Poinsettia Ponderings

It has been a crazy busy fall for me and this blog and my Twitter account have been two of the casualties. I’m still keeping up with my writing, though and plan to get these peripheral things back on track soon so I can prepare for the coming of the spring gardening season.

This is not the greatest photo as I just took it as the light was beginning to wane. Also, this poinsettia is a bit past it’s prime. Before the holiday season I wrote two articles on these plants and squirreled them away so I didn’t have that worry. They are “How to select and care for a poinsettia plant” and “How to rebloom a poinsettia plant”. (I plan to take my own advice and rebloom this guy down the line.) Oh, and I learned why I could never correctly spell poinsettia over the years. I was spelling it as “pointsettia”. Duh.

Eagles at Chincoteague

A couple of weeks ago we went on another trip to the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. Now, every time we’ve gone there we heard about eagles. There used to be a video monitor in the visitor’s center, which showed some baby eagles in a nest. But, we never saw any until this last trip. Note that there are two here, and one flew by just as we saw these. This was on the wildlife loop in the late afternoon.

Tobacco at the Maryland State Fair

One thing that I always enjoy at the Maryland State Fair is seeing the many different varieties of things that people grow in our state. There are heirloom watermelons such as Moon and Stars ( a personal favorite), nuts such as walnuts and pecans, grains, and hay. One thing I always seeing on display are the tobacco hands, such as this one, which one a blue ribbon. I hate smoking and the tobacco industry, but I do like this because it hints at local history.

Currently tobacco farming on Maryland is on the wane, but it was once a big industry. During Colonial times tobacco was a big moneymaker. At first, workers were brought over from England but over the years African Americans took over this work. It takes a lot of work to harvest a field of tobacco. The local tobacco industry suffered after the Civil War, was revived during World War I, and then waned again. Now, many Maryland tobacco farmers have given up the crop in favor of other, more profitable things like vegetables. To see a recreation of a Colonial tobacco plantation, consider visiting the Spray Tobacco Plantation in St. Mary’s City, Maryland.

I Love Zinnias

Yes, I do and I try to grow them every summer. I usually have a mini variety in pots and semi-doubles in the main flowerbed. This year I tried some new types but they didn’t quite make it. I find that mysterious, as zinnias are the one flower that will grow for me anywhere. In fact, they were the first flower I grew in the all cement yard next to the outhouse.

Well, as you can see some of them are recovering from the drought and heat of early summer and beginning to bloom. I believe this is a Candy Cane mix. I also have them in white with pink streaks, and pink with white streaks. They add a lot of splash and I will certainly grow them again next year. Last year one of my neighbors had a great bed of cactus type zinnias in their front yard. I want them next year but I’m afraid they’d look too crazy in with the candy canes.

And yes, I wrote an article about zinnias. Actually, I wrote this last winter but deleted it a few months ago and re-wrote it for summer. I had planned to introduce a “flower of the month” thing to my column but it seemed hokey so I dropped it. I wanted a winter series but I’ve since come up with better ideas. I also liked the photos in that article, but since Examiner is migrating to a new style we don’t have control over our layout and things look wonky unless they are super simple.

Peachy Goodness!

Yesterday while we were out and about we stopped at Baugher’s farm – they of the famous pies that pop up in stores around the area. My intent was to get peaches because I tend to get a bit peach crazy in summer. While pick-your-own is only on weekends there, they still had a wide variety of goodies to choose from.

I haven’t tried all of the pictures fruits so far, but the Red Haven peaches are sublime. The white peaches are OK, but I’ve never found a white peach that is as good as others. The donut peaches here aren’t quite ready yet and neither are the white nectarines. The apricots are a bargain at $1 a pound – a sign explains that they are smaller than usual and have harmless spots on them. But, they are quite tasty and better than the prettier apricots I’ve been getting at the farmer’s market.

When we were kids there were peach trees on our property so I have lots of nostalgia connected with them. Of course, my brother and I didn’t appreciate them but I remember watching the peaches grow at all stages, from hard green buds to rotted ones on the ground. They were often buggy so my brother and I mainly used them to throw around. Still, they were great trees to have around.

Wordless Wednesday - the Baltimore City Hall Garden

Another Visit to City Hall

I usually don’t repeat here the same photos as I do on Examiner, but I just like this picture and I have a bit of a time crunch today. I used it at the end of the slideshow for my recent report about the Baltimore City Hall Garden. I was happy to find it thriving and productive. Though it is less showy I like it because it seems like they are utilizing the space well and the crops selected are good for a continuous harvest. I also like the addition of sunflowers here. They bring a bit of cheer to an otherwise utilitarian garden. I plan to do a Wordless Wednesday with more photos tomorrow.

I just noticed that Examiner now has spammy little ads on the bottoms of my photos in the slideshow. Ugh! I shouldn’t have done one.

Squirrel Flophouse

It has been hot here. Well, that is an understatement. It is more like an unrelenting summer of 90+ degree days with no relief. At least it has rained here and there so I don’t have to worry about my garden being dry anymore. The grass in front is growing again but the back is a disaster. First, most of the grass died. Then, we had heavy rain that flooded the back lawn. Now when I go out barefoot I feel the weird texture of the crunchy grass that has been pounded into the ground by the rain.

Aside from the heat, my big activity has been squirrel watching. This little guy (we call him the “squirrely squirrel” because he is a little nuts) is often sleeping on our porch, rolling around in different positions like a little kid. Yesterday he flopped into one of my potted plants. I usually keep seashells on top of the soil of my potted plants to deter squirrels from digging. Well, we found him sleeping on top of the shells.

As for Examiner I’ve pulled back from them a bit in favor of things that pay more money. I did write a little heat series earlier this month, beginning with an article on preventing heat stress in plants. Next I did a story on facts about brown grass as it seemed to be a bit of a fascination at the time. One of the TV stations (I believe channel 11?) was running a “worst lawn contest” and everybody I knew seemed to be talking about their brown grass. An easy offshoot of these topics was “Five heat tolerant plants”. No wonder there is so much bamboo in North Baltimore. Them, yesterday I wrote about larkspur simply because I am tired of writing about heat.

I just noticed a large ad with music that took over the heat tolerant plant article page when I went to it. They are on other pages, too. I believe these ads, which begin as an intrusive band at the bottom of the page, are new. If you accidentally move your mouse over them they tell you they will “…expand in 3…2…1….” Thanks, now my readers will be motivated to click away quickly. No wonder Examiner is not getting the page views it used to. I could complain about them a lot, but I do like the body of work I have on the site and I should just diversify a little more. Once this busy summer calms down I’m going to explore some new angles to my writing (for other places).

Gladiolas

The gladiolas that my aunt gave me began blooming last week. I’m glad because it seemed that everything else was doing so badly in the heat. I have a lot of impatiens and things that won’t set flowers when it is too hot. I thought I had a lot of bare spots but actually things just aren’t blooming. I got some portulacas for half price on my way back from the Eastern Shore so I popped them in for quick drought resistant color. Hopefully the recent rain will help.

Wordless Wednesday - Butterflies at Sotterly Plantation

A Visit to Sotterly Plantation

I had the good fortune to visit Sotterly Plantation on Friday. This was impulsive, as we originally planned to visit Mount Vernon in Virginia but then thought it might be too stressful due to the holiday. Sotterly was so beautiful and peaceful, but it was a shame that this place wasn’t seeing more visitors on a holiday weekend. We were there for hours and other than workers, we only saw one other family.

This plantation is worth some time. Visitors should go during summer because even though the house is beautiful the grounds are a great place for gardeners and nature lovers to explore. There is an old tobacco road that goes by an original slave cabin. This leads past the former tobacco fields and down to the water, where there is a shady picnic bench. (Carry out your trash on your own.) Along this path is an eagle’s nest, which is surprisingly visible. There is also another path through the woods.

Ahh…the formal garden is another place where you will want to spend time. The second photo above shows a part of it. There are lots and lots of flowers, and more butterflies than I’ve ever seen in my life!! I used up one memory card taking zillions of butterfly pictures. That will be my Wordless Wednesday this week.

I Should Take my Own Advice

This volunteer petunia is thriving happily in a sidewalk crack in Fell’s point. I wish I could say the same for all of my flowers.

When I went to put out the recycling this morning I watered my garden. I’m a little down because I seem to be loosing my impatiens to mildew and my one garden bed is a scorched mess. But, this is up against the wall of my one neighbor’s garage and gets a lot of reflected light. The other side of the yard is sheltered by the other neighbor’s fence and so is faring much better. Thankfully, my new herb garden is on that side.

I’m still fretting about the scorched bed and my beloved zinnias, which usually do well no matter what. I want to run out to find a garden center that still has drought tolerant plants like portulacas but I know that is unrealistic.

In my “July in the Baltimore garden” article today I wrote that if you have a scorched flowerbeds you can cover it with mulch or move potted plants to the area. I have enough mulch for the sad impatiens bed under the tree. The scorched bed next to the wall could really use mulch, but since my arm still hurts from the last time I got mulch I’m avoiding that. I don’t want to transplant anything when there is no rain so I may well move my potted plants to the sad flower bed and go from there.

Coneflowers

Coneflowers are everywhere these days. I should have done a Wordless Wednesday with them yesterday but I had to go to work early. These are down by the Inner Harbor. I used a photo from the same session to accompany my events article this week.

I’m so busy these days. We had a big family weekend and it is also so hot. I continue to be plagued by my sore arm so I only do the writing that I have to do.

The only reason that plant diseases are good is that they give me an easy, newsy article to write. Earlier this week I found out that downy mildew is attacking local basil crops. Mildew is also a problem in my garden as I have it on the impatiens on my porch. They are in a dark corner that doesn’t get much air circulation, though. My basil is doing great, though.

Wordless Wednesday - Beach Wood at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge

A New Camera

I impulsively bought a new camera on Wednesday. Well, I never do anything impulsively and as my father reminded me, I’ve been drooling over this camera for months. It is a Cannon Powershot SX120 with a 10x optical zoom. I wanted a point and shoot that was both easy to carry but with better features for nature photography. The most powerful zoom I had before this was 5x so I was due for an upgrade. The zoom is always my favorite camera toy.

My first real camera was a Cannon, given to me by my father on my birthday, perhaps when I was 19 or 20. It was a film camera that I still have. I originally wanted one when I moved to digital but they were too expensive and so I settled for Kodak instead. I’m fairly happy with Kodak—they make great walking around cameras, but I’m glad I finally got my Cannon.

A Nice Set of Cabbages

Last week I went down to check on the City Hall garden. Someone emailed me about a harvest date, but I couldn’t make it on that day. But, I still wanted to write about the garden each month because my focus is Baltimore gardening and you can’t get closer to the topic than the City Hall garden. It looked a lot better this time around. The black mesh was gone and things were getting big.

Actually, there is an interesting variety of cabbages down there, plus lots of kale and mustard greens. (I apologize for the red signature on this photo. I couldn't get it readable any other way.) The beds nearest the War Memorial building were empty but the lettuce was once there and I’m sure that was what they harvested. Since I didn’t make the harvest day I instead wrote "What we can learn from the Baltimore City Hall garden" to promote the usefulness of it.

The photographs I take there look great but it amuses me to see Baltimore life in the garden. Here and there are beer cans and random items of clothing. Street people were washing up in the nearby fountain. I’ll be back down there in a couple of weeks to do another “progress” article, hopefully with a slide show.

Speaking of slide shows Examiner wants us to focus on National Rose Month this weekend. This means that everybody else will be writing about roses. Every time some kind of editorial focus comes up with a garden focus I am busy with other more newsy topics so I never really do it. Rather, I think I’ll plan a slide show or garden history article for the following week.

Wordless Wednesday - New Plantings at Sherwood Gardens

City Chickens and Roosters

I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t been keeping up with my blogging. I’ve had some new writing opportunities but I don’t want to overdo computer time as my injured arm still bothers me. I’ve been slacking off just a touch on my Examiner column, but I do try to keep it current. I didn’t get to city hall while they were harvesting recently but I do have new photos and am planning to write about them again soon.

I haven’t even done photos in a while because I don’t have what I need for my articles and have been using stock photos. I wrote about urban farming in Baltimore today and I have to admit, I enjoyed using a picture of a chicken for a change. (I get into a flower rut because they are easy to photograph.) Apparently you can keep chickens, bees, and potbellied pigs in the city if you follow certain regulations. But, since chickens must be kept 25 feet from buildings, that leaves out most rowhouse dwellers.

This whole urban farming thing reminded me of the Charles village rooster. He frequented the yard of an apartment building on Charles Street, across from Hopkins. He was notorious for waking people up with his crowing but no one seemed to know who he belonged to or why he was there. After awhile he disappeared, presumably to a more suitable environment or stew pot.

For your viewing pleasure I have included a stock photo by Philip MacKenzie. He has some nice chicken and rooster photos on stock.xchng

Wordless Wednesday - Alley Flowers

Wordless Wednesday - Assorted Alliums

Summer Flowers and Tomato News

The other afternoon we went to the Peabody to get tickets for an upcoming performance of the ballet Sleeping Beauty. Well, for some reason they were not sold at the box office but in the dance department. Because of that, we got to take an interesting walk through the Peabody. When we went through their courtyard to get to another building I noticed that they have a nice little variety of summer flowers out there already. Besides these, they have hollyhocks and pincushion flowers.

I’ve been a little busy this week but thankfully there were some tomato related news stories I could write about for Examiner. First, late blight was reported again this year. Also, cold damage is now plaguing home gardeners. I found out about both of these issues through the Grow It, Eat It Page on Facebook, so I am finally convinced that Facebook has some use after all.

In other Examiner news I continue to edit old articles. This seems to be like bailing out the ocean with the tin cup but I do a few every day.

Wordless Wednesday: Roses are in Bloom at the Flag House

The Flag House

Photographing Nature – With People in the Way

On Saturday afternoon we took a ride out to Catoctin Mountain Park. Well, it was very busy on a sunny Saturday afternoon, but well worth the trip. I would like to come back at a time when it wasn’t so crowded, though. As you can see, people were climbing all over the place and it was impossible to take serene nature pictures of places like the falls.

I don’t always like people in my photographs, but I know I have to have them in there sometime for both visual interest and for size comparison. I particularly like this one below, which I took of a little boy at the cherry blossom festival but never got to use. I think it is because I didn’t want to imply that people pick the blossoms or damage the trees. Yes, I know that sounds crazy but if I write for the public I have to try and be a little responsible at times.

Part of the problem with people is that they don’t match the colors of the subject that I’m photographing. For example, people will wear screaming red or orange. This makes them appear as a bright blob in the background when I don’t want anything detracting from the color of nature. I think I’ve become a bit redundant with my close-ups of pretty colorful flowers, but oh, well. For my “What’s Blooming in Baltimore ?” slideshow this month I tried to give some of the photos more of a sense of place. I stuck them in the middle of the slideshow, though because they are not as splashy. I’m working on it, though. I’m also disturbed that the photo at the top of my article appears so green on my monitor, but Examiner is fruity this morning so I don’t want to try and remove it or I may just frustrate myself.

Flowers From Eden

I’ve been a little bit under the weather these days. Besides my arm problem (which is slowly going away) I have this weird tiredness. I have a friend who went though this and can only assume it must be a virus of some sort.

The flowers above came from How Sweet it Is, which is located in Eden, Maryland and on the way to Chincoteague. I always look forward to getting a flat of plants from there each year. They have annuals we don’t have in the city such as double petunias and pink stocks. Some of these are destined for the front of my house, but others I don’t know what to do with yet. They are just so appealing I had to buy them. Also, they have good produce and I got some excellent strawberries from them.

Wordless Wednesday: Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge

Sunflower Seedlings

I was happy to see these sunflower seedlings on a recent walk around the neighborhood. This particular neighbor had a beautiful patch of sunflowers here last fall and it looks like they've reseeded themselves.

I'm taking it easy this week, and expect to do only necessary writing until next week. My arm is still a problem and typing too much aggravates it. I'm also having problems gardening because I can't use tools too well.

I did do a quick piece on Flowermart trivia and have another article on something else ready to go up for the weekend. I would like to hunt up a decent picture of some iris today.

Investigating the Tulip Library

When I went to visit the cherry blossoms in DC a few weeks ago I stumbled on the Tulip Library, which is also near the Tidal Basin. I was excited by it, but there were no brochures or other information available. I only knew it was the Tulip Library because some excited kid came running up to his mother to report that he found the sign.

At home, I didn’t have much luck. Little research is on the web and the National Park Service write up mostly just mentions the history of tulips. The most helpful was this 2007 blog entry from Washington Gardener magazine. (Hmmmm…note to self…change blogger theme.) They have a link to a PDF of an old brochure, which was better than nothing. If Tulip Library had been here in Baltimore City I would have the good old Pratt library vertical file to play with. (Yes, I know that this garden is in another city. But I also like to write about places within easy driving distance of Baltimore because most gardeners love to visit other gardens.)

Well, with my arm still on the injured list and my ability to do a lot of typing and mousing curtailed, I pulled out the Tulip Library research and put up an article. It is not what I wanted, but if I don’t do this now the topic won’t be relevant again until next year. (Then, I can revisit it and do a slideshow or something.)

The photo at the top of this post was my first choice for the article, but it looked too similar to the photo on the National Park Service PDF and also to the one I selected for Sherwood Gardens. Tulip gardens are rather hard to photograph at times because of the way the flowers are spaced. If I don’t get a good angle and lots of flowers blooming at the same time I end up with a picture of little dots of color amidst the dirt.

A City Garden and Examiner Thoughts

Hmmm…I thought of titling this entry “lettuce behind bars” but thought better of it.

The other evening after work I went down to City Hall here in Baltimore to take pictures and get some writing material. This garden was great for me last year because I could just report on it monthly and it gave me an interesting series with lots of photos. This year, I hear that budget cuts and practicality trumped over the free flowing and widely varied design of last year. Actually, it doesn’t look too bad, except for this black netting. I assume it is there to keep both people and critters away. But, this being Baltimore city if people or rats wanted the vegetables they would just cut the net and take them.

They don’t have any educational materials out for this garden yet, but I did notice labels on almost everything this year. Some had cute little signs but others at least had plastic sticks. To see any differences see my current article and then go look at the article from this time last year. There are some similarities, but I miss the free design and the kohlrabi.

In other news, I got an email about changes with the Examiner web site but I’m not sure how this will pan out. They want to create more of a social network, which I think is a great idea long past due. Right now, everyone that wants to comment can only leave his or her name and comment and it is not linked to a profile or anything. So, I feel like a complete stranger if I comment even though I’ve been writing there for a year now. I would like to be able to leave a connection to my profile. I think this would be valuable in hooking up with other Examiners or even just interacting with the readers. It doesn’t look professional when I can’t leave a signature of some sort.

Another thing is that Examiner is going to “archive” past articles and we won't be able to edit them. They said we’d get some warning, but I’ve been working on tightening up my old articles so I’m going to step this up. In my old articles I don’t have many links to my other articles, nor do I have the “more info” paragraph with links to my Twitter page and this blog. I want the appearance of my page to be consistent.

Wordless Wednesday – National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes

(Their web site.)