The Wabbits Ally With Radical Terrorists

Posted on 20/04/2011 by Grumpa Joe

Today is opening day of a new chapter in the Wabbit War. Last year (2010), Grumpa Joe (GJ) battled the Wabbits, and by late August they disappeared from the garden. However, GJ uncovered large amounts of evidence to suggest the Wabbits will return again soon.  Throughout the winter there has been an abundance of snow, and the level of Wabbit tracks in the snow was telling. In addition, early this spring GJ uncovered evidence that the Wabbits devastated his prize Viburnum shrub by clipping all the lower stems, and leaving the naked center branch looking like a torch. Piles of Wabbit scat encircle the Viburnum.

The tulips, a Wabbit favorite, are just beginning to open. Grumpa Joe sits at the window awaiting the first Wabbit attack hoping to prevent needless tulip decapitations.

Late last summer, a new enemy joined the Wabbit Wars; Cirsium arvense(Canadian thistle). This new enemy employs radical terrorist techniques. He attacks by popping up in the middle of a dense lawn or flower bed. By the time he is sighted he has sent combatant runners  spreading around the yard to establish more sleeper cells. The mower is one of the primary forces GJ used to combat them in the lawn. The whirling blade whacks the Cirsium; wounding, but also infuriating him. The warrior returns stronger than before. During his recovery he dispatches several young roots burrowing underground to establish new cells. Within a week, the cells begin to pop up along a line extending from the wounded warrior.

In the flower beds, the Cirsium arvense terrorists work under cover of foliage to grow and strengthen. By the time GJ spies evidence of their presence, they are fully established and towering over the flowers held hostage to hide their activity. They send copious numbers of sleeper cells running in many directions. They sleep underground until ready to attack then spring up everywhere within ten feet of origin.

Several times, GJ attacked them with the digger tool, and even a spade. Pulling  out runners, and following them to new cells. Often, he pulled up two feet of roots with green shoots that had sprouted along the runner. If a single small piece of the root breaks off during removal, it survives to become a new sleeper cell. The Cirsium reestablishes itself, and within a week new sleeper cells are terrorizing the flower bed.

Grumpa Joe attended a late fall conference of Master Gardener Generals to discuss the Cirsium terrorists. The generals instructed GJ to rid the Cirsium arvense with the dreaded garden nemesis; Roundup. In the early spring, GJ would have to drench the fresh young shoots with this chemical killer of broad leaf vegetation. The chemical works by absorbing into the foliage and traveling into the root system.

This afternoon at 13:00 hours, Grumpa Joe dressed in full chemical battle garb. He loaded his sprayer with the prescribed ratio of concentrate and water. He pumped the tank sixty times to pressurize the nozzle, and forged into battle. By 14:30 hours all visible Cirsium terrorists were drenched in chemical.

By 13:00 hours tomorrow, Grumpa Joe will know if his attack affected the Cirsium army.  He will sorrow over the many innocent garden plants he has killed. What he will not know is this; has he merely sent the Cirsium arvense Terrorists underground to form new sleeper cells?

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Burning Gas-Butchart Gardens

Posted on 15/04/2011 by Grumpa Joe

The following morning we drove out to see the Butchart Gardens. I had been there before and knew what to expect. Peggy didn’t have a clue. We stopped at the entrance kiosk and I paid the man to enter. She looked at me and said,”we’re paying forty dollars to see flowers?”

I ignored her question. We parked and walked through the gates into the garden. For the next six hours we oohed and ahhed at every turn in the path. It was cloudy, but bright. A perfect day to take photos, and I did take a few pictures.

I hope you enjoy the photos as much as I did taking them.

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CITY FARM

Posted on 20/01/2011 by Grumpa Joe

My family lived on South Avalon Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. They call the neighborhood Burnside.  Mom and Dad raised us in a small house, with a porch across the front. The property was small, only twenty-five feet wide, and one-hundred twenty feet long. It was a typical city lot. Our house was a small, wood framed, two-story with seven steps that led from the porch to the city sidewalk.  Between the porch and the sidewalk, was a narrow bed of flowers, and a patch of grass.  The parkway between the sidewalk and the street had grass. Sometimes there was a tree there too.

All of the houses were very close to each other. The narrow space between houses called a gang-way was only wide enough for one person to walk through.  On the end of the gangway, at the back of the house, Dad installed a gate to close off the back yard.  At the back of the house we had another porch which Dad walled in to make a three-season room.  Behind the house, was Mom’s farm. It extended between a very small lawn surrounded by flower beds, and vegetables that extended to the garage and chicken coop.

At the end of the lot stood Dad’s one car garage. He built it directly on the ground without a foundation. It had a dirt floor.  Ma’s chicken coop hung off one side. Together the garage and the coop stretched across the lot.  The chickens roamed in a small space in front of the coop.

In this precious plot of ground, Mom and Dad squeezed a front lawn with a flower bed, a three-bedroom house, a back lawn and flower bed, a good-sized vegetable garden, a chicken ranch, and a garage.

Mom grew most of what she needed to feed the family right in her backyard.   The garden produced tomatoes, onions, kohlrabi, cabbage, corn, beans, peas, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers and more.  What we couldn’t eat immediately, she preserved, by canning.  The chickens provided fresh eggs, and meat for Sunday dinners.

Mom grew flowers from seed she got from friends or by taking cuttings. In Spring she had tulips, and by Fall the same bed was a sea of chrysanthemums.  Mom had roses, snap dragons, petunias, dahlias, bleeding hearts, marigolds, zinnias, carnations, and pansies to add a mix of color.  She planted any flower that she could get, and propagated them to keep it going.

My love for flowers, came from watching Mom’s delight at seeing things grow. She loved bright colorful flowers, and grew as many as she could. Mom kept a garden on her father’s the farm too, but there it was mostly vegetables, fruit, and berries, as opposed to flowers.

Her knowledge of plants came from watching other gardeners, and by experimenting  with seeds. She never turned down an offer of new seeds or cuttings from friends. Her trial and error approach, taught her the best methods.

Mother kept her gardens going until she was into her eighties. When her heart began to slow, so did she. She began to lose her sight, and memory. Her gardens became smaller and smaller. The loss of energy killed her desire for the garden, and the city farm was no more.

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Choo-Choo Hosta

Posted on 19/01/2011 by Grumpa Joe

My friends know that I am into gardens. I have a page dedicated to my Garden hobby. I often show photos of flowers and my garden in my posts. During the winter, I write about my indoor garden.

This weekend, I had occasion to scour through a couple of thousand old photos. I came across some that I had forgotten about. They are of my first real garden adventure. Prestwick is the neighborhood I lived in during another lifetime. The properties were large and there was room to make some nice things happen. There were trees, shrubs, lawn, and flower beds too. Previous to Prestwick, I didn’t really get into gardening, but Barb did. She was the master planter and color coordinator. I helped her with shovel work. When we moved to Prestwick, I got the bug, not for the horticultural aspect but for an aqua-scape. I fell in love with the idea of a pond. I told people that I always wanted to own lakefront property, but couldn’t afford it, so I built my own lake in the back yard. The idea became a reality and the rest developed from there.

I told a fellow engineer at work about my ideas for the pond while we were on a twenty hour flight to Singapore. A few months later he asked me  when I would get started. “Soon,”I replied.

“How soon?”  he asked.

He basically chided me to “s_ _ _  or get off the pot.”

“I can be there tonight with a backhoe.”

“Okay.”

I got home from work at my usual six-thirty and had supper with Barb. In the middle of our dinner the dishes began to shake on the table. “What is that?” she asked.

“It is probably Delmar coming to dig the hole.”  Just as I finished those words a blue tractor with a back hoe stopped at the end of our drive.

“What is going on?”

“We are digging the hole for the pond.”

“When were you going to tell me?”

“Now.”

That was the beginning of my love affair with the garden. It took several years to develop a pond and the surrounding landscape. Each year, we changed it to make it look better. I had a new vision of what it should look like after I finished the last one. Of course, each vision built on the last.

During the first five years I installed a little pond with a waterfall spilling into the big pond,. That wasn’t enough, I added a second  waterfall to spill into the little pond. After that, I was unhappy with the water clarity, so I designed a filter. A pump moved pond-water underground to the filter-aerator.  Clean oxygenated water returned  via a stream to the big pond. A little complicated, but it all worked pretty good, and it looked okay too. The fish were very happy and growing along with a variety of bog, and water plants. There was the sound of trickling,and splashing water to soothe the soul.

All the time I was playing hydro-engineer, Barb continued to plant a variety of perennials. She mixed annuals in between to add color and textures. The garden was shady, so she learned to plant only those things that grew well in shade like hosta and Impatiens.

We went to the Farmer’s market in town and discovered a vendor who specialized in hostas. He gave me a history of all the possibilities and varieties of hosta plants. Before long there was a collection of sixty different hosta varieties.

One year we were on a vacation trip to Michigan, We loved to stop in small towns and look at the shops. Out of a hundred shops, maybe one turned me on. This time, we found a shop that sold G-Scale Trains made by the Kalamazoo Toy Train Factory. These trains are commonly used in garden railways.  I never heard of a garden railroad before, but the idea was intriguing. Barb let me buy an 1850’s steam locomotive with a tender, a passenger car and a flatbed. It was on display around our christmas tree for the first few years before I got the bug to add a new feature to the pond;  add the train as an item of interest in the garden. What that translates into is track, and a train. No buildings, or people, just track, plants, and trains. The garden became animated.

It took a complete year to develop the 100 foot road bed with trestle, a bridge, and a tunnel.  The effort was worth it.

Here are some of the photos that started this long-winded piece of personal history.

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Autumn Stroll

Posted on 16/10/2010 by Grumpa Joe

This past week, I couldn’t take it anymore. My PC crashed again for the sixth time in as many weeks. I had to get away from the machinery and the search for a fix. My new computer was still en route and I continued to nurse the old guy along hoping it would find new life. Microsoft was working against me. Every time the machine allowed an upload of new security software, it affected the functionality of the keyboard.

The afternoon was warm, and sunny, so I left the house with my camera and took a stroll around my town.

I love Frankfort. It is growing up but still has a small town feel to it. We are close enough to Chicago to make a trip downtown relatively easy. In fact, on Wednesday afternoon, Peggy and I drove to Steppenwolf and made it in fifty minutes. The ride home was faster. There are times, however when that same trip takes a full ninety minutes each way.

The air was still this afternoon, and eerily quiet. Normally, I can hear the traffic on route thirty or forty-five. Today, all I heard was silence.

The sun was still high, but because of its position the shadows were long. This made for some great photos. There is color all around. All one has to do is to look and be aware. The trees that are still leaved are brilliant green, yellow, gold, red, and orange. Those trees that are bare have a blanket of crinkly dry leaves scattered about lush green lawns.

All about town, people decorated for Halloween. Front lawns and porches sport bright orange pumpkins with scary ghosts and skeletal witches. A few have graveyards on the lawn with silly grave stones.

Downtown Frankfort was empty. it was a ghost town. There were very few cars and even fewer people in town.

Along the trail in Prairie Park a great bloom of wild asters is showing off its lavender color. The pond is void of ducks and geese. Where the heck is everybody? I didn’t really care, I just enjoyed it all.

The best and most colorful part of the stroll was my back yard. The fall flowers are in full bloom and their colors are brilliant. How lucky I am to see this everyday. The tomatoes and cucumbers are still putting out, and giving me some fresh salad makings.

Yes God, you have blessed me. Maybe the crash was Your way of telling me to take a walk and suck in the sights, sounds, and scents of your wonderous natural world.

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