The Snows of March
Our recent March snowfall is trying to tell us something. What it is trying to tell us is this: there are too many damn rabbits in the garden.
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Notes from a wildlife-friendly cottage garden
Thoughts on Rose Pruning
The weather was good this past weekend, so I got outside and pruned the roses in our garden. Pruning roses used to make me nervous, but now I relax by reminding myself that roses are basically brambles. At least mine are – two shrub roses (‘Sally Holmes’ and ‘Cassie’) and two climbers (‘Darlow’s Enigma’ and the wild Rosa setigera or Prairie Rose).
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Good News on Monarch Butterflies – For Now
So the numbers are out on the eastern Monarch population in Mexico for the winter of 2015-2016, and the news is good. The Monarchs roosting in pine forests occupied a total of 4.01 hectares (a little under 10 acres) this year, more than three times last year’s 1.13 hectares (less than 3 acres). The population nadir occurred in 2013-2014, when Monarchs covered just 0.67 hectares, about 1.5 acres.
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Is Yellow Just Too Common?
Why is it that Sissinghurst has a White Garden but not a Yellow Garden? Perhaps yellow is just a bit too insistently cheerful, like those morning people who sing and bustle about while you try to burrow into your newspaper.
Also, I read somewhere that yellow is the most common color for wildflowers, and its omnipresence may make it seem less desirable. Botanists even have an expression, DYC, or Damn Yellow Composites, for the myriad species of yellow daisy-like flowers of the Sunflower Family.
I do like yellow flowers and we have quite a few of them in our garden. However, I would never have an all-yellow garden. Yellow definitely needs companion colors to be at its best in the garden.
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A New Source for Unusual Seeds
Within a few days of each other, two gardening friends mentioned the same company as a source for different plants we had been discussing. It’s a grower and retailer called Outside Pride, and their website is here.
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Presentable in Pink
Judy and I are generally not fond of pink flowers, and we don’t have many in the garden. Not sure why. Generally we like really strong colors – but then we both are partial to blue, which is a softer color like pink. Also, there are a few pink flowers that we like, and at least one that we love. I never claimed to be consistent.
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My Kind of Bird Watching
Today we participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count, which is sponsored by the Audubon Society, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Bird Studies Canada.
GBBC brings together tens of thousands of people from around the world to compile data that scientists use to evaluate the state of our feathered friends. This year it started on February 12 and will wrap up tomorrow, on the 15th.
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Summer Whites
Last post was about white flowers, specifically white flowers in my garden that bloom in spring. Might as well finish my thought and talk about the white flowers of summer and fall.
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Spring Whites
The weather has just taken a wintery turn here in Chicago. Arctic air has buckled southward, bringing cold and modest snowfall. For the moment there is a blanket of white that covers the ground.
Snow provoked thoughts of white flowers, and how it shouldn’t be too long before they would brighten the garden. Considering white flowers, it occurred to me that I have quite a few blooming in different seasons. I like white flowers best in shade – under the hot sun they can be a bit too dazzling. However, the softer light of spring is kind to white blooms. Let’s take a look at some of my favorite white flowers of spring.
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