Mt. Mitchell view

The air was quite clear today, post cool front pushing the heat from the Southern Appalachians for a while.

Here were two views from Mt. Mitchell today.

Click to see the larger images!

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Trees in sunset light

The late evening light illuminated the ravine forest in sunset.  Neither of my cameras (iPhone 6 or venerable Nikon D100) did it justice -- not surprisingly.

They were surprisingly equivalent in the flattened light that they captured.  This is a photoshopped version of the iPhone image.

Still not what I saw in the magical evening light.

More fireflies

They're flashing from ground level to canopy again this evening. Magical.

I poked around to see if I could find a decent image to share, with no luck (either highly enhanced images or not very good ones).

Certainly my camera(s) can't do justice to the biological flashing in the dark, programmed by selection to attract mates. It's lovely to watch and an unexpected summer treat.

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A pop-up flower shop

My garden group (an eclectic federated garden club) recently had a meeting where we created flower arrangements to go to a local hospice care facility.

One of our members is a nurse there, and a couple (that are new members) suggested the program.

It was delightful.

We all brought flowers and foliage from our own gardens, or snagged flowers from commercial outlets, and we created MANY lovely arrangements.

 It was a great experience, and hopefully brought some remembrance and respite to folks at the hospice facility.

Fireflies

It's not easy to get photos of fireflies, but just imagine their flashing from ground level to canopy.

We've been treated to evening displays for days now. Lovely, and unexpected.

Normally, we'd have sucessional waves, from ground to canopy over weeks, not days - so it's a treat to see the night sky full of flashes.

Years ago, in Maryland, we saw similar views in the canopy forest below the house we rented in summer (while during field work). Nice to see that again in our urban ravine forest behind the house.

 

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Morning view

Orchid, cyclamen and banana bran muffins

 

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Sunset at Beaver Lake

A favorite morning walk (at Beaver Lake in North Asheville) is also a wonderful evening stroll. 

The light and clouds were exceptional this evening, with Woody on a post-dinner walk.

Another bear saunters by

Eating dinner out on the deck this evening brought another bear sighting.  This fellow was larger, with an ear tag, so wasn't the younger fellow of a couple of days ago.

He checked out (the empty) bird feeder, poked around a bit, and headed up the ravine (towards town). 

I hope he turned around and headed back down, towards more woods and the larger neighborhood...

So this is the 4th bear sighting in our urban Western NC site.

A young bear helping himself

A morning fuss from Woody (our Golden retriever) had me looking from the deck (what was he barking so vigorously about?)

It turned out to be a young (presumably) male black bear, quite small, who was helping himself to the black oil sunflower seeds in the feeder.

According to our neighborhood list-serve, he must have just been wandering through our end of the neighborhood.  We're close to downtown, so don't normally get visits. 

This is just the third bear we've seen in 7+ years.  They've all involved the bird feeder -- so no seeds for a while...  He was so small, I just let him eat the seeds, without doing too much shooing away.

The power of water: Niagara Falls

We'd never visited Niagara Falls before.

It always sounded touristy; years ago, driving from Maryland to Toronto, I skirted the falls, avoiding what I thought would be tacky tourist stuff (the edges of town at that time were downtrodden, to be sure).

But traveling this time, from Western North Carolina to Toronto and back, visits on both sides of the falls were powerful experiences.  The falls are massive, of course, but standing next to some of the major "drops" (on the American side) are remarkable, both for power and sound.

I took a couple of videos (on my new iPhone), which recorded the sounds of the water, too.

Toronto Music Garden: a remarkable garden experience

I was reminded while visiting one of North America's great cities recently (Toronto) how easily many city dwellers can become disconnected from nature.  Opportunities to experience nature become both more precious as well as perhaps more important, too.

A luminous visit to the Toronto Music Garden, listening to the wonderfully crafted audio guide as part of the visit, I was struck by a comment in an audio snippet (describing the dance forms).  The commentator mentioned that during Bach's time, people in Europe were very much still part of nature, even living in cities, where he said, birds, animals, and the more gritty realities of life were always evident.

Interesting to contemplate, in an antiseptic age where it's quite easy to see nothing particularly natural while walking along a city street, much less hear birdsong. 

So it's always a delightful experience to seek out those places that do remind us of the natural world, whether restored, created, or evoked.

The Toronto Music Garden and its surrounding restored wetland areas are places that give respite and restore the spirit, for sure.

Summertime, summertime...

Is it spring or fall?

Several years ago, I purchased this native fall-blooming aster, but each year it has bloomed in both the late spring and early fall.  Its breaking of bud dormancy may be caused by the same length of day as its correct blooming time. Whatever its problem, we do enjoy its surprise show each June. 

Anthill built into a yucca plant. 

Imported red fire ants!

A question from a reader: "We are trying to keep our yard as pesticide free as possible, however, we are having a lot of trouble with fire ants. We have a two year old who keeps getting worse and worse reactions to their bites. Can you give me any suggestions for dealing with the problem in a healthy way?"

My answer: Oh, I hate those imported red fire ants and I too suffer from nasty reactions to their stings.

- Boiling water works quickly: pour directly on the top of the hill in a slow steady stream so that it erodes a deep hole into the center of the nest. Warning: this will also kill any plant roots in the area.
- Disruption and cold water will take at least 2 sessions. You dig or rake away the whole top of the hill and then pour a whole watering can (2 or 3 gallons) of water over the area.
- Grits or rice poured on the top of the hill do not work.
- If you must use pesticide, use a bait type which will be taken into the next by workers.
- Never use a landscape-wide pesticide.

I did not use boiling water on the anthill pictured here because it would have killed the yucca. I quickly raked the hill down to soil level with a leaf rake and then poured a whole watering can on the spot. I also poured water on it the next day and then they were gone and I did not receive any ant stings in the process. Yay! 

I was in central Florida and pulled over to snap some photos of these native 12' tall hibiscus (Hibiscus coccineus).

At Riverbend Park in Jupiter, I stopped to take a photo of this native seven sisters lily (Crinum americanum).

What were they thinking?

Back in 2007, the people in this Clay County house that we pass on a regular basis planted 12 queen palms along their fence and directly under the wires. Only 2 of the 12 have survived the winters here in north Florida.

Why do people plant (and more importantly, continue to sell) these queen palms (Syagrus romanzoffiana) in North Florida? Here are the four big reasons why you should find another palm for your landscape:
1) Queen palms are tropical plants and are NOT cold tolerant. If the temperatures dip below 25º F, most of its fronds will die. After a cold winter, if the palm's growing stem survives, it'll look terrible for six months or longer.
2) Unlike most palms, queens are not wind resistant. In a tabulation of trees lost in the hurricanes in 2004 and 2006, queens blew over twice as much as any other palm.
3) Queen palms are not drought tolerant and will require irrigation to survive our seven-moth dry season, especially during a prolonged drought period.
4) Queen palms produce a huge amount of seed, which quickly becomes a smelly mess. Plus in central and south Florida, queens palms have invaded our natural habitats and are listed on the II Florida invasives list put together by the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council (FLEPPC).

And speaking of tropical weather...

Our 5-month wet season began on June 1.

You know it's summer when thunderheads are a daily occurrence. We thought we were going to get a nice cooling shower on a 95-degree day, but no. As ominous as this looked, it dissipated quickly and we didn't receive any rain this day.

Cooking to the harvest

A tabbouleh harvest includes a sprig of mint, curly parsley, garlic chives, and meadow garlic bulbs (not shown) . The parsley has begun to bolt, so it's time to harvest it all. A good chunk of it went into a 3-day tabbouleh--so called because my husband makes enough to provide the main course dinner for the two of us for three days.

For our tabbouleh recipe, read my post From compost to dinners. And if you look in the harvest photo above, you can see some marigolds growing among the Greek oregano. I've planted most of my marigold cover crop for the summer. The marigolds deter root-knot nematodes when planted as a cover crop and dug into the soil a few weeks before planting the fall crops. See my post Results: the nematode experiment for the details of the how and why.

I have been filling up my dance card for this fall. Be sure to check out the Appearances Page to find public events near you.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

Sedums at Toronto Botanical Garden

These were delightful mixes of sedums and their friends in carefully planted boxes along the path.

They're largely the sort that need to be brought in over winter;  glorious, never the less!

Dogs at the Evergreen Brickworks

Waiting for their humans to return.

A luminous sculpture (of the Don watershed)

There's no way that my photographs can convey how magical this (living and dripping) sculpture was (at the Evergreen Brickworks in Toronto -- a reclaimed old brickworks space that was a wonderful and inspirational place to visit).

The sculpture depicted the Don River watershed in pipes, water, and plants -- dripping continuously.

It was remarkable.

Serviceberries

I've really enjoyed foraging serviceberries (Amelanchier spp.) that have been planted as ornamentals around our mountain town.  They hadn't been on our radar before, but the nearby visitor center has lots of trees (planted for their spring flowering interest), but often loaded with berries in June.

I managed to harvest berries from two sites, before leaving town.

Interesting to note the difference in cultivar color in ripe berries!

These collections were both converted to low-sugar jam....