I have been noticing the goldfinches are really starting to hit the birdfeeders again.  I don’t know if it is the cool weather or all of the babies have fledged and are now flocking to the feeder with the family.  I counted 7 last night at our feeder before I went to bed.  (Actually, it was evening.  I have to go to bed before the sun does with the new schedule.)

Anyway, I thought the seven was a lot until I got here this morning and found an email that Valerie Rust had sent me on Friday after I left for the day.  She attached a few photos that she took at her mother-in-law’s house.  She didn’t mention where the photos were taken, but I think you can look outside to any thistle feeder and see something similar:

A few of the goldfinches.

Chow time!

I didn't hear the dinner bell, but they apparently they did!

Wow! I counted 17, but there may be more.

I especially like the one hanging from the bottom of the sock.  When you have this many on one feeder, you have to grab it where you can.

I don’t think this is a sign of what the winter will bring, but it is nice to see all that yellow when a lot of my flowers are getting past their prime.

Thanks for the pictures, Valerie!

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Posted under Uncategorized

The Fall Harvest Festival will be held at the Cedar Valley Arboretum and Botanical Gardens.  If you have never been there, you should try to visit.  If you haven’t been there in awhile, you should go back.  There is always something to look at. 

Each year the community gardens take on a new look.  Each plot is looked after by a different individual or group and each has it’s own look to it. 

The Weed & Unwind group meets each Thursday after work.  They take care of five different beds of plants while meeting with friends and enjoying snacks and drinks that they bring themselves.

I want these for my garden!

This is gorgeous.

There are also therapy gardens with raised beds so those in wheelchairs, or those who have a difficult time bending over can garden.

If you have kids, they can learn a lot and wear themselves out in the Children’s Garden.  This includes some “dinosaur bones”, a large sand play area, a lily pond, a prairie and an area where they can learn about the different types of soil. 

The entrance to the Children's Garden. The iron sculpture was created locally.

The kids can play in the dinosaur skeleton.

There is a train that runs through the garden.

A prairie the kids can walk through.

The lily pond.

Different soil types are in this quartered circle.

The Rose Garden has a lot of roses.  I wouldn’t mind having about a quarter of their roses.

Roses to the left....

Roses to the right....

And all of them beautiful.

If shade is more your thing, there is a Hosta Garden a little bit down the hill.

with daylilies nearby….

There are all sorts of things to look at during a visit to the Gardens.  You can check it out today or head for the Fall Harvest Festival.  If is free, but they are encouraging donations to help keep the gardens in top shape.  It is on Sunday, September 20th with an open air market including 36 vendors and food vendors.  There will be a corn maze and the ever popular Scarecrow Contest.  I was fortunate enough to help judge this event last year and the scarecrows are incredible.  If you want to catch a sneak peak of the scarecrows, you can attend the Wine and Scarecrows event on Saturday, September 19th.  Wine and Scarecrows is a ticketed event, but is open to the public.  Tickets are $40 to help raise funds for the Gardens.

The Arboretum’s Director of Horticulture is Mollie Benning Luze.  A wonderful lady and loves working outside.  She also has a blog!  Check our her words of wisdom here. 

Even if you can’t make it to the Fall Harvest Festival, try to make it to the Gardens.  They are wonderful.

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Posted under General, Photos

I think my love of gardening was started at an early age.  As I have mentioned before, I loved to get outside and “play” in our vegetable garden.  But that isn’t the only education I had with gardening.  In Middle School, our science teacher took us on a field trip about three miles south of Cosgrove to a cemetery.  No, we did not go to look at the sandstone and marble markers on the graves.  Those markers were smack dab in the middle of a prairie!  Or as close to one as you could get at that time.  I loved being a kid then. 

I wish I were a kid now!  And going to George Washington Carver Academy in Waterloo.  It has been built on Logan Street, right by the Logan school site.  AND it has a greenhouse!

The Dick Young Greenhouse at George Washington Carver Middle School in Waterloo.

I went there on Thursday and met up with Julie Evenson, the Black Hawk County Extension Horticulturist.  She has a lot of energy!  And she loves what she is doing and she wants to make sure that everyone has the right information to keep their gardens, yards and trees safe and healthy.

This will keep it from getting TOO hot inside.

The greenhouse will be available for both the kids and the community to use.  Each subject in school will be able to utilize something regarding to horticulture.  There will be an Ag History class at the school and the science class will look at the way the plants are formed.  The music class can even get in on the learning with Trumpet Vines and Coral Bells!  There will be a prairie planted and a vegetable garden that the kids will help grow to provide food for the school lunches.  Not only will the kids at George Washington Carver Academy enjoy the benefits of the greenhouse but Julie and the school will be taking projects to other schools and other schools can take field trips to the greenhouse. 

This will host a lot of activity over the next several years.

The community isn’t left out.  There are science classrooms that will be used for training new Master Gardeners.  Classes start September 10th, so get signed up in your county.  Just go to the County Extension office and they will help get you started.  You must be able to attend 40 hours of classroom training and one all day Saturday session in Ames (Go ‘Clones!) and then be able to commit to 40 hours of volunteer work a year.  Believe me, it is easy to get the hours.  There is a fee to cover the cost of educational materials.  To learn more about it check out the Iowa State University Extension Service Master Gardener Information Site.

The school will have a lot of activities surrounding the greenhouse.

There will be so much to do with the Dick Young Greenhouse that Julie will have an assistant.  That way there will be someone on hand whenever you have a question.

It even has a weather station!

The greenhouse wasn’t quite ready for the flora when I was there.  I’ll go back and get more pictures when they open to the public.

Julie was still busy setting things up when I came for a visit.

If you want more information about the greenhouse, the Master Gardener program or about horticulture or landscaping (she’s a pro at that), contact Julie at the Extension Office at 319-234-6811 or drop her an email at jevenson@iastate.edu.  Shell be happy to answer your questions.

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Posted under General

Because I had to work for Mark on Monday morning, I had Sunday off.  I was trying to balance the checkbook when the weather radio went off…. again.  A Severe Thunderstorm Warning had been issued for portions of several counties, including northern Benton.  The automated voice said that the storm would be in Urbana at 1:55.  I went back out to the kitchen and looked at the clock on the stove.  1:45.  Okay, I had 10 minutes.  The neighbors in the back have an in-the-ground pool and the boys were in it.  I was about to go out and tell them about the warning, but apparently the really dark skies to the west was enough and they were getting out and putting all the stuff that could blow away in the shed.  I went back to my figuring.  About two minutes later I turned on the light because it got dark with the approaching storms. 

At 1:55, this is what I saw:

 You can hear Louie in the background at the end.  I think he wanted to know if we should go to the basement.  What a smart cat! 

The movement of the camera is from the wind moving the window.

The thunder didn’t start until the winds had died down.  That is what happens when you get a gust front.   And this is what it can look like:

This shelf cloud was taken by Rodney Gehman as the storm was moving over Lake McBride near Solon.

Shelf clouds, gust fronts and roll clouds are all indications of strong winds on the leading edge of a thunderstorm.  They can cause damage.  I didn’t see much in our neighborhood, but we lost a couple of sunflowers

I think these are goners.

These had to be cut off. They were completely bent right above the ground.

This one may make it. I hope so for the birds' sake!

 and our arbor is leaning even more than it did with the June storm. 

It's leaning even more. The grapes seemed like a good idea at the time. Now they are just something for the wind to press against.

The next one may knock it over!

Of course, when the storms are over, we get to see rainbows.  And if we are lucky, we get to see two.

A double rainbow in Independence taken by Kayla Toale.

This double rainbow was taken by Gloria Clough from her deck in Waterloo.

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Posted under General, Photos, Videos

I have been waiting anxiously for the Swallowtail caterpillars and the Monarch caterpillars to make an appearance.  I have been looking every day for over a week at my Butterfly Weed and our parsley.  The Monarchs eat away the Butterfly Weed and we found out last year that Swallowtails love parsley.  We planted a lot of it this year.

Three types of parsley in the main part of the garden.

The parsley is growing well in the clay pot.

Well, the other day, while talking to Dwayne on the phone, he mentioned that a huge caterpillar was eating away one of our ornamental peppers. 

The plant seems to be shrinking.

I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t on the parsley.  Then I figured out, it isn’t the Swallowtail caterpillar.  It is a tobacco hornworm.  And they love to defoliate tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants and, you guessed it, peppers.  The article I read didn’t mention tobacco as one of it’s favorite foods, so I’m not sure where the name comes from.

He ate this branch down before we found him.

The tobacco hornworm is green with seven diagonal lines on it’s sides and a curved red horn at it’s back end. 

This is his eating end.

This is the non-eating end.

There is also the tomato hornworm which has V-shaped marks and it’s horn is more straight and a blue-black color.

The tomato hornworm. Photo courtesy of the Colorado State University Extension Service.

Hornworms are the larvae of hawk or sphinx moths which are also known as the “hummingbird moth”.  Their wings move almost as fast as a hummingbird.  We saw one of these the first or second year we lived in our house and we could have sworn it was a hummingbird.  I just couldn’t figure out about the antennae, though.  We were new to gardening and birding, but I was pretty sure hummingbirds didn’t have antennae.  And hummingbird moths can’t fly backwards. 

The hummingbird moth. Photo courtesy the Colorado State University Extension Service.

While I love seeing the hummingbird moths, I don’t really like their larvae eating my vegetables.  The moths don’t really harm any of your plants, but the caterpillars can seriously defoliate a plant and even eat some of the green fruit.  I don’t want that!  The recommended way to deal with the caterpillar is to pick them off and cut them in half or drop them in a bucket of water.  We have moved the pot to our deck and Dwayne is thinking of steaming it this weekend with some plastic wrap.  The birds can have their very own barbeque!  If you happen upon one that has what looks like small white eggs on it, leave it alone.  These are the cocoons of a parasitic wasp and as the wasp eats away the caterpillar, the caterpillar with die.  Nature takes care of itself.

The news isn’t all disappointing.  I found a Monarch caterpillar on our small fence around the butterfly weed. 

This picture was taken two days ago. He's probably quintupled his size by today.

The Monarch caterpillar a couple of days after the photo above. He is definitely growing!

Now, him I look forward to watching gorge himself on our flora offering.

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Posted under General, Pests, Photos

National Farmers’ Market Week is winding down, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t go to the market any week this summer.  Most run through at least September and many run through October.  You can usually find information on an area farmers’ market in the local newspaper or you can check online. 

Here are a couple of sites to visit: 

The National Directory of Fruit Stands and Farmers’ Markets 

and The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship Farmers’ Market page.

According to Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey, “farmers’ markets make an estimated $31.5 million impact on the Iowa economy by giving local producers a place to directly market their goods and bringing business to town centers.  Over 135,000 Iowans shop regularly at their local farmers’ market during the typical 22 week market season.  88 of Iowa’s 99 counties have markets operating in them.”  There are more than 220 farmers’ markets across the state, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding one close by.

Have a great time shopping your local farmers’ market and tell the vendors that I said “Hi” (even if they don’t know me!)

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Posted under General

I would love to have a water feature at my house, but our budget doesn’t allow it.  The water flowing down our slope in the yard would attract lots of birds and the little pond at the south end would have koi in it.  Unfortunately, that is not to be.  I got really excited when my Station Manager moved to a new place with a koi pond and she said they were not going to keep it.  But, I still can’t figure it into our budget this year and she wants to get the koi out of the pond before winter. 

So, if you are interested having some koi, Kim said there are six koi about seven or eight inches long.  She didn’t have a picture for me to post, but she will be happy to give them to you for free, if you want to come get them.  Her email address is kleer@kwwl.com to get your name in. 

Good luck and enjoy the koi!

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Posted under General

I like to go out to the garden before I head to work each day.  It’s a little difficult when I fill in for Mark, but I make sure to check out my “babies” when I get home in the afternoon.  Every day I see something new.  On one of my “walks” I found that my hibiscus is blooming.  Well, only one of my three hibiscus are blooming right now, but I’ll take it.

This bloom is hiding.

The bloom looked like this the day before it bloomed.

This is from last year, but it shows you how big the blooms are.

This one, obviously, is the red one.  I have a white one with a red center

Also from last year.

 as well as a pink one. 

Last year's bloom of Betty's Hibiscus.

The pink one came from our friend around the corner, Betty, but the other two came from a local grocery store about three years ago.  Dwayne bought them for only about five dollars apiece.  That is not a lot of money for huge blooms year after year.

Our sunflowers are also blooming right now. 

Let the sun shine in.

We didn’t plant any this year. 

You always have sunshine even on a cloudy day.

These are all coming up from the seeds of last years plants. 

This is one plant. The birds are going to love this when it dries out!

We leave the heads on the stalks until the birds eat all the seed, and then we might cut them down.  When we leave them up for the fall and into the winter, it provides a place for birds to land and it creates some winter interest.  At least they stick out of the snow!

This stalk held up a lot of weight.

This one has lost it's head, but still shows interest in winter.

I love the way the snow accentuates the form of the sunflower.

I have more sunflower seeds to plant next year.  Now I just have to find the room for them.

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Posted under General, Photos

I love going to county fairs!  I know that many people, myself included, go to the fairs for the food.  Funnel cakes are among my favorites, as well as pork burgers.  Every year I go to the Johnson County Fair and every year I take a sack with me to bring as many of the Johnson County Pork Producers’ Pork burgers back as I can!  (This year I brought ten burgers home with me).   Of course, there are other things to do and see at any county fair.  You have all the livestock that the 4-H kids have spent months raising and grooming.  There are crafts and photographs that I wish I could do and take.  I have noticed that each fair is a little different.  The Johnson County Fair is a 4-H and FFA fair so the exhibits and entries are all done by the kids.  The Benton County Fair has a section for adults.  I’ve submitted some cross-stitch a couple of different years and one of these days I may even get a few photos in. 

Over the last few years, I have noticed these five-gallon buckets at the Johnson County Fair that are filled with plants. 

Floral display

Both students and Master Gardeners create these floral displays.

Another bucket-o-flowers

They use a five-gallon bucket and fill them with color!

And the Johnson County Master Gardeners have a flower and vegetable garden on the fair grounds.

The Johnson County Master Gardeners have a terrific plot this year. Their tomatoes hadn't turned red yet either.

There was a beautiful flower bed, too.

This year they have scarecrows!

One of the scarecrows around the garden. It seemed to be a pirate theme.

Even if I don’t have time to see all of the livestock, I make it a point to get to the garden display before I have to leave.

I think this will be a great thing for the Benton county kids to do.  I am going to bring this up to the Benton County Fair Board and see what they think.  And if we can get the garden up and running at the fairgrounds, maybe we can have some fresh vegetables to hand out to the fair goers.  They can have a fresh tomato with that funnel cake!  Okay, maybe the pork burger or beef tenderloin sandwich would be better.

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Posted under General, Photos

Our butterfly and hummingbird garden has certainly gotten a reputation amongst the bee population.  We have a lot of bumblebees this year.  They are on pretty much everything in the garden.  They seem to be enjoying the Russian Sage,

Our Russian Sage is a big hit with the bumblebees.

the Coneflowers and Black-Eyed Susans,

A nice spread of White and Purple Coneflowers and Black-Eyed Susans.

This guy has been a very busy bee.

and anything else in the garden.

I really like this angle of my garden. It has nice range of colors and textures.

This is the part of the garden that we started first, so some of these plants are six or seven years old. 

Here is an angle showing off the Joe-Pye Weed behind the Coneflowers.

It finally looks pretty good. 

The Crimson Frost Birch is a nice contrast to the coneflowers and black-eyed susans.

Now we are thinking about re-doing this part of the garden.  We have some Penstemon that you can’t see because it is very short and in the back.  It is behind all the tall stuff.  And I need to thin out the Coneflowers, the Black-Eyed Susans and the Joe-Pye Weed.  I plan on replanting everything I thin out.  I have a Master Gardener project that I will be working on around a new sign in Urbana.  I hope to get started this year with some of the project, but the plant part will have to wait until next spring.  I hope to have people in the community donate more plants for the plot.  That will make it a true community garden!

I’ll keep you posted.

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Posted under General, Photos