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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