Lots more photos and reflections to come

A

We've had a wonderful trip around the Argentinian Lake District, across to Chile and down the Carretera Austral, returning up the Ruta 40 on the Argentina side, now back in Buenos Aires for a few days before returning home. Gravel roads, dust, isolation, fiords, mountains, Valdivian rain forests, glacial lakes, posadas, trout, and merluza - all part of the journey, along with a short trip on the "Patagonian Express" - La Trochita, which now circles through a remarkable landscape of steppe, desert-shrub, and multicolored mountains from Esquel.

 

Our travels took us through vast landscapes of amazing diversity - it's going to take time to sort through all of the photos -and properly write about the experiences.

 

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Bariloche, Argentina Lake District, Patagonia

View from Cerro Campanario

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A wish for a greener 2015

I wish you and yours a wonderful and bountiful New Year!!

A frosty reddish leaf lettuce.

Winter vegetables

Here in Florida, even here in North Florida where we receive several killing frosts each winter, we can grow most cool weather crops right through the winter. In most of the country, gardeners spend winter wishing they could garden, while we enjoying our "Salad Days."

One of the main reasons we wrote "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida" was to alleviate frustration of gardeners new to Florida trying to use their old, general garden books written for Anywhere, U.S.A. They just don't work here.

Growing some of your vegetables is good for you and your family, plus it helps to make Mother Earth a little greener.

Salad days! From the knife clockwise: dill, chard, 3 types of leaf lettuces, garlic chives, meadow garlic, & sugar snap peas. Not shown are Greek oregano and rosemary.

The sugar snap pea, a hybrid  of a snow pea and a shell pea, was introduced in the 1970s. They've become quite popular because they’re easy to grow, have a sweet taste, and are versatile in the kitchen.

Whether you call them beggarticks, Spanish needles, or Bidens alba,
this pioneer species really knows ho to take over any disturbed soil
in your landscape. The bonus is that these seedlings are edible.

Use more sustainable gardening methods to save time and money in 2015

There are many ways to be more efficient in your gardening and maintenance and still have a beautiful landscape. You'll still have issues to deal with like a beggartick attack as shown in this photo, but how you deal with them makes all the difference. 

I boiled all these methods down into just 6 steps for my post over on the Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens blog: 6 easy ways to save time & money in your landscape.

My treatment for the beggartick seedlings is to gently uproot the seedlings by rubbing the surface of the soil with my gloved hand and then cover with mulch, usually leaves or chipped wood. This minimizes the soil disturbance, which would bring out a bunch of other seedlings and discourages others from taking root there. It also uses natural mulches that are free.

Lawn asters 

One of the 6 topics is to urge people to switch over to freedom lawns and only for lawn that they'll actually use. Our lawn has been free of pesticides,fertilizer, and overwatering for 10 years. Most of the time it is just as green as our neighbors' expensive and high maintenance lawns. In some place the St. Augustine grass is doing very well with our regimen, but in other places a variety of different plants has grown in as you can see here in these lawn aster photos.

I just turned in the final edits for my 3rd book "The Art of Maintaining a Florida Native Landscape," which will be published in August. Yay! It continues the theme of sustainable gardening, but this time I cover the reality of living with native or mostly native landscapes. It has been fun and educational to write and I hope you'll like it.

A freedom lawn supports many different species.

Christmas Eve sunrise included a gift of a full arching rainbow.

May you have a wonderful 2015.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Speaking out

Senator Rob Bradley and me.

The 2014 Clay County Delegation hearing

Each year the 3 elected officials to the Florida legislature representing Clay County—a senator and 2 representatives—hold a hearing before the legislative session begins. This year the committee work begins in January and the general session begins on March 4th. (The only date during the year that calls for action. Get it? March 4th.)

After introductions of the delegation members and their staff people, the normal agenda was interrupted for a heart-rending testimony of a mother holding her child with brain cancer pleading for more freedom in choosing medicines including restricted substances.

Then came the parade of the local elected officials from the county, the 3 incorporated towns, the school board, the clerk of court, and the supervisor of elections. They all made cases for more money for their various projects. The one surprise was the clerk of court's problem of the lower crime rate meaning less money in fines that are normally used to run the court.

Charitable groups like the Council on Aging, a group that works to employ people with disabilities, an orphanage, 2 groups that work with at risk children, a group that rehabs houses for veterans, and more also described their needs. A couple of people with cancer made their cases for medical use or restricted substances and that the exceptions shouldn't be just for children. A breast cancer survivor made the case for medical coverage of compression garments that are needed for people whose lymph glands have been removed during their cancer treatments. People from Keystone Heights (where the lakes are drying up) plead for more help to direct surplus water to their lakes. Someone wanted to ban all billboards from Florida.

For the past few years I've made a point of attending this hearing to be the one person speaking on behalf of Florida's native ecosystems. See my handout and summary of my remarks below.

It was a very long night. The hearing was supposed to be from 4pm to 6pm, but it lasted until 7:30pm.

I hope that you are speaking up for Mother Nature, too. She doesn't have paid lobbyists and needs all the advocates she can get.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

Politicians and others working the room before the meeting starts.  More seats filled up when the session actually started.

Handout & summary of my presentation

Dec. 16, 2014
To: The Clay County Delegation
From: Ginny Stibolt  gstibolt@sky-bolt.com  904 XXX_XXX

Issue #1: Florida is the "Sunshine State."

As the nation's 3rd largest consumer of energy, Florida needs to develop smarter energy policies, which may not necessarily more profitable to the monopolies that run our power grid. In at least one district, when power consumption decreased the rates were jacked up to keep the stockholders happy. Power should be supplied as a public service in our society and the customers should not be used as a profit center. Florida is also 3rd in the nation for solar potential, but 18th for installed solar systems and by 2016 solar will reach grid parity.

As a step in the right direction, you passed the Florida Energy Act in 2006, which offered rebates to individuals and businesses to install solar systems. The funding has been gutted as approved by the appointed Public Service Commission, which has caved to the power companies' pressure. Scott appointed these people and the fact that 2 power companies have contributed more than $2,500,000 to Scott's campaign means that this commission works for the monopolies and not for the Public. Maybe it should be renamed the Power Company Service Board.

More than one power company has applied for fracking in Florida to find oil and gas for its power sources. Fracking is expensive, uses huge amounts of water mixed chemicals that will pollute our already stressed aquifers, and has caused sinkholes. Fracking should never be allowed in Florida, but you passed bills HB71 & HB 157 that allowed frackers to keep those polluting chemicals that they are mixing with the water a secret. The customers pay the bill for this exploration and environmental ruin. The irony here is that all this irreparable damage to Florida's fragile ecosystems to extract gas and oil would be totally unnecessary if the companies just switched to solar.

There has to be a way to organize the solar effort so that it works for the power companies, so that they never have to build another power plant. Instead they can manage a grid of solar panels: 1) that they install and own, such as in parking lots, 2) that they install on roofs and lease out to businesses or individuals, and 3) by putting privately owned panels on the grid with 2-way meters. If these utility companies don't get to charge their customers for new power plants, they may not make as much money for their shareholders. Shouldn't the public be served with fair policies for their power?

Issue #2: Amendment #1, funding of the Land Acquisition Trust Fund

75% of the voters passed this amendment, which as close to a mandate as we get around here. Do not gut the will of the people to preserve more of the Real Florida. Everyone knows that tourism is our largest job creator, but tourists are not going come to our state to visit a dried up spring, a polluted river cover with green slime, or to see yet another abandoned shopping center. So use the money as mandated and not for sewer systems that would allow even more development. Please don't undo other environmental funding because this money is again available. This is for new projects.

I'm appalled that more than 70 people showed up in Bradenton last week for a hearing of the 10 members of the Acquisition and Restoration Council that recommends land purchases for the Florida Forever conservation program, but the council members did not show. Even the council’s chairwoman, a high-ranking official with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, skipped the public hearing. How rude. The people of Florida deserve better from our state officials.

Issue #3: Redistricting

Why am I worried about your handling of Amendment #1? Because in 2010 63% of the voters passed the Fair Districts Amendment and you have spent more than $6,000,000 for legal fees, billed us for special sessions, used secret email accounts to bypass the constitution. And we still have District 5 that is the very definition of gerrymandering. Is this the best you can do?



Rob Bradley's response to redistricting:
The way the Fair Districts Amendment was written guarantees allowances for districts like District 5. I've known Rob for 10 years and worked with him when he was the lawyer for our special tax district that manages the lakes in our neighborhood. He was on the redistricting committee which had little choice in how that district was drawn. He said that the writers of the amendment either did not know the ramifications of the language or they lied about it—maybe both. Now it will be very difficult to change this situation since it's in our constitution.

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Journeying

I went on a wonderful trip a couple of years ago to visit naturalistic gardens in Germany.  (This group of posts reflects on that trip and beyond).

Traveling solo creates a different experience than traveling with others, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it, spending reflective time as well as active time. 

Of course, traveling with a like-minded companion is wonderful, too.  Garden-visiting in the company of other gardeners is in that category, too.  I'm definitely excited about going to Toronto for my sixth Garden Bloggers Fling in June.  The smiles on our faces reflected the great time we had last year in Portland.

Thanks for the great photo, Helen!

Janet, Daricia, me, and Julie (all Carolina garden bloggers)

And traveling, whether alone or with others, can be such a source of self-discovery as well as a way to connect with the commonalities and differences of lives and cultures in parts of the world very different from my own.

As I'm off for another winter break journey, I'm thinking about what it means to share time in other places and cultures, and the enriching and remarkable experiences that result.

We can journey in our own places in the world, too, of course, and I'm a believer in gardening and learning about nature as a path to creativity and sense of place.

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Winter

This is a good time of the year, for me, as we move through the "holiday season" and pass through the Winter Solstice, in the Northern Hemisphere. 

Here in the Southeastern U.S., we have 4 distinct seasons, to be sure, but winter isn't normally too difficult, unless you're high up in the mountains (Southern Appalachians).

Many of you, who might read this, are in MUCH farther northern areas than I am, so count me a wimpy winter person;  I'm mindful of that.

I spent an academic year in Germany several decades ago, and thought the winter was pretty darn difficult and dark. Light at 8 am, twilight at 3:30- 4 pm. I was not happy, although I loved the festive season around Christmas, and the holiday markets.

Holiday lights, the Solstice to come, and longer days all beckon. 

And I'm glad to have a dose of Southern hemisphere summer for a few weeks, too. When we return in early January, it's not so long until the early flowers of Asian species pop out, and our native woodland wildflowers are not long behind.

It was fun to read my older posts tagged winter!  Perhaps you'll enjoy them, too.

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More holiday thoughts

This is really another test Blogsy post.
Here's Woody on the trail. It's hard to leave him at home, when we're traveling, but he's always in good hands.

Posted with Blogsy

Geez, it actually worked!

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Christmas lights

I was reminded, thinking about Christmas, and traveling to come, and various places that we've been over the holidays - of the wonderful lights in Lecce, in Southern Italy some years back.

They were magical, above the streets of the old town's (now) pedestrian walkways.
 

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Traveling over winter break

Holidays are interesting times. We're heading off on Friday for three weeks of traveling, and I've been making sure everything is "battened down" here at home, etc. with house-sitters, mail and newspapers held, plant care instructions, and bills paid in advance, etc. etc.

It's a familiar dance, but is always a bit stressful (an understatement) to make sure everything is taken care of! I'm blessed to be able to travel, for sure.

We're headed to mountains, forests, and streams, with long summer days this time of the year (in Argentina). We'll be in Buenos Aires for a bit, but then mostly in the Argentinian Lake District (Northern Patagonia).

It's always interesting to see how Christmas and New Year's are celebrated in wherever we are; I expect a combination of restrained celebration with over-the-top commercial stuff, too. We'll see.

But most importantly, it'll be fascinating to explore the drier side of the Andes, too.  We visited the Chilean side (the wetter side) 12 years ago on a wonderful trip, which included a much farther south trek through Torres del Paine and Punta Arenas.

Lake Pehoe refugio at Torres del Paine National Park

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Woody's perch

I thought I had some better photos of Woody's perch.  He looks so delightful when we return from dinner or an outing without him (not frequent....)

A rescue boy, with an affinity for getting into trouble (think cat poop, decomposing debris, etc., with resulting MAJOR digestive issues, and expensive vet bills), he's become an indoor fellow, in spite of his size. 

He gets very long walks several times a day, so no need to feel sorry for him.

He snoozes most of the day, but when we're away from the house, he loves his perch!

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Connecting with nature through art

I've had a great time tip-toeing back into doing art that connects me with nature.  Nature has been a touchstone for me, although art (aside from photography) has been absent for a long time.

Doing watercolor classes has been great fun recently, and helping me get through some of the "art blocks" that I still have.

This exercise was one of the most recent, in a class with Elizabeth Ellison, and I liked how it turned out.

So I was delighted to see (via a good friend) that I could have the image printed, put on mugs, placed on a shower curtain, or duvet.  Wow, who knew!

I'll be ordering a mug for myself -- perfect for morning coffee.

It will be a reminder to be creative every day.

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Traveling

I'm fussing around this evening trying to make sure that I remember how Blogsy works, with its tricky interfaces with photos, Picasa, etc.

It's the best option for blog posting on an iPad, still, apparently. I first used it 2 years ago in Germany, then a bit in the Caribbean.

In Colombia last winter, Google refused to recognize that I might be traveling, without a smart phone to receive a text message to confirm that I actually was "me."

They actually did that again this evening, when I'm home, just because I accessed Picasa (which they own) from an unfamiliar device (iPad), and hadn't done so for quite awhile. Hhmrph.

Posting photos hardly seems like a high-security endeavour. And, of course, they'd like to have me switch my log-in to my Blogger account (also a Google group) to a gmail account, even though they don't allow using a gmail account as a secondary "security" email -- go figure.

In any case, a few weeks without posting anything is not the end of the world, but it's become a touchpoint and reflection for me. I may need to fall back on notebook and pencil, which isn't a bad thing.

Today, I'm thinking that the fall color is stretching on -- with the oak leaf hydrangea out my study window still vibrant and the blueberries in the front now a scarlet red.

Hmm, I'll have to add the photo for that from my desktop! I'm still blocked from logging into to Picasa, for some reason.

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Wonderful fall color

The fall color just continues -- it's surprising. Maybe the mild weather has held the brilliant red leaves of the oak leaf hydrangeas still?

Here's what they looked liked a couple of weeks ago, and have the upper leaves echoing this still.

And the blueberry leaves have turned a lovely scarlet color, too. (I wish I had my camera!)

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Japanese persimmons

I should have persimmons to harvest about now, but don't, thanks to some sort of voracious herbivore (the fruits would have been VERY astringent when they disappeared.

The small tree that had produced them came with us to the Piedmont over twenty years ago.  I've written about that journey and its atftermath before.

Persimmon fruits (on an old tree)

It struggled quite a bit in its early years, and has never been truly robust, but often has produced 20-30 fruits.

That's what what it looked like would happen this year.  HMM. Deer, squirrels, woodchucks?  Very puzzling.

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A wonderful witch hazel

The witch hazel in the front is in full flower now.  It's beautiful.  My camera is "in the shop" so I'm just imprinting what it looks like to memory.

The beautiful fall color of the leaves (a buttery yellow) are lovely, and now past, but what's wonderful now is the flowers --they festoon the now small tree (it's no longer a shrub) with dainty yellow -- dancing in the light.

fall witch hazel

 This image of fall leaves and flowers, from several years ago, gives you an idea of the magic that this witch hazel creates.

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French Broad views

There's a lovely trail up along the Deer Park Trail at the Biltmore Estate.  It starts at the lagoon and goes up to the Walled Garden and the "house."

We had a lovely hike there this morning, so I remembered these views from earlier in fall, on a similar hike.

There were a couple of red-headed woodpeckers working snags nearby.  Their solid red heads and white patches clearly distinguished them; they're not birds that I've seen recently, although distinctive; red-bellied woodpeckers are much more common.

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Winter views and sculptural trees

The winter views have become amazing in the mountains.  The clear air, trees sculpturally outlined in the distance.  Wonderful.

I'd posted about this tree some years ago.

Happily, I'm still enjoying the view of it, along the horizon as I walk up past the visitor center and towards the bridge into downtown.  This was a close-up view; the walk view encompasses the mountains beyond.

along the horizon

 I was reminded of this tree, as we enjoyed a spectacular sunset from a nearby park.

My camera - a trusty early Nikon D100-- is being serviced, and my favorite (very versatile) lens repaired -- both dinosaurs, I'm sure, but they're what I'm used to, and I haven't yet added a smart phone with perfect optics, etc. to my digital life.

So I'll be revisiting older images for a while.

oak at Biltmore

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Late fall view

 I've spent a lot of time in my study lately, proofing final book copy.  One of the joys was seeing the oak-leaf hydrangea next to the porch turn a vivid scarlet.

They don't always do that.  This one has been happy in the almost total shade, and even though slow-growing, has thrived.

view from my study

vivid fall leaves

from our bedroom door

 I feel a bit wistful about this fall, as it's our last one here.  It's been a beautiful one.

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Yard critters

A green treefrog (Hyla cinerea) jumped out of the beggar ticks (Bidens alba) that I had pulled from the front garden.

A bagworm (Oiketicus abbotii) is overwintering on a beautyberry bush.

Managing exuberance carefully

I allow some beggar ticks (Bidens alba) and snow squarestem (Melanthera nivea) to grow in restricted areas to attract all those pollinators. But in the fall, I harvest those that have escaped to other places in the landscape to reduce the population and weeding the next year, at least to some degree. So last week I started pulling and a cute green treefrog that was using these stems for shelter jumped out of the cart. And the frog is just the wildlife that is evident. There could be hundreds of bugs snuggled inside these stems for the winter. Instead of leaving these stalks out with the yard waste, I add them to various brush piles, so those insects will have a chance to make it through the winter. The songbirds also use the brush piles for shelter, so they may appreciate the seeds, and maybe even some of those hidden bugs. 

Nearby, I spotted this bagworm (probably Oiketicus abbotii) hanging from a beautyberry branch. This moth is different than most, in that it gathers plant parts to stick to itself as a caterpillar to build protection. When its ready to pupate, it glues its portable shelter to a secure location and seals itself inside. When the female reaches the adult phase, she will be flightless and will emit pheromones to attract males. When a male arrives, they mate inside her sack where she lays her eggs and dies. The new larvae feed on her remains and other food that she's stored there. When ready, the new larvae head out on their own, often on a long strings of silk that balloon in the wind so the larvae swing away from each other. Isn't Mother Nature amazing?

Fall goldenrods! 

I planted seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens)  this spring thinking it would be similar to the sweet goldenrod  (S. ordora), which volunteers in my yard, but no. It bloomed later in the season and it attracted a different set of bees. Normally I see carpenter bees with their shiny abdomens, but these are real bumble bees (probably Bombus impatiens).

An insect wove an overwintering shelter within the flattop goldenrod (Euthamia caroliniana) inflorescence, so I'll leave this stalk standing, and if I'm lucky, I'll find out what's inside this cocoon.

The spiny orbweaver!

Spiny orbweaver (Gasteracatha cancriformis): I found this beautiful spider doing her work in a gap on the far side of our driveway. 

We loved seeing this beautiful little spider and the hand lens came in handy to see her up close. It's been a couple of weeks since I took these photos, but she occupies this same gap in the trees in our mostly wild area on the far side of the driveway. We've had some high wind events and a frost, but she's still out there. She has had to reweave her orb at least 4 or 5 times since we've been aware of her, but she may have been there for months before that.

The markings on her back look sorta like a smiley face and those 6 red spines look fierce. Isn't this a cool find? Of course, the reason we have all of the critters is that we have used no landscape-wide pesticides since 2004. If you'd like to improve habitat for birds in your yard, you must invite the bugs. It's time to break that poison cycle. Read my post: A poison is a poison is a poison for details on the whys and hows.

I called my husband out to see her. She's small, so this hand lens is useful.

Suspended above my garden glove, you can see how small she is.

The sun makes the seeds of this bluestem grass (Andropogon sp.)
shimmer. How beautiful.

The Disney Wildlife Preserve

Last Saturday I headed down to Kissimmee to the Nature Conservancy's Disney Wildlife Preserve for a Florida Native Plant Society board meeting. It was great to see old friends and meet new ones. The morning presentation was really interesting, the pot luck lunch was an eclectic collection of yummy stuff, and then in the afternoon I met with Marjorie Shropshire to talk through the plans for the next book. Marjorie illustrated both "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida" and "The Art of Maintaining a Florida Native Landscape," which will be released in August 2015. Now we are working on the proposal for book #4. Stay tuned for more details.

Our discussion was delayed while we took photos of this wonderful Florida praying mantid. It was near my shoulder, so I felt like Jiminy Cricket was there to give me advice. "Don't poison your landscape," she whispered in my ear.

A Florida praying mantid (Stagmomantis floridensis) behind my shoulder at the Disney Wildlife Preserve.
Marjorie took this photo because I did not want to disturb this magnificent insect.

Seasonal colors

Here in north Florida, we don't get the rich fall colors that you see farther north, but the Virginia creeper (Pathenocissus quinquefolia) lights up the landscape. And its blue berries feed the winter birds.

Even in Florida, there is some color as we move into winter. Virginia creeper provides reliable color and the way it is festooned across the vegetation, it make everything look festive. And speaking of that, I wish you and yours a bountiful Thanksgiving. I hope you'll be able to provide at least some of your family's meal from your edible garden.

Green gardening matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Waterfalls and wildflowers

I'm fortunate to live in a wonderful part of the world -- our ancient mountains are rich in biodiversity of all sorts.  And we're blessed with an abundance of waterfalls, too, throughout the mountains.

So I'm just thrilled to see the final copy of my gardening companion's second book, Waterfalls and Wildflowers of the Southern Appalachians: 30 Great Hikes, University of North Carolina Press before it goes to print.

We've just finished proofing the final text and layout, so it's right on schedule for spring release.

It looks great, but even more appealing is how Tim (aka my spouse) put it together.

He carefully sifted through an abundance of interesting hikes, which included one or more waterfalls, to choose some of the very best in terms of wildflower richness, finally deciding on thirty in the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia.

Then over a period of two years, he visited each site at least 10 times from spring into fall over a two year period, in order to pick up most all of the interesting wildflowers (lists for each hike are provided in flowering sequence, along with species profiles for 125 plants).

The hike narratives are interpretive, pointing out interesting wildflowers that you're likely to see on each hike, as well commenting on potential birds and other animals, so they're much more lively and interesting than standard "hike descriptions," in addition to the usual trail maps and location information.

I haven't been on all of these hikes yet, but their descriptions have me ready to go.

The book is available for pre-order (currently at a 40% holiday discount through UNC Press; click for details).

What excellent encouragement to slow down, observe, and enjoy the diversity of nature along the trail...

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It's been a wonderful fall

The cold and wind is pushing out the last fall leaves, but I'm reminded of what wonderful fall color that we've had in the Southeastern U.S.

The maples just went on and on and on.

view from Biltmore terrace

I was reminded about how beautiful it's been, as I looked back through some recent photographs.

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Large numbers of buzzards

There's been a large flock of buzzards coming through at sundown for the last two days.  They swirl around in long, looping circles, as they slowly progress onwards.  Curious.  There are upwards of 20 in the group.

We speculate about whether they're roosting nearby?

I'm thinking that I don't know that much about vultures, aside from their keen sense of smell and carrion-eating ways, but there's clearly a lot of interesting aspects to their behavior.  I'll have to learn more about them.

But, dinner needs to be cooked....

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