All the presents are ripped open and the wrapping paper and packaging thrown out.  The tree is still standing despite the best efforts of Rover and Fluffy.  Now what?  What do I do with the tree?

Well, if it is an artificial one, leave it up until Valentine’s Day like we used to do.  It seemed like the thing to do at the time…

For several years, Mom and Dad would buy a living tree.  We kept the tree in the living room until Spring when we could plant it outside.  I don’t know if we left the decorations on it, but that may be where the tradition of keeping them on until Valentine’s Day came from. I know we had at least three live trees through the years and they are all taller than the two story house I grew up in.  They liked living near Cosgrove, apparently.

If you are of the school to buy a cut tree for your Christmas season, you will probably want to get it out of the house as soon as possible.  It becomes a fire danger if it isn’t kept moist.

When you are ready to take all the ornaments off and put them away, there are several ways to get rid of, or recycle your tree.

After you take all the ornaments, lights and tinsel off the tree, place the tree in the yard to be used by birds and other wildlife.  It will provide shelter for the creatures from strong winds, cold and predators.  You can hang fruit slices, suet cakes, cranberry strings or raisins on the branches to feed the birds.  You can smear peanut butter and seeds on pine cones and then hang them in the trees, too.  Birds love that!

Another option is to cut off the branches and use the boughs as mulch by placing them over perennials.  Chip up the tree and use it as mulch, also, around trees, shrubs or in your flower beds.

If you don’t want to use the tree yourself, contact your local Solid Waste Agency to see if they have some type of Christmas tree disposal program.  Some communities will have curbside pickup, others may provide a place to take the trees to be chipped into mulch. They will then be used to cover area trails or be made available to local residents to be used in your own gardens.

I have seen a lot of formerly decorated trees placed on top of the ice over lakes and ponds to be used as fish shelter/habitat when the ice melts.  Contact your local Conservation Board to see if they want your tree for such a program.

 

Never burn your old Christmas tree in your fireplace or wood stove.  The dry, evergreen branches will explode when burned and could cause a house fire.  That is in addition to adding to the buildup of creosote in the chimney and flue.

Merry Christmas!

Dig it!

Posted under Winter

‘Tis the season to decorate, but you might want to be careful what you are decorating with.

Oriental Bittersweet is a woody vine that has bright red berries and is perfect for Christmas decorations.

The problem is, the seeds on the vines are viable, meaning they will grow if they hit the dirt… well, they have to get IN the dirt and get the appropriate amounts of water and sunlight, but you get the idea.

—-Oriental bittersweet:

While that in itself is not necessarily a problem, the fact that the vine is very aggressive, is.  The vine is native to Asia and it climbs trees, slowing the growth or killing the them by blocking the light from the forest canopy.

There is an American bittersweet, which is native to Iowa.

 

Just looking at the pictures, they seem the same to me.  You can tell the difference by checking the fruit location on the vine.

 

American bittersweet only has fruit at the tip of the stem whereas Oriental bittersweet has fruit and flowers along the length of the stem.    The Minnesota Department of Ag has some more information here.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources also has a page you can visit, and goes into a little more detail.  You can check it out by clicking here.

 

Whether you have the invasive or the native variety of bittersweet, have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Winter Solstice and any other celebrations that occur when the Sun is in the Southern Hemisphere!

 

Dig it!

 

Posted under Winter

The Vinton Youth Garden is pretty much done for the year.  We have cleaned everything up, but there is still some lettuce enjoying the cold weather.  It is covered, but I’m sure they would prefer it a few degrees warmer!

 

To keep the kids interested in gardening over the winter, I have planned a few events.  We will  meet once a month at the Benton County Extension office to do a project.  Next month we will be painting clay flowerpots, in January we will plant some tulip or daffodil bulbs in them (they are chilling in my fridge as you read), and in February we will meet to pick what the kids want to plant next year.  And, either in January or February, we will have a popcorn party with the popcorn the kids grew and picked.  They will get to shuck it and rub it off the cob and then pop it themselves.  It is sure to be a great time.

 

This month, we met to make cards.  The kids could do thank yous, Happy Thanksgiving, Christmas or whatever kind of cards they wanted.  I had a bunch of scrapbooking stuff for them to use, although it was very hard to find vegetable rubber stamps at the local hobby stores.  I’ll start looking sooner next year!

 

They had a great time.  I had gotten white and off-white notecards and envelopes in two different sizes and 12 in a package.  I think between the five kids they used most of two of the packages!

Lauren and Olivia….

Striking a pose….

Millie stamping away…

Nash was helping with the glitter glue…

Lauren, Olivia and Cali are working away….

Cali knows what she wants to do…

Nash getting into things with the glitter glue….

The finished products… drying since glitter glue was the main ingredient!

My mega-helper, Martha, had the kids write out what they liked and didn’t like about the Garden this year, and what they wanted more of next year.  She is going to use the “good” for a flyer to hand out to get more kids interested.  I think the “bad” is to help us to help the kids next year!

She also brought along the loufa we had grown so the kids could peel it.

She had some in water so the kids could see how it became a sponge.

It was pretty darn cool!

We had some visitors at the beginning of the “meeting” from Buchanan county.  Joe, Jess and Roxanne stopped by to see how our Garden grew.  Roxanne is the Extension Administrator for Buchanan county, Jess is the Food Service Director at one of the Elementary Schools in Independence and Joe is the “Super Volunteer Extraordinaire”.  They came down to check out the layout of the garden and see if they could steal some ideas for their gardens in Independence.

Joe had a good time peeling some of the loufa.  He took some of the seeds, too, to grow in our northern neighbor’s gardens.

A rousing success and I can’t wait to see what they do with the flowerpots!

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn, Youth Garden

Autumn is my third favorite season.  It would probably be higher, but it has that really cold season following it.  Whatever I think of the seasons, I have to get my garden ready for Winter.  This usually involves lots of mulch, at least in my case.

A couple of weeks ago when the nighttime temperatures were expected to dip into the 20s, I figured I had better try to winterize my butterfly bushes.   They are all located on the “hill” on the south side of the garden.

We have four of them and I took a couple of bags of mulch and piled them around the base of the plants.

The black dot in the middle of the picture is our neighbor’s dog, Rugger.  We have permission to let him out of their yard and play with him in ours, which we did.  However, he tried to help a little too much… he kept trying to eat the mulch and chew through the back.  We tried to wear him out and then we had to put him back.   He pretty much wore us out!  He’s still a puppy, so he has an infinite source of energy.  He wasn’t too happy to be put back in his yard.  He still wanted to help, as you can tell!

I finished piling the mulch around the base of the butterfly bushes.  Butterfly bushes are marginally hardy in Zone 4 so I try to give them all the help they can get.

Since it was going to be even colder this night than the previous night, I moved the pots.  I put the mums up next to the house, along with the boots and the hen and chicks.  Dwayne had already unhooked the hose, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

We have a few pots in the front of the house.  The one with the mum and lantana was already tucked in between the smokebush and the juniper, so I left it alone.

I tucked the snapdragons and impatiens under the junipers.

They got a little nipped, but they are still alive.  Actually, they are still tucked under the junipers.  I suppose I can move them back now!

I have some snapdragons that keep coming back in the Ash tree bed.  I don’t remember planting them there and they have come up the last three years.  Since they seem to be able to survive, I didn’t do anything with them.

The mum in the background looks even better from the front.  Especially with the asters in bloom.

The celosia, or cockscomb, did not survive the freezes, but the pink flamingo still looks pretty good!

Fall decorations are starting to show up in the garden, too.

A smooth pumpkin has now joined the garden, so it is really looking like fall.

The weather has been nice enough that my roses are still blooming.

I have not been deadheading them and will not for the rest of the year.

I let the “seeds” form.  These are called “hips” in the rose world.  Birds will eat these for energy through the Winter and early Spring.

When the hips form on the rose, it starts to put the energy into producing the seeds and this tells the plant that it needs to start storing energy in the roots for next year.

Essentially, it begins shutting down.  It will continue to grow, although slowly, until a few hard freezes occur.

Depending on how the Fall plays out temperature-wise, I will hold off winterizing the roses until it gets closer to Thanksgiving.  These roses are on the south side of my house, so will have protection from the Winter winds, but I will still mulch them.  I have had previous posts on different ways to winterize roses, but I usually only mulch.  I will take a bag of mulch and dump it on the plant to protect the roots.  I will do this on the southern roses and my Chinese miniature rose (although, it isn’t very miniature), won’t protect Sven, Ole or Sigrid….

… they were developed in Minnesota and have survived in our yard for a few years without extra help from me.  I will also not cover our Knock-out rose.  It is somewhat protected by surrounding plants in my garden, and it is generally hardy in our zone.  I have had it several years now and haven’t covered it in at least three.

While I have been getting the garden ready for Winter, I don’t think my brain has grasped the realization that it is near the end of October and Winter is right around the corner.  Maybe if I close my eyes real tight….

 

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn

We have been having some pretty nice weather for Fall.  I thought I had better take advantage of that and get my garlic in the ground.  Well, the raised bed, anyway.

We have four 4×8 and two 4×4 raised beds.  Last year’s garlic bed has been empty since the end of July, but I wanted to put the garlic in a different bed and save this year’s for tomatoes next year.

The near bed will be the home for the best tasting vegetable in the world!

Dwayne finally pulled up the tomatoes last week.  With the weather cooling down later this week, I figured I had better get the garlic in the ground now.

I brought out the tools and some of the garlic that we started last fall.

As with any job, in order to be done correctly, you have to have supervision.

That is one of the stray cats in the neighborhood.  I must have been doing an okay job by him, since he just sat there.  Until Dwayne came home and chased him away, anyway.   His brother and mom hang around, too, so we should have plenty of supervision when something needs done in the yard.

This summer we ended up with 84 bulbs of garlic.  Not nearly enough to get us through the year, and, of course, I am using some of those to get next year’s crop.  So, this year, I am planting as many as I can.  Without going back into the basement to raid the remaining bulbs.

I managed to get 14 rows hoed in the bed.

I separated the cloves from the bulb…

The pointy end goes up….

The light brown stuff is some bone meal.  That is the only amendment I made to the soil.  I’ll add some blood meal and maybe a little more bone meal in the spring, but that will be about it.

In the end, there were 148 cloves planted.

Before I covered up the rows, I need to mark them.  We plant stiff-necked garlic, so I use the stem as row markers.

This also tells me how many heads I used.  There were 21 “necks”.  Yep.  Dwayne’s not happy that I have depleted our winter supply of garlic.  Honey, it is a sacrifice for the good of the next crop!  And, anyway, I’m the one who should be upset…. I at least triple every recipe’s amount of garlic.

I mark both sides of the rows, so for the ends that didn’t get a garlic “neck”, I used some bamboo sticks.  Then the rows get covered up.

The next step is to cover everything with straw.

This will help retain moisture and provide a layer of protection from the coming winter.  But first, I need an assistant…. and he comes abounding….

This is Rugger, the neighbor’s puppy.  He is about 13 weeks old, a lab/water spaniel mix, chews on everything and only stops moving when he is crashed out after a hard day’s playing.  The neighbors allow us to let him off of his lead and then we play.  This time, we had some work to do.  Lesson learned…. letting the puppy help just slows you down.  He got into the bed, chewed on the straw, ran around and chewed on everything else.  And then one of our other neighbors got to talking to us over the fence.  And her 3rd grade daughter came over to play with Rugger.  The two of them wore each other out.  It was pretty fun to watch.  But I didn’t get much done for awhile.  It was pretty nice taking a break to have some friendly conversation.  After the “kids” were all worn out, we took Rugger back to his yard and I got back to work.  The little gnats were all over the place, busy biting everyone.  Dwayne wimped out and went inside.  I finished putting the straw on the bed.

I gave the bed a good soaking.  And before the winds pick up later this week, I will put our garlic drying rack on top of the straw to weigh it down.

Garlic is usually planted in the fall in late September to early October.  It should be covered for winter with straw, mulch or anything to protect it from the winter winds.  Take the cover off in Spring, cut off the flowers (or scapes) before they bloom and when the plants die back, dig everything up.  Clean the heads off, dry them for two weeks and then hang them in a cool dry place to enjoy through the winter.  The scapes can be used as a seasoning when cooking or just add them to a salad.

Now the hard part.  Waiting for that garlicky goodness to be ready for harvest!

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn

The Garden is starting to wind down.  We met on Monday and I was worried the cold, rainy wind would keep the meeting short.  I planned on making sure the kids picked what needed picked and then get the heck out of there and back to the warmth of home.  It turns out, Mother Nature was kind to us.  The sun came out and the wind wasn’t quite as cold.  While I pulled weeds….

The kids were busy harvesting.

They picked quite a few tomatoes.

The watermelon is still producing.

The pumpkins are looking great this year.  This one is hiding, but huge.

An even bigger one is waiting for Halloween.  The pie pumpkins are keeping it company.

We have planted loofa, the stuff that you can use in the bath, the last couple of years, but this year we finally have some!

Martha is going to look at her notes and see when we can pick them to dry them out.

Once the kids had all the veggies harvested, Martha had them stringing beans…

I think they are hoping to dry out the beans completely and then plant them next year.

Before everyone else got to the Garden, I was busy planting some lilies and one new hosta.  One of my neighbors was changing up her yard and was going to get rid of them.  I put some of the lilies at the “Welcome to Urbana” sign in town, but put the rest into our flower bed.  The bed is looking pretty good.  The mums and sedum are blooming and we still have some hosta flowers.  The cannas are still going strong, too.

Hopefully it will all make it through the Sunday morning cool snap!

Dig it!

Posted under Youth Garden

Ah, vacations.  Lots of planning for a trip that may or may not turn out.  Our main rule is that we don’t eat at chain restaurants, or at least, places we have around here.

Last year, for our vacation, we met some friends in the Black Hills on the way to see my sister in Northern Nevada, then circled down to the Grand Canyon and stopped in to see Dwayne’s mom in Kansas on the way home.  Twelve states, 14 days, 4, 995 miles and one fight later, we were home.  This year, we couldn’t decide on where to go.  Stay home? Head out west again to see my sister and hit Colorado this time?  Eat our way across Texas?  Head north and go around the Great Lakes?  A comment by Vi, Dwayne’s mom, decided our trip.  Vi is a huge fan of Hank Williams (senior) and read in a book (that Dwayne had sent her) that Hank was buried in Montgomery, Alabama.  Soooo….. we headed to the Deep South… in August…. with my mother-in-law.  We tried to get my mom to come along, too, but she claimed she had to work.  I’ll have to check to make sure that she did….

 

Despite my reservations of being stuck on a roadtrip with my full Italian mother-in-law and my half Italian-half German husband, the trip went surprisingly well.  Lots of laughs, lots of driving (8 states in 7 days and 3360.8 miles) and no arrest warrants!

Our trip actually started before we even got to southern Kansas, which is where Vi lives.  Dwayne and I stopped in Kansas City for a couple of days.  We tracked down the original Oklahoma Joe’s barbeque joint.  It is in a gas station and is always crowded, but the food is really good!  We ended up with left overs to put in the refrigerator at the hotel.  When we got checked into the hotel… no refrigerator!  I put ice in the sink, put the container on top and covered the whole thing with the tray that sits under the ice bucket.  It was still cold in the morning, so Dwayne had ribs for breakfast.  Then we headed to the zoo!

The lorikeets were pretty noisy, but fairly friendly.

While waiting for SOAR-Symphony in Flight, we caught the sea lion show.  Delilah didn’t really feel it….

At the Symphony in Flight, we got up close and (almost) personal with one of the cast members

We saw flamingos having a siesta in the shade

… elephants (my favorite!)

…a herd of oryx (among other African antelope breeds)

…and getting slimed feeding the deer

The real fun began when we picked up Vi and headed south.

Our first touristy stop was the Blues Highway… Highway 69 that runs from Memphis, Tennessee to Vicksburg, Mississippi.  We stopped at the Crossroads (Highways 69 and 42), where legendary bluesman, Robert Johnson, allegedly sold his soul to the devil in exchange for incredible talent.

We actually veered off the Blues Highway to take the “scenic route” of Highway one.  The road was good, but you couldn’t see the Mississippi river due to the levee.  We did see a lot of cotton and rice, though!

In Vicksburg, we visited the Vicksburg National Military Park. During the Civil War (or War of Northern Aggression-depending on which side of the Mason-Dixon line you are on), Vicksburg was the only remaining Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River.  The Union wanted to control the entire length of the Mississippi for supplies and to effectively split the South in two and make it more difficult to fight a war.  After a daring move by General Ulysses S. Grant, Vicksburg was under siege from May 14 through July 4, 1863.  We were worried Vi would be bored, but we all found it more interesting than expected.  The Park is set up so you can drive on 16 miles worth of roads through the area where Union and Confederate soldiers “held the line”.

Different types of cannon used during the Civil War

During the siege, Union soldiers dug a tunnel to supply other soldiers digging a trench to get closer to the Confederate line.

…from the Confederate side, at the top of the hill….

Each state that had soldiers in the siege put up a monument. Iowa’s was the most beautiful, in my opinion!

The United States Navy was also involved in the siege.  The USS Cairo, named after Cairo, Illinois, was a mine sweeper that was sunk in the Yazoo River, a tributary into the Mississippi.  She was in the water (and mud) for almost exactly 100 years.  She is now on display at the National Military Park.

Next stop… Montgomery and Hank’s gravesite!

I’m pretty sure the car was stopped before Vi jumped out…

Next stop was the Hank Williams’ museum downtown. Vi ran into the building… she was like a kid in a candy store!  It was pretty nice to see her so excited.  I’m not sure how long we were inside, but I’m sure it was at least an hour.  When we came out I was heading to the car to put our Hank Williams purchases in when I heard Dwayne say “Turn around and accept your thanks”.  I turned around just in time to be attacked..er.. hugged by Vi.  She was so happy and it made me feel like a good daughter-in-law.  And we weren’t done, yet.  A couple of blocks away was a statue of her idol.

She is one happy camper!

Next on the itinerary was Mobile, Alabama.  It is only a two and a half hour trip between Montgomery and Mobile, so we had a little time to kill.  Dwayne had mentioned that Vi wanted to see some antebellum-type homes, so I used my tablet (with my phone as a mobile hot-spot) and looked up any sort of plantation tours in the Mobile area.  There just so happened to be one….

This is Oakleigh Mansion in Mobile.  We got a tour (once again, no pictures inside) right before they closed up for the day.  It was very nice inside and the docent had a wonderful accent (to my Yankee ear).

There are also LOTS of Live Oak trees in the south.

It was beautiful… and very humid.  We had been fortunate to hit a time when the temperatures were “cooler and less humid” than normal.  Although it was still pretty muggy for “us northerners”!

We ate before we found a hotel for the night and we ended up passing our next destination.. the battleship, USS Alabama.  And there happened to be a hotel right next to it… and they just happened to have a couple of rooms facing the battleship!

They even light it up at night (although I, obviously, don’t know how to use my camera in the dark…)

The next day was a long one (and the hottest one)….

We started with the battleship…

This is Commodore Dwayne

The Big Guns

You could climb inside (a tight fit) and look inside the breach

This is what the sailors had to look through on deck…

This is as high as we could get above deck

This would not be a good sight to see if you are on the other side of the fight…

A beautiful ship

On the way down the pier to get this shot, I looked at my mother-in-law with her sunglasses on.  She was missing a lens and didn’t even know it.  We laughed about this the rest of the trip!

When we left Mobile, we headed west along the Gulf Coast on Highway 90 and stopped to put our feet in the Gulf of Mexico near Biloxi, Mississippi.

Vi got an up close look at a Great Blue Heron.  He wasn’t too happy we interrupted his fishing.

Saw footprints in the sand of the sandpiper…

and the gull…

so we added our own.

We had supper in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana that evening at Landry’s, suggested by KWWL’s very own Bob Waters.  It was excellent!

The next day we visited the Tabasco factory on Avery Island south of Lafayette.

Every bottle of Tabasco in the world comes out of this factory.  They produce 700,000 bottles a day for 120 countries in 22 different languages!  We were there on a Friday and they do maintenance on Fridays.  They happened to be bottling for Sweden while we were there due to the approach of future Hurricane Isaac.  Also on the Island is Bird City and the Jungle Gardens.  This was the only day we had rain while we were sightseeing.  Fortunately, we drove most of the route and, when we did get it out of the car, it was warm.

Nesting area for Snowy Egrets among other migratory birds.

And here is a Great Egret butt.  Actually, I don’t know how great it is, but that’s what they call it….

The Cleveland Tree…  I think they told us it was on the property when they set up the Gardens and named it after President Grover Cleveland.  It is huge!

There is even a Buddha on the property!

There are signs for alligators

Our first time around, it was raining and we didn’t get out of the car.  After the rain took a break, we drove back to the area.  We got out of the car and….

Don’t worry, Vi did NOT go in for alligator food.  We didn’t see any right away.  Although, I think all of our laughing brought them out….

We saw five of them, all around two feet long.  We did not see Mom, but we did see a path that was a lot wider than the kiddies looked.  We only stayed a little longer… we got back in the car as the rain moved back in!

We got out of Dodge (really Shreveport) before the Hurricane moved in.  We left Louisiana Saturday morning, spent a lot of time in Arkansas, including stopping at a Rock Shop (where we bought a new addition to our garden), drove through Joplin, Missouri to check out the cleanup from last year’s EF5 tornado and got to Vi’s house around 8 in the evening.  We slept well that night!

All in all, the trip went well!  I’ll have to tell my mom about all the fun she missed.

I’ll save other pictures of some of the plants I saw on the trip in another blog.  I think I’ve bored you enough!

Dig it!

 

Posted under Vacation

This isn’t garden related, but today is our baby’s birthday.  Barney turns 4!

He is a Maine Coon and even two years ago wouldn’t fit in the cat bed.. although he keeps trying!

Here he is keeping the others herded on the chair….

Maine Coons are generally large cats, although when younger, they can fit in some areas….

He doesn’t do this anymore… at least not while we are around.  I’m not sure he can fit anymore.

Maine Coons age a little slower than other cats and don’t mature until around 4, so Barney should be considered a mature adult now.  I still don’t think he has a legal ID in order to drink, though.

And, no, the following pictures are NOT after having a few too many…

Barney is the most relaxed cat I have ever seen.  Not much bothers him.

 

He enjoys a good pillow, too.

Even if the pillow is supposed to be at the front door keeping the cold out!

Happy Birthday, Fuzzy Butt!

Dig it!

Posted under General

Late last September I planted a bunch of garlic cloves in one of our raised beds. We used the end of our harvest from last year’s crop of garlic.

 

A few weeks ago, we pulled up what grew and built a “drying rack” for the garlic.  We ended up with 83 heads of beautiful, wonderful, tasty garlic!

We let it dry for two weeks and then I cleaned off the heads and trimmed the stems.  I didn’t get a chance to tie them together to hang, so they got to spend a few days in a bucket in our basement.

Once I got around to tying them up, it didn’t take very long and now we have some of the best tasting bulbs in the world hanging in our utility room.

 

I can hardly wait to get next year’s crop in the ground!  I’ll have to wait until the tomatoes that are in the bed are finished producing.  They are just starting to produce, so I’ll have to wait a little bit.  Actually, I have to wait until late September, early October anyway.  That is when you are supposed to plant garlic.  I’ll keep you updated!

Until then, we are keeping the vampires at bay!

Dig it!

Posted under Summer

Last week was the Benton County Fair.  The Youth Garden kids picked some of the Garden produce and entered the Open category of the Fair.  They did pretty good for their first time.

 

They got second for one using six to nine items in a display….

….and they got first for five items in a display.

 

Way to go, kids!  We’ll enter even more displays next year!

Dig it!

Posted under Youth Garden