Do You Know Snow Squarestem?

Great purple hairstreak on a snow squarestem.Snow squarestem or salt and pepper (Melanthera nivea), a member of the daisy family (Asteraceae), attracts a high volume of butterflies, skippers, bees, wasps and even hummingbirds. It has only white disk florets in its flower head. Unlike a sunflower, it...

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Cats in the Landscape Controversy

 USA Today posted an article House cats kill more critters than thought by Elizabeth Weise, which reported on a study where 60 cats near Athens Geogia were outfitted with tiny crittercams to record what they did while they roamed around their neighborhoods. The results were startling and showed...

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Beans

Yard-long beans, greasy-cut beans, Italian Romano beans, and French filet pole beans have been on the menu for weeks, but the supply finally overwhelmed our ability to eat them in a timely fashion.So, it was time to start blanching them to freeze, and this nice assortment has ended up as freezer packages...

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Front meadow

I really wish I had a decent camera at the moment - the iPad 2 is pretty minimal (awful, actually). I miss my trusty Nikon D100 left at home in the Piedmont through forgetfulness and a hurried exit!But I enjoyed the front meadow this evening, and even these sub-par photos reflect the scene. (As an addendum,...

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Two Geezers and a Shed!

The garden shed in its original place was too far from the house to be useful.When we purchased our house back in 2004, it came with an 8 x 10 foot garden shed about 180 feet behind the house, which is about half way down to the lake. In this position, it was too far from the house and garage to store...

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Tromboncino squash

The tromboncino squash are starting to come on strongly - just as the older leaves are starting to decline, first yellowing and then looking ratty, and finally dying. Most unattractive for a front garden trellis. So I've been spending some time 'grooming' the vines. Hmm. At least the scarlet runner...

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Weeding

Back home in the Piedmont for a couple of days, I devoted time to tidying the main vegetable garden and satellite garden for fall planting.  "Tidying" is a wimpy word for the weeding involved, but happily, enough recent rain has left the soil pliant enough for easy pulling of even the Italian dandelion volunteers (from an original plant that I had deliberately cultivated years ago).What was I...

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