There once was a medical writer/editor who worked really hard over a long career to explain diseases and treatments very, very clearly for the general public. Then she decided she’d rather NOT work til she dropped, so in 2008 Pamela J retired from NIH and took up gardening in a big way. Gardenblogging, too, though in her case it’s garden+nature+knitting+cats+whatever she’s reading, and so on, and I say good! I think blogs that are all gardening all the time can be boring – or so I concluded years ago, before I stopped reading them. (A shocking admission, I admit, but if you’re a gardenblogger, you probably know it’s true.)
But I do read the far-flung thoughts of my real (not virtual) friend of 30 years and recommend them to inquiring minds everywhere:
On PamelaJ, her main blog, she recently posted an exhaustive display of composting systems, but the BIG news there is her new life as a beekeeper! Here’s Pam in her full beekeeping regalia and believe me, wardrobe isn’t the only thing she’s doing right, after much study. (She recommends training given by Montgomery County Beekeepers Association, as well as on their forums.) To actually see Pam, go back to my post about a friend we’re both missing.
My Lovely Worms is her vermicomposting blog and that name was not given in jest. She really thinks that way.
And finally (for now) My Lovely Weeds, because blogs are free and why not? Posting about weeds could bring her closer to her ideal of weed mastery by name-knowing.
I stole just a few of Pam’s awesome nature photos for the collage below. There’s lots more where they came from – and good writing, too.
Yesterday I took these shots – of a modest group of plants that nevertheless look stunning in mid-January – as I was walking through my back yard and into the woods. First you see the boulder stairs that lead from my basement door down into my garden.
Then the two mosses above (names, anyone?) adorn the path through the woods. I've written before about this wonderful woodland that my property sits on the edge of, but continue to marvel over it – even after 25 years of walking through it. Yep, after living in eight different places around metro D.C., I found my spot and decided to stay put.
Totally off-topic, I have to give some link love to a blog called Cute Overload, especially this collection of sleeping cat photos. See, I keep up with politics and global warming and all that, and if it weren’t for a daily dose of adorable animals a girl could get downright grumpy.
For as long as anyone can remember, the wooded valley that my back yard is part of has been covered with English ivy. Not just on the forest floor but even up into the trees where it matures and produces berries, berries that are then spread far and wide by the birds. But then came another vine that – can it be? – managed to win the battle of primacy with the ivy – the five-leaf akebia. It now has a lock on the lowest, wettest parts of the valley.
Then suddenly the fastest spreading invasive plant EVER landed in our valley - the lovely garlic mustard. Its beauty (of sorts) is important to mention because when I’ve shown it to neighbors I’ve discovered that it’s been picked, brought indoors and admired! Oh well. Even if they removed it by its roots it wouldn’t slow the steady march of garlic mustard across the woodland floor.
It’s really no wonder this plant is so successful. It likes the sun, it likes the shade, it seems to like every damn location in North America.
So thank to Barbara Lucas and her pals in the Midwest for this video that goes a long way to showing exactly what mustard garlic looks like and then how to get rid of it. I think I’ll forward this to my neighborhood Yahoo group with the broad hint that we make ridding our valley of this one plant our New Year’s Resolution for the lovely woodland we share.
A tipping point has clearly been crossed because all of a sudden the need for sustainable fishing practices is everywhere. And not just at The Slow Cook, which I read religiously, despite my lack of interest in cooking. It’s also here,here and – oh, everywhere.
So I was primed to try the new Georgetown hot spot Hook, the first restaurant in D.C. that adheres strictly to sustainable fishing practices. Chef Barton Seaver, called a "visionary" in this Washington Post review, visits all his suppliers to make sure they’re not using such widespread practices as overfishing, collection techniques that destroy habitat, or farming with the use of antibiotics.
So how do sustainable fish taste? Like real food, the real meat of
creatures of the sea, but with a touch of Barton’s culinary magic. I’m no food critic but yum!
Each customer receives a wallet-sized brochure outlining in detail the fish to avoid and the fish to eat with impunity, a brochure brought to us with the help of Patagonia and the Blue Ocean Institute. (The brochure’s supposed to be on line here, but that link isn’t working at the moment.) And Earth Echo International is also involved somehow and my dinner companion was their secretary-treasurer, the charming Jan Cousteau, whom I’d met at the DC opening of "The Green" on the Sundance Channel.
So that’s what I was doing at a "glam new watering hole" that’s "swimming with the young and pretty." A little off my usual beat.
Photo of Jan Cousteau and Chef Barton Seaver, taken with a camera whose flash wasn’t working at that particular moment.
Okay, there’s nothing new happening in my garden this time of year and I need diversions. Netflix is a big help but what I miss most on frigid days is connecting with nature, so I recently purchased a bat-house. It holds up to 100 bats and cost $45 (part of which goes toward conservation efforts, I’m told.)
But buying the house brought so much more than this lovely tree ornament; it revealed to me a whole world of bat conservation. There’s the Organization for Bat Conservation out of Michigan, from which I ordered my bat-house. Their site holds a wealth of great info, including how to arrange an in-person program for school kids – too bad it’s only available in Michigan (not to mention only for kids). The site has a bat-house-owner forum, too, where I found tales of owners counting the bats return to the house in early morning, using their binoculars to identify the species, and more wildlife excitement. See, I’m such a lousy birder that I’ve experienced only failure at identifying birds, but there are so few bat species in my area, I have a fighting a chance.
Another amazing site is produced by Bat Conservation International, based in Austin (there it is again, one of the coolest city in the U.S.) On their site you can join their Adopt a Bat program and receive an "endearing letter from your bat." Okay, that’s not my favorite part, but how about learning about their backward-facing knees and locking claws make hanging upside down easy? And then there’s the Latin American bat that eats only blood, the legendary vampire. So legendary, in fact, that the Wikipedia entry for vampires is about the legends, not the actual animal. Hey, bat conservation people, how about amending the entry?
Best of all, I learn that a small insect-eating bat can eat up to 2,000 mosquito-size insects in one night – GO TEAM!
I’ve committed to writing a bunch of columns about wildlife as part of my town’s campaign to become certified as a Wildlife Habitat Community, so you’ll be reading more soon about bats, pollinating bees, and good old butterfly gardens.
ADDENDUM, in response to a commenter, about WHERE TO PUT THE BAT-HOUSE. From the Organization for Bat Conservation site:
In the Northeast: Where you mount your bat house plays a major role in the internal temperature. Houses can be mounted on such structures as poles, sides of buildings and tall trees without obstructions. Houses placed on poles and structures tend to become occupied quicker than houses placed on trees. Bat houses should face south to southeast to take advantage of the morning sun. In northern states and Canada, bat houses need to receive at least 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight. It is also advantageous to paint the house black to absorb plenty of heat (when baby bats are born, they need it very warm). Use non-toxic, latex paint to paint your bat house and only paint the outside. Your bat house should be mounted at least 15 feet above the ground, the higher the house the greater the chance of attracting bats.
Bats return from migration and awaken from hibernation as early as March in most of the U.S., but stay active year-round in the extreme southern U.S. They will be abundant through out the summer and into late fall. Most houses used by bats are occupied in the first 1 to 6 months (during the first summer the bat house was erected). If bats do not roost in your house by the end of the second summer, move the house to another location.
MORE ON WHETHER THEY WORK: I once heard a wildlife gardening expert say that it may take a while for the bats to discover the house, but once they find it, it works well.
What other word to use for it, building homes on the fragile barrier island that is Pawleys Island, South Carolina. And this is low tide. So how long can they last? According to a local developer I happen to know, no problem. They’re bringing in more sand to build it back up. Yeah, we humans are all-powerful, all right.
But look how gee-orgeous it is at sunrise. Or my favorite shot, without the silly house, worth clicking to enlarge. You might pause for a breath or two and imagine what it sounds like.
For more happy vacation photos, check out the shots of Charleston on my other blog.
*Wikipedia on hubris: “In its modern usage, hubris denotes overconfident pride and arrogance; it is often associated with a lack of knowledge, interest in, and exploration of history, combined with a lack of humility.”
Here’s a little piece of garden art that always starts a conversation – and raises questions I can’t answer, leading me to shrug stupidly and sputter disjointed bits of information. So I decided it’s time to stop embarassing myself and do a little Googling.
So, what you see is an artificial nest for orchard mason bees, pollinating bees that are native to the U.S. Solitary and therefore not hive-building, these bees lay their eggs in mud-walled cells like these drill holes, or straws packed in a coffee can that’s then mounted a few feet off the ground facing the morning sun. Although the person who sold me this nest-holder raved about the pollinating abilities of these bees, they can’t be managed directly by humans – say, hauled around to different farmers’ fields – and thus aren’t suitable to large-scale agricultural use. Even worse, most native pollinating bees nest in the ground, so any disturbance and they’re history. The use of pesticides has also reduced their numbers.
All of which helps in explaining why honeybees were brought here from Europe to pollinate crops for our growing population. But the recent destruction of about half the American honeybee population by a parasitic mite has highlighted the dangers of overreliance on any particular species. So I’m right there, offering these little drill holes to the wandering orchard mason bee looking for a nest site. I know it won’t make much difference in the scheme of things but hey, it’s something. And not a bad-looking garden ornament, either.
RANDOM HONEYBEE FACTS: The average honeybee hive holds 50,000 bees. It takes the nectar of about 2 million flowers to produce one pound of honey. Honeybees are used in the pollination of 130 agricultural crops in the U.S. and add $14 billion to crop yield and quality. 15 to 30 percent of our diet relies on honeybees.
FUN TREND: Reportedly, a "deeply cool and trendy" new hobby in British cities is beekeeping, on rooftops and in tiny backyards. One advocate describes it as a "fashionable thing to do something for the environment." Don’t look for this trend to jump the pond and land in Washington, D.C. any time soon, though. Beekeeping is banned in D.C. and many other stinger-fearing jurisdictions.
My recent post about this National Wildlife Foundation program elicited some questions – does my community have this? – so here’s a link to the communities that have either completed the process and been certified, or have registered, meaning they’re working toward certification. Three more communities have registered since the list was updated: Burlington, VT; Clarksville/Buffalo Junction, VA, a rural community on the NC border; and Lawrence Township in the Indianapolis area.
Notice how these communities concentrate in Virginia and the Seattle area? Further confirmation that Seattle’s an environmentally progressive community. Virginia has the good luck to have the Foundation headquartered in Reston, and nearby Arlington County recently became the largest habitat community in the U.S.
So if your community isn’t on these lists, maybe you can help make that happen.
And Readers, thanks for generously offering your photos for the cause. They’ll be accompanied by links to your sites and blogs.
There once was a medical writer/editor who worked really hard over a long career to explain diseases and treatments very, very clearly for the general public. Then she decided she’d rather NOT work til she dropped, so in 2008 Pamela J retired from NIH and took up gardening in a big way. Gardenblogging, too, though in her case it’s garden+nature+knitting+cats+whatever she’s reading, and so on, and I say good! I think blogs that are all gardening all the time can be boring – or so I concluded years ago, before I stopped reading them. (A shocking admission, I admit, but if you’re a gardenblogger, you probably know it’s true.)
Then the two mosses above (names, anyone?) adorn the path through the woods. I've 
