Epimedium collection includes more than 150 kinds, with other shade treasures such as Solomon’s seal, or Polygonatum, and some lookalikes also on his radar.Broken Arrow, where he has worked for 25 years, is known for unusual things: “Especially if it’s variegated, dwarf, or has contorted branches, or there’s something that’s not quite looking right about the plant”–in the very best way, of course–Andy says you’ll find it there. Plants with an irresistible twist

SO WHAT IF IT’S A COUPLE OF MONTHS OLD–positively ancient in internet times. Watching this short film of a murmuration, or gathering, of starlings lent perspective and poetry to the start of a new day.

FIRST THINGS FIRST, OR SO THE SAYING GOES. And so a normal spring goes, too–if there is ever such a thing again.

PUBLIC-SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: The Department of Justice sentenced the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company last week to $12.5 million in criminal and civil fines, for tainting wild bird food with insecticides. “Scotts pleaded guilty in February 2012 to illegally applying insecticides to its wild bird food products that are toxic to birds, falsifying pesticide registration documents, distributing pesticides with misleading and unapproved labels and distributing unregistered pesticides,” the DOJ announcement stated.

I actually have no certain diagnosis; so many of these issues look somewhat alike, unless you are a plant pathologist, and so far I only have a relative few affected leaves. I nevertheless love Cornell’s diagnostic tool, a photo-driven system arranged by plant part (leaves, stem, fruit).What I do not seem to have, thankfully, is the late blight that’s been the source of the most dramatic headlines, and of a thorough story by Adrian Higgins of The Washington Post, late last week. This dramatic outbreak has also prompted warning bulletins from Cornell and other extension services. My plants have none of its characteristic early sign: dark stem lesions.This is the affliction (affecting tomatoes and potatoes) that caused the 1840s Irish Potato Famine, and it has never been recorded this early in the United States, apparently, nor this extensive

These non-native “ladybugs,” introduced by the Department of Agriculture to help combat certain agricultural pests, have made themselves right at home in America—and in my house, too. In fall, the south-facing side of the exterior can be teeming with patches of them, as they look for places to tuck into and overwinter. The USDA imported lady beetles from Japan as early as 1916 as a beneficial insect, to gobble up unwanted pests on forest and orchard trees, but it was probably later releases, in the late 1970s and early 80s in the Southeast, that took hold. Today, multicolored Asian lady beetles have made themselves completely at home around the United States, easily adapting to regions as diverse as Louisiana, Oregon, and mine in New York State.

‘I WILL BE  A BUTTERFLY, I WILL,” the black swallowtail caterpillar said between bites of dill foliage yesterday. “I think you are very beautiful even now,” I said, and asked if I could take his picture.

Maybe it’s Mercury retrograde that has me (a Gemini—one of the signs most heavily influenced by the antics of Mercury) plum tuckered out; maybe it was just this strange season of lots of wet and no heat. Maybe it’s the book I’m 200ish pages into writing that needs to be 300. But don’t worry; I’ll make it to the finish line on all fronts. I’ve been on an amazing new diet with my sister and my best friend that’s making a big difference. Onward; but first a little walk together, yes?Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, then toggle from slide to slide using the arrows next to each caption. Enjoy.Categoriesannuals & perennials bulbs edible plants slideshowsTagsMargaret Roachmargaret roach garden

Eliminate hiding places. Wilted or slightly decaying foliage left in the garden can provide perfect hiding places, as it often bends to touch the ground. This week, now that things have dried a bit so I can get into the beds, a more ruthless approach to cutbacks than normal is scheduled, since the extreme rains caused so much excess, often floppy, growth.Don’t over-mulch. One to perhaps 2½ inches of mulch is desirable; layering on thicker amounts than about 3 inches just invites damp conditions that slugs love, plus it provides a great place to hide.Set out safe baits or traps. There are self-described “nontoxic” slug baits these days (though research institutions like Cornell use the term “low-toxicity,” which is probably

BEST BIRDS PHOTOS: Never mind its name (which is not G-rated, but what the fu-k?). This wonderful site powered by Tumblr blog technology is packed with photos of birds I could just spend all day looking at. And sometimes do. I hope you enjoy Fu-k Yeah Birdwatching (as in: yup, I’m a bird watcher) as much as I do.WATCHING WITHOUT INFERENCE: I just completed an online bird-behavior course with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology called “Rivalry and Courtship in Birds,” taught by the noted ornithologist Ken McGowan (his world-class work on crows is ongoing since 1988). Amazing videos from the Lab’s unrivaled collection

Someone, you see–someone who wasn’t a sleepover-type house cat in the nine years since he adopted me, not until this winter–has learned to open the door to the upstairs. Where I sleep. Or try to. And he wanted to go out.But no, on second thought, maybe not. It’s snowing; can you clear me a path maybe first?I bundle up; I get my shovel. The path is cleared in the dark, amid swirling wind and snow.He inspects my work.No, I think I’ll just wait a little while longer. I can hold it.OK.But I

In the Q&A that follows, Ellen’s answers contain green links to audio files from BirdNote’s archive that you won’t want to miss. A recap of earlier stories in our ongoing series is at the bottom of the page, along with information on how to hear BirdNote daily. Easiest of all: browse all the BirdNote series stories at this link.winter bird q&a with ellen blackstoneQ. How far south do migratory birds go for the winter? A. They cover a very wide range of distances, but here’s a hint at some of the impressive extremes:Our humble barn swallow is a true long-distance migrant, and may winter as far south as southern South America, often returning to the same area year after year. Imagine: the sprightly bird that nested in the eav

The guy up top is a dead giveaway: He’s a green frog (I know, he’s all yellow right now, but his species is green frog). The yellow coloration he adopts in mating season can be just underneath, on the chest (with his back staying greenish or brownish), or it can go all-out, as with this ultra-sexy individual. The frog below? It’s a green frog, too–but look at her ear, or tympanum–that flat disc on each side of the head, behind the eye (not the architectural element by the same name).If the tympanum in green frogs (or bullfrogs) is larger than the eye, it’s a male. About the same size as the eye or smaller? A female, and this one’s hiding in the semi-shade of some pondside vegetation, watching the antics of the males who are violently competing for her attentions.In some species (in the tropics, for example) it’s more like it is with many birds: males an

COARSE AND SLIGHTLY UNKEMPT AS IT MAY BE, Viburnum sieboldii was one of my first viburnums and is still beloved here.  And as if it knows it has some rough edges to make up for, it gives me little extras, in addition to being easy to grow. There is fruit the birds enjoy that evolves through several colors as it ripens over a long period, and foliage that smells like a somewhat funky pineapple to me whenrubbed or crushed (one not-quite-aroma-therapeutic way to tell if V.

I HAVE FINALLY CRACKED THE CODE of a no-mow lawn. How’s your piece of turf looking right now? Me, I’m thinking tundra is the new green.

ISEEM TO BE A MAGNET for furry black creatures, a trend that I suppose started when the cat of my dreams adopted me all those years ago. This week, he and I have been visited by two other thick-coated types: the biggest caterpillar I have ever seen, Hypercompe scribonia (above, who will become the giant leopard moth), and a not-so-big (but big enough, thank you) American black bear, Ursus americanus, who completely terrorized resident fur-bearer Jack the Demon Cat in the overnight hours last night.

GALINSOGA is also called quickweed; the Rutgers weed database says that’s because the seeds that follow its tiny, daisy-like yellow and white flowers start to germinate on their way to the ground—no waiting, and quick enough to produce multiple generations each growing season.More than one species are listed in weed books; I have G. quadriradiata, which I actually know as its synonymous name G. ciliata, and I know just where it came from. A friend in New York City shared a desired plant a decade ago, and a gallant soldier was lurking in the pot, a hijacker. (Originally, it’s from South America, but is now widespread in the U.S.)I recommend pulling this one as soon as it emerges–it thankfully comes out easily when young–or using a hoe to dislodge seedlings, being sure never to let it establish and flower. With repeat weeding or cultivating, I have kept it fro

I hadn’t done a music show since the previous June, when I threw myself an on-air birthday party, and brought along some of my crazy collection of tunes. It’s wasn’t another birthday yet, but an anniversary I wanted to note:Almost precisely seven years before the radio taping (specifically in December 2007) I began to live fulltime in my now nearly 30-year-old garden—a place that before that was home to me only on weekends, for more than 20 years, as many of you know.When I lecture to garden clubs, I often begin by saying that I am going to tell the audie

Many of you, like I do, probably enjoy watching birds, but what prompts a person to set out to pursue a big year, as it’s called in the world of extreme birding? And what besides a possible record do they potentially gain in the process?On the occasion of the publication of his latest book, “Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World,” I wanted to ask Noah all that–and also for some advice on being a

LATEST LINKS: Too-hot-to-handle weather has had me indoors for a broad swath of each recent day, and that means more than the usual dose of web browsing—and a couple of new links to share. One (a video) is an extraordinary take on dragonflies; the other a moving essay on what I think is the garden’s most important and insistent message: that nothing lasts. The latter is delivered not by a gardener at all, but by the neurologist Oliver Sacks. Some decidedly non-horticultural but ever-so-moving links I think you’ll like:

MY MOTHER KEEPS SPOUTING some crap about how my catnip is really called Nepeta cataria. See the words “pet” and “cat” in there?—I’m telling you, she talks in word puzzles, though she’s no Will Shortz. She blathers on that it’s “a perennial that self-sows” (what?).

LOOKING FOR ME THIS LONG WEEKEND? I’ll be counting birds (and I hope that Mr. Ruffed Grouse of last week, like the one above, will come calling again). The Great Backyard Bird Count began at 7 o’clock this morning for a four-day run through the 20th. Here’s how you can help give researchers a better snapshot of this year’s winter birds in this important “citizen science” project:

Wind, which most simply described is the motion of air molecules—the air in motion—bring us more than just extra leaves to contend with.  It is a powerful pollinator, for example.The US Forest Service says that about 12 percent of the world’s flowering plants are pollinated by wind, along with most conifers and many other trees.Grasses and cereal crops are the most common types among the flowering plants. Since they don’t need to attract

ANEW FRIEND REMINDED ME THAT EMILY DICKINSON lived “right at the intersection of solitude, poetry, and gardening,” a place that sounds like a happy home to me at this life phase.

DID YOU WATCH ‘HARMONY,’ AN NBC SPECIAL that aired November 19? I just did (thank you, streaming technology) and wanted to say that it’s a must. Prince Charles, whom the British tabloids dubbed the “tree-hugging prince” when he began talking about threats to the environment in the 1980s, is the principal narrator, threading together an impressive range of interviews from farmers, scientists, environmentalists and more.

“You may not (yet) know the difference between a bird’s song and its calls,” says Ellen, “but the bird sure does. It’s often sending a special message to another bird–or other birds–of its species.”In the Q&A that follows, Ellen’s answers contain green links to audio files from BirdNote’s archive that you won’t want to miss, since we’re talking sound this time. I recommend making a big pot of tea, and planning to spend some time with these answers and the corresponding sounds–it’s like a beginner’s course in birding by ear. Enjoy.bird songs versus bird callsQ.  OK, I’ll take the bait, Ellen: What

It’s not all about pretty pictures–when and where a bug was recorded is a big part of the information being captured as the image itself. That’s because the site “helps expand on the natural histories” of its subjects, it says. “By capturing the place and time that submitted images were taken,” it explains, “we are creating a virtual collection that helps define where and when things might be found.”I would have felt welcome enough after Maury‘s hello, but then pretty quickly things got even friendlier. A previously anonymous recent arachnid visitor of mine—a colorful spider that was the second photo I uploaded (the one above)—got identified by BugGuiders with relative certainty asa Shamrock Orbweaver.“Maybe Araneus trifolium? Let’s see what the others think,” Contributing Editor Laura said, in the notes that suddenly appeared below my image.“I’m pretty sure this is A. trifolium,” concurred Contributing Editor Kryontf.Love it.

I ONLY GOT TO PAGE 5 of the new “Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America” before I was hooked.  “Moths are everywhere,” it proclaims, and (hearing that as a challenge) I simply stood up, got my camera and went outside for a mere 10 minutes. The authors were right: Even though it was sunny midday, I photographed seven species (including the luna moth, above), and got so excited trying to ID them, I wrote to co-author Seabrooke Leckie—a stranger—and sent her my shots.

When I got up close, I noticed not just how many mushrooms there were, but also that they were in all stages of development: tight buttons, yet to push upward; others that were halfway emerged, and giants whose tops were the size of butter plates or bigger. But why were they circling the conifer? And what were these robust fungi, anyhow?Out came the field guides (actual and digital). I knew from some previous failures at identifying fungi that I needed to look at all the parts—not just the cap from above, but its underside (for gills, and how they are attached, or for no gills), also the stem.I didn’t have to go far in my 1991 copy of Roger Phillips’s “Mushrooms of North America” because the genus Amanita is at the start of the alphabet—and becaus

I mean, it doesn’t close up shop or shut it doors on me or to visual enjoyment. The garden centers may need to stand idle a portion of each year, but not the landscape itself. And so, stubbornly and defiantly over a period of 25 years, at first accidentally and lately more intentionally as my knowledge has grown, I suppose I have made a garden for 365 days. Good thing I did, since I now live in it year-round, having left my career and the city in late 2007 after more than 20 years as a weekender in the Hudson Valley-Berkshires area of New York and Massachusetts.TO MAKE A YEAR-ROUND GARDEN was not my plan, or at least not a conscious one I could have explained when I began digging holes on an overgrown, bramble-infested bit of Columbia County, New York, land with little more to recommend it horticulturally beyond a half-dozen very old apples and a pair of ancient lilacs. My 365-day garden style was actually a happy side effect—a total serendipity—precipitated by my love of birds.Because birds’ needs vary at different times

So many plants seem at their loudfest and most insistent now, don’t they?, positively shouting from all corners of the place. That’s a tender thing, Oxalis vulcanicola, up top, defiantly hanging on and getting more fiery each day as if it dares frost to just try to take it down.Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, then toggle from slide to slide using the arrows beside each caption (or the arrows on your keyboard). Let this newest gallery be the matching bookend to the one about garden gold that I posted in spring. Enjoy.Categoriesannuals & perennials conifers deciduous Nature slide

ICAN’T IMAGINE LIFE WITHOUT THEM. The frogs, I mean.

TIME FOR A LITTLE NON-PLANT MOMENT, captured in a quick jumble of other-than-botanical snapshots from around the garden lately.

APPARENTLY I AM OPERATING A PICK-YOUR-OWN blueberry farm, but my customers arrive early, before the fruit is even ripe; skip the baskets altogether, and leave without paying.

Learn more about these beautiful birds, who love offseason fruit in the garden, like hollies and crabapples and also including the Eastern red cedar’s fruits (Juniperus virginiana), from which they get part of their name. I have a giant such tree in my front yard; I know what birds like.By the way, that red thing in the pool up top is a floating pond de-icer, so the frogboys don’t suffocate and the birds can drink all winter. And sorry about photo quality; had to shoot through glass from a distance before they fled. If you click the top image it will open up a little bigger and brighter (true of all photos on the blog).Categoriesbird sh-t

I MEAN, REALLY. At 6:14 PM last night–pre-Halloween, mind you, pre-EDT clock change–it was already dark with 3/4 inch of snow on everything outside.