Guest Blog Report

Fall is finally turning to winter here in southeastern Michigan. I am still covering my parsley at night to save it for Thanksgiving stuffing, but it may need to be harvested, now that temps are getting into the 20s overnight. We had a long, lingering fall this year, with unseasonably warm temps into November. That made it easier to do fall clean-up chores but also removed the sense of urgency about getting things done.
A few days ago, I intended to clean the gutters one last time, but the red maple out front was still clinging to half of its leaves. Now, the only thing decorating the trees is forlorn and abandoned nests, plus the occasional fluffed-up mourning dove or munching squirrel. My now-25-year-old English walnut trees keep the latter very busy and well fed.
My plants were dazed and confused by the weather, with bulbs sprouting and roses continuing to flower. The Tiny Monster geranium was still producing some bright purple flowers, and few of its leaves had turned bright scarlet yet, when it was surprised by the first light snowfall.
Today, it is cold and blessedly sunny. The wind yesterday was (unusually) from the north, bringing Michigan’s Thumb area heavy lake-effect snow. In one of those quirks of fate, the iPod is serving me Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald as I type. “Huron rolls, Superior sings, Michigan steams” indeed.
-Martha in MIchigan

Martha's Japanese Beetle Problem

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven...
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up..."
Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3

Martha and I grew up together in Maryland. We both fondly remember our brother tying threads around the necks of Japanese beetles in the 1950s, letting them fly around him in circles on their leashes. Now living in Michigan, Martha writes the lamentation below on her current (not so fond) experiences with Japanese Beetles. Looks like it's time to kill.

"I thought the JBs had disappeared after that, and chalked it up to DDT. Now, however, I realize that I was just out of the East Coast gardening loop for decades. Maybe they didn't go anywhere except off my radar screen -- and, at 1/4 mile per year, westward. A research proposal from 2005 noted, 'The Japanese beetle has now spread across most of eastern North America from Maine and Georgia west to Minnesota and Louisiana. Isolated infestations have now been found in many states west of the Mississippi River, including Colorado.' So, they're headed your way.

They reached Michigan in large numbers some ten years ago, and my roses in particular 3-4 years ago. I've tried traps, which caught thousands without appreciably thinning the numbers on my roses. I've tried Milky Spore on my lawn for the past two years, to no avail. (That could be for two reasons: I learned Thursday that the commercial products may not contain the actual effective milky spore, according to DNA testing; and my non-irrigated turf is likely not the home for their grubs anyway. My next-door neighbor, whose retirement has become full-time lawn care, has likely created the perfect conditions for them to thrive.) I've flicked them onto the patio or driveway and stomped them (satisfying but not effective on a grand scale). I've squirted them with Rose-RX and Safer Soap solution. They are still winning. My only success has come from planting double knockout roses that are resistant (and not all are!)

Now I am into biological warfare. One corner of Connecticut, scientists discovered many years ago, had a protozoan pathogen (Ovavesicula popilliae) keeping the beetles under control. It both kills close to 60% of the grubs (once established) and causes infected females to produce only half as many eggs. David Smitley of Michigan State University Extension (your tax dollars at work!) has been introducing them to public golf courses here and studying them since at least 1999. (An early layman's report notes that pathogens worked but parasites did not. Smitley has also done a lot of research on natural controls for the emerald ash borer -- too late for Michigan's ash trees, but maybe in time to save the baseball bat as we know it.) He held a Biocontrol Field Day about 15 miles from my home last week, to hand out dead and live beetles collected from his 'infected' sites. The dead ones are planted in the ground, so that grubs can be infected. Since my dry yard is not a great site for that (and my neighbor might shoot me if he saw me digging holes in his fairway), I got a Ziplock of a dozen or so live ones to release in my yard.

I am not the only one who came early so as not to miss out. Half of the 300 bags had been distributed before the official start time, and huge numbers of cars were still arriving when I left. Obviously, SE Michigan is ready to engage the enemy. The Judas beetles have now been spread much farther than they could have flown in a year. Optimally, it will take five years for heavy infection with the protozoan to become established and ten years for significant reduction in plant feeding damage. Perhaps I should start watering my lawn, to encourage egg-laying and the survival of the infected grubs. I'll have to lay off trapping and spraying for a few years, but it wasn't working anyway. I guess I could continue to flick and stomp, if I bury the remains. ;-)

I am attaching a photo of the buggers ravaging my roses ten minutes ago [expletive deleted]."

Dolce Domum

"Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way...shabby indeed, and small and poorly furnished, and yet his, the home he had made for himself, the home he had been so happy to get back to after his day's work..."
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Home should always be sweet, wherever it is. Here are more pictures from my sister’s garden in Michigan. There are very few things that grow equally well in Southern California and central Michigan. So we often exchange pictures and envy what flourishes in one's garden that languishes in the other's. The only thing we have in common below is iris, although my thirsty and anorexic plants make her iris patch look like a jungle to my eyes. Here are M’s pictures with her captions.

I started a bunch of bicolor violets from seed (looked more red and yellow in the catalog) to live around my mailbox, where I need something short. The first flower opened the day I put them in the ground.

The irises just started to open, at the left front of my house. The viburnum beyond them is now about 8 years old and flowering for the first time (just a little topknot of three). There were so many old roots there from the juniper we'd removed that I ended up planting the poor thing in a narrow little clay hole, where it bare survived. It is finally feeling comfy.

To the right of the viburnum is the white rose I used to have in a patio tub. It looks much happier, although I did just spray it for aphids. I bought it on impulse because of its clove-scented blooms, but the super spiny branches tried to kill me every year when I was surrounding it with a cage filled with leaves for winter insulation. No more of that!

To the right of that is the hole where I butchered a too-large viburnum down to movable size and moved it to the back yard.(When that bed starts to fill out, I'll send photos.) In its place is a sad Little Honey oakleaf hydrangea, still barely recovered from its Fed Ex journey. I really need to buy more locally in the future."

The clematis on the lamp-post is much happier since I gave it an inadequate trellis. Behind it, the stupid peony is in bud (stupid, because it can't hold up its own heavy flowers).

I've been too busy working in my own yard, making the most of the lingering chill on mornings to stop and take pictures and blog. As much as I envy M's peony clematis, my own garden always has the sweet fragrance of home, sweet home.

Fear Itself

“Freedom of thought is the only good that is perhaps more precious than peace, for the simple reason that, without it, peace would merely be another name for servitude.”
- Andre Comte-Sponville

Here are some more pictures of stuff I can’t grow in my backyard. The pictures are of my sister’s garden in Michigan. She's too busy gardening to have her own blog.

Generally speaking, I’m a big fan of Freedom of Speech. But recently, I was caught in the ripple of an e-mail message circulating about a new scam thieves use to steal your car and terrorize you. Here’s the heart of the matter, purportedly from “a Pine Bluff, AR Policeman”. In the seductively gravelly whisper of a horror book on tape, the message says, “You walk across the parking lot, unlock your car and get inside. You start the engine and shift into Reverse. When you look into the rearview mirror to back out you notice a piece of paper stuck to the middle of the rear window. So, you shift into Park, unlock your doors, and jump out of your car to remove that paper (or whatever it is) that is obstructing your view…” That’s when the thieves “appear out of nowhere” and jack your car. Walking and talking about fear itself: terror is another name for servitude.

Or, I suppose you could do what I do - and simply not look in your rearview mirror before you shift into “Reverse”. I know what you’re thinking, but this story must be true too, because the chain mail message includes “THIS IS NOT A JOKE” in the subject line. The part about me not looking in my rear view mirror before backing is so true I forgot to laugh.

And now for something seemingly completely different.

I’m thinking of starting an e-mail chain to spread the word that me and my college friends weren’t crazy when we were watching the Wizard of Oz, and at the exact moment the Cowardly Lion roared for the third time, somebody started playing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Literate college kids all seem to know that the song TOTALLY goes with the movie at that point, and explains some of life’s greatest mysteries. Rest assured, THIS IS NOT A JOKE EITHER. Movie and song sync perfectly even if you’re NOT stoned and listening to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre” when the tornado hits Kansas.

To paraphrase what Bill Murray’s character said in Caddy Shack, about how a swami once told him he’d have universal awareness in the moment before he dies: “So, we’ve got that going for us.” So let’s all just be careful about retrieving messages left on our rear windshields, and we can all get on with our lives.

Gardening in Michigan

"It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between."
Diane Ackerman

My sister lives in Belleville Michigan, and she is too busy gardening to blog. So, I'm doing it for her, and posting her lovely daffodils. I asked her for pictures of her garden. Here's what she had to say yesterday:

"Okay, so I decided the late afternoon (well, 6:30) sunlight on this glorious 70-degree day would be perfect. Before I could get to the things I wanted most to show you, the batteries in the camera gave out, and I only have 2 of the needed 4 replacements. Then again, I am also out of beer, so a store run is not inconceivable, even though the light will be gone by then.... I'll get back with lilacs and yard improvements!

"I started with my favorite weed: ground ivy, gill- over-the- ground, other names. I adore its tiny orchid-like flowers, which set off my dandelions nicely! Then my lovely new creamy daffodils, still going strong a week after the plainer, smaller, yellow ones. Behind them, the rose hedge is leafing out and it smells like roses even without any flowers. The two tomatoes I put out weeks ago in walls-o-water are no bigger than the two still on my windowsill. The raspberries (from Gary's mother's house, where they had been brought from his grandmother's house in MN decades earlier) are budding.

"We have had such a string of perfect weather as I've never seen here before. I can only attribute it to Alice leaving the state. ;-)"

So much for gardening in Michigan. I was going to take a picture of my tomato plants, now beginning their serious growth, but we had an unexpected rain. I say unexpected because I have missed the weather reports because my tv was broken for more than a week. But the real reason I don't want to include photos of my tomatoes are that I don't need a red bag of water to shelter them like my sister's, and they're now about as high as the red bag in her picture.

My sister's daughter visited San Diego recently and I was reminded of her love of gardening as she enjoyed my backyard garden. My own grown daughter has a number of interests and skills that keep her too busy to garden. Besides, she once pointed to a tomato plant and asked in perfect seriousness, "That's a tomato, right?" So although it may be easier for me to grow tomatoes in my garden, my sister managed to cultivate a love of gardening in her daughter; and it's a mystery to me how I failed to do the same in my own daughter.