Digging RI

Note patchy hair on its back. Poor little thing.

The above photo was taken in broad daylight on my neighbor’s lawn. Foxes aren’t supposed to do this. They are supposed to be “crepuscular,” hunting and hiding, mainly at dawn and dusk – not curled up in the middle of someone’s lawn.

I spoke to a veterinarian about it and she said that it could have been rabid. Perhaps. We’ve had lots of foxes around here during the past two summers. In the evenings, the parents would emerge with their cubs and we’d often see them tumbling and playing on the lawns. Everyone enjoyed watching them and they were just part of the scene.

In fact, during certain periods in the summer we would often see foxes trotting casually down the street. So we’re used to them.

But this year’s cubs didn’t look so healthy as they grew up. We saw them several times scavenging seed under a neighbor’s bird feeder. They looked thin and their coats were patchy. Maybe something happened to the mother before she had enough time to teach them what they needed to know to hunt successfully. We’ll never know.

For these foxes, it’s going to be a very tough winter.

The meadow in October

The photo above is of my neighbor’s wildflower meadow in October. You can see the milkweed is dispersing its seed, and rudbeckia now predominates. There are a few gallardia here and there, but that’s about it.

Earlier this summer, I wrote about my complaint to the RI Department of Environmental Management, after a tree company sprayed the apple trees in the meadow, as well as all the pollinators it had attracted, and my birdbath and vegetable garden.

(OK folks, let’s plant a wildflower meadow to lure the pollinators and then kill them all with toxic chemicals. What were they thinking???????)

I explained that I had decided to give the bureaucratic system a chance, so I duly registered my complaint, which required a lengthy interview with the investigator, and waited to see if anything would happen.

Weeks went by and I heard nothing from the investigator. Finally, I telephoned her and she informed me that she had no way to confirm the wind speed the day of the spraying. This is key, because it was far too windy for the company to be spraying that day and the wind carried the chemicals into my yard.

I had checked the windsurfing site my husband subscribes to and recorded the wind speed at the time of the spraying. The  investigator emailed me to say she was unable to gather wind data from that day, and could I please give her the windsurfing website URL so she could check with them. The last communication I had from her was that she had not been able to access the site. Don’t you think it’s strange that a plant pathologist investigating a case for the state can’t obtain something as basic as wind speed data?

So there you have it. Case apparently closed. This was an ineffectual, and in my opinion, pathetic effort on the part of RIDEM. As for the “system,” I’m sorry I even bothered.

A bee on the bog salvia

Over the recent Columbus Day weekend,  we had temperatures in the mid – 80s. Weird. I remember when I was growing up in Quebec, Canada, it was not unheard of to have snow on that weekend, which is Thanksgiving there, in case you didn’t know.

We went to the beach and there were people swimming and tanning. It could have been July. There’s been a bit of frost in northern RI, but here on the coast – nothing yet. The annuals are still doing their thing, and I’m still getting eggplants.

It's summery on the salt marsh.

When I did a walk-through of the garden this morning. I watched a bee pollinating my Salvia Uliginosa, or Bog Salvia. This is a lovely cultivar, by the way. The flowers are an intense gentian blue. It is hardy only to Zone 8, so it is treated as an annual here. It is deer resistant, drought resistant and generally trouble-free. I am particularly taken with the color – a more turquoise blue than it appears in the photo.

Anyway, back to the bee: she seemed to be in a big hurry, rushing from flower to flower, desperately searching for some late season pollen. Most of it’s probably gone.

Hi, all! Auntie Beak here (remember me?). I just popped by to tell you all about an article I was just reading on NPR on heirloom vegetables. This paragraph jumped out at me:

Today, heirloom crops have become so popular, that some people treat them like precious works of art. In his book, Gettle recalls attending an auction where buckets of heirloom vegetables were being sold for around $1,000.

Rich people: just plain stupid or really incredibly stupid? I report, you decide.

Also, too, that had better have been a charity auction!

Tithonia "torch" photo: Photofarmer

While some gardeners snobbishly declare that they only grow perennials, dahling, I like mixing annuals with my perennials. In fact, my favorite annuals give so much bang for so little buck, that I wouldn’t be without them. So there.

I do like to try new annuals, and every year I attempt something different. This year, for the first time, I grew Tithonia Rotundifolia, or Mexican Sunflower. This is definitely an annual in RI, and it is grown from seed – either direct sown or started indoors. When I found myself with a blank space in my perennial border, I rooted around in my seed collection and dug out a packet of Tithonia – the yellow ones. You can also grow “Torch,” which is the deep orange one in the photo above, and there’s a red cultivar, too.

I sprinkled the seeds on the soil, covered them lightly, gave them a sprinkle of water, and forgot about them until I weeded out some 3-inch seedlings by mistake. (I hate when that happens.) I didn’t think our growing season would give them enough time to amount to much, but fast forward to October and I have a really big one, still thriving despite the beating it took from Tropical Storm Irene. It’s about 4 feet tall and 6 feet across, and provides bees and passing monarchs with something to pollinate or just rest on. The flowers are also fine for cutting.

Mine got very, very big.

Tithonia likes things hot and dry, so you don’t have to coddle it with frequent watering. Just make sure you have lots of room for this shrub-sized plant!

Montauks get big. Really big.

In October, when flowers in the gardens here in RI dwindle to a precious few, the Montauk daisy reigns supreme. The botanical name of this plant, Nipponanthemum Nipponicum provides a clue to its origin. It is indeed from Japan.

In my neighborhood, these flamboyant daisies actually look more like shrubs, forming huge clumps that are alive with late pollinators. Gardeners here know that this plant is too aggressive for the perennial border, and is best by a mailbox or dressing up a drab expanse of lawn. They do look a bit like our old stand-by shasta daisies, but they have a rather pronounced and funky perfume that I am not particularly fond of.

Montauks grow in zones 6 to 10, and need full sun. They are drought tolerant and it appears that no wildlife eat them. (Maybe because they don’t like the smell!) They are easily propagated from cuttings, but our local nurseries are full of inexpensive young plants, too.

Lots and lots of flowers

To look their bushiest and best, Montauks should be cut back severely in late May or early June. Most people don’t bother, but the plant tends to get find of bare in the center and rather floppy if you don’t.

One well-known garden website suggests planting Montauks behind smaller plants in a perennial border. I would strongly advise against this. As I mentioned earlier, these are big and sprawling, and will quickly overwhelm anything smaller nearby. Just plant them as stand-alone  specimens  and enjoy the fall show.

Blech!

It’s a sure bet that as soon as the kids head back to school, chrysanthemums  – hundreds of them – will begin to appear in a nursery or market near you.

I am not sure if this is a tradition that is particular to New England, and I would love to hear from readers in other parts of the country – and other countries, for that matter. Does everybody buy these in the fall? It sure seems like they do around here.

For years, I have followed the crowds to the chrysanthemum displays, bleating in submission as I try to pick plants with colors that I can live with. Why are the colors so muddy? And why is there never any soil in the pots?

I bring my purchases home and quickly find out that because the growers always skimp on soil, the pots are light even after having been diligently watered, so they  blow over in the slightest breeze. Then, as autumn becomes rainy, as it inevitably does around these parts, the flowers begin turning to brown mush. The final phase before they are tossed is crispy, brown, wilted foliage, jutting from an overturned plastic pot.

This scenario repeats itself over and over every year, and until this year, I was a part of it, too. But this year, I am saying a resounding NO to overpriced plants that only last a few short weeks and are just plain unsustainable.

I will not succumb to the mum!

Notice anything different? We all loved those worms – and the bee – but we thought it was time for a change so we have a new look!

Please let me know what you think, and stay tuned for more posts, rants and ramblings.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Auntie Beak for her creative input and technical expertise. So thanks, AB!

This was the only Crocosmia to come up. That's a 90% failure rate!

Last May, I wrote excitedly about my purchase of 10 Crocosmia Lucifer from Brent and Beck’s bulbs. At the same time, I also bought 10 anemone coronaria De Caen in red, white and blue colors – or at least, that’s what I thought I was buying.

I received my order, which was shipped promptly, and planted everything right away.

I was prepared to have no crocosmia flowers this summer, because I know they need time to mature. But of the 10 corms, only 3 came up at all – and yes, I followed the planting instructions that came with my order. Now, there is only a single plant. It is blooming, but I don’t even see leaves for the other nine.  I had expected most of them to at least come up. Wouldn’t you?

The next bummer was the anemone. When the plants began flowering, I first noticed that they were NOT red white and blue, but all dark pink.  To top it off, they were the double St. Brigid cultivar (which I do not like), not De Caen.

I emailed Brent and Beck’s over a month ago, and I never received a reply. I hate when that happens.

Last October, I wrote (more than some of you probably would have liked) about the pumpkin shortage here in RI. I referred to it as a “crisis” and while it may not really be as serious as that in the grand scheme of things, pumpkins are icons of fall, whether they are carved or used as decorations, or, best of all in my opinion, eaten. It is the simple pleasures of the seasons that we gardeners love, after all – simple pleasures like pumpkins.

I thought we had come through the 2010 shortage and emerged in the light of plentiful supplies for 2011. But sadly, that is not the case, so here I sit, writing about this YET AGAIN!!!

Libby’s, which sells the most canned pumpkin, blamed the 2010 shortage on too much rain. So guess what? The same thing’s happening again, only now producers from the mid west all the way to Canada are blaming flooding from Tropical Storm Irene, oh, and a nasty fungus, too. One Vermont grower said he saw 15,000-20,000 of his pumpkins wash into Lake Champlain! The flooding from Irene was horrendous there. If you would like to read more grisly details click here.

Before I move on to other things, I do have a couple of questions: wouldn’t you think that large commercial producers would have the sense to distribute their crops over different areas to avoid having everything ruined by bad weather in one place? And what is happening to my favorite canned pumpkin, “One Pie?” Once again this year – and it’s only September – the shelves are completely devoid of this wonderful product. The company has no website, no mailing address that I can find and I can’t find a phone number either, so I can’t contact them and ask what’s going on.

I used one can from my small stash last weekend, when my husband pleaded for a pumpkin pie. Now I think I’m probably down to about 4 cans. He owes me big time.

If you see One Pie pumpkin anywhere, please let me know.