“If everything around seems dark, look again, you may be the light.”
Rumi
Sometimes all we need is the perfectly petite flower of a fragrant geranium to change darkness to light; sadness to joy — and sometimes WE are the light.
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Category Archives: Garden: Verb and Noun
Today is World Naked Gardening Day!
The first Saturday in May is World Naked Gardening Day.
We’re encouraged to wear NOTHING but a sunhat and sunscreen, to pick up a trowel or a rake, and seed and weed au naturale.
Why garden naked? Our culture needs to move toward a healthy sense of both body acceptance and our relation to the natural environment. Gardening naked is not only a simple joy, it reminds us–even if only for those few sunkissed minutes–that we can be honest with who we are as humans and as part of this planet. and that’s also a definitely NOT ME, whether it’s “world wide” or “worldwide”! Curated from https://naturisteducation.org/wngd/
Today, you’ll find me in the garden, fully clothed, planting peas and beans and mixed leafy greens.
However, if YOU choose to celebrate in your birthday suit, DO NOT send pics!
Enjoy!
Backyard Bobcat Bliss
More magic!
I can’t post video any other way on WordPress so I hope you’ll be able to view this spectacular bobcat that came to my garden DURING THE DAY with a RAT in his mouth!
Here’s how the story unfolds: Yesterday morning around 6:30 a.m., I saw something on the lawn. I went out to look and it was a mangled rat. Hmmm, I said to myself, that’s gross, but I bet a hawk or owl dropped it. A little later, I walked up the stairs and took the SD card out of my wildlife camera that’s situated on the lower half of the hill and brought it inside to check, like I do on a weekly basis.
I was absolutely blown away by this video!
Bobcats (and coyotes) visit most nights, but this is the very first time I’ve captured video of a daytime stroll through here — with the added bonus of a meal.
It might look as if he walks away, but keep watching for his return along with an early dinner. As he makes his way down the steps, I realize the bobcat is the reason for the rodent remains I found on the lawn. This bobkitty is so jawdroppingly beautiful, I’ve watched the video at least a dozen times.
Bobcats are incredibly elusive animals and a bobcat sighting is a rare occurrence. Although bobcats are primarily nocturnal, they may be seen during the day while hunting/foraging for food, especially between April and July when they are most likely to have dependent young.
The only part of this momentous event that makes me a little sad is that I was HERE at that exact time and didn’t have a clue that I should have looked out the window that faces the garden as it would have been the greatest day in my life, right up there with seeing wolves in the Lamar Valley at Yellowstone, (although the temptation to want to run outside and say “here kitty, kitty” and pet him is strong.)
I am beyond grateful that these creatures feel that my garden (and me) are a safe haven to explore.
What might it mean? Seeing a bobcat carries a powerful spiritual message. It could be a sign that we need to tap into our inner strength and independence. The bobcat embodies resilience, encouraging us to stand our ground in the face of challenges.
Additionally, the presence of a bobcat might be a call to explore the mysteries of our life. It’s an invitation to delve deeper into our personal spirituality and uncover truths that may be hidden or suppressed. A bobcat can indeed be seen as a good luck spiritual symbol. https://lifeadventurously.com/spiritual-meaning-of-bob-cat/
This is a good time to remind us all about the horrors of using poison to control rodents:
Rat poisons don’t just kill rats; they kill wildlife too. Wildlife species are exposed to anticoagulant rat poisons when the poisons are used in urban and agricultural areas to target species such as rodents. But those who consume the poisons do not die immediately of the internal bleeding they are intended to cause. It can take more than a week for a poisoned rodent to die. In the meantime, the poisoned animal may be vulnerable to predators, and if a predator such as a bobcat preys on the poisoned rodent, the bobcat becomes poisoned too. Thus, poisons enter local food webs and become especially harmful to animals at the top of the food chain. Through a process called bioaccumulation, animals at the top of the food chain absorb toxins from eating lots of different prey animals, but their organs cannot filter out the toxins, causing the poisons to accumulate in their systems. As a result, some of the most iconic species in California – bobcats, coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, owls – are the most vulnerable to this indirect poisoning. https://panthera.org/blog-post/surprising-effects-rat-poison-bobcats
Miracles and Magic
Let’s go
To where the magic waits for us
Where our hopes, our dreams
Our wishes. Come true.
Athey Thompson
Yesterday was a magical day full of miracles.
In the garden, I looked up in a tree and saw two hawks mating! (I didn’t take any photos to protect their privacy.) Last night one of the wild baby bunnies was on the deck and scratched at the screen door like it wanted to come in the house (I didn’t open the door, but I was tempted), and the third miracle is that my adorable little vireos are once again nesting in a brand new bird house!
“And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles” — Walt Whitman
Hügelkultur: Word of The Day
It’s time to prepare the garden for spring vegetables. Every year I attempt to win the battle with rodents and bugs and lack of sky water; sometimes I win, sometimes they do…
I have a couple new ideas. I purchased coconut coir bricks to rehydrate and mix with the existing soil in my raised bed and I thought I’d try cardboard box planters, too, inside the raised bed.
Maybe one day I’ll be able to build my own Hügelkultur.
“Hügelkultur” (pronounced hyoo-gul-kulture) is a German word that means mound culture or hill culture. A hügelkultur is a sloped and raised planting bed filled with topsoil, wood, and organic materials. Germans and Europeans have practiced it as a gardening method for hundreds of years.
Instead of gathering branches, leaves and grass clippings for yard waste trash pickup or to toss in the compost, build a hugel bed. Mound logs, branches, leaves, grass clippings, straw, cardboard, petroleum-free newspaper, manure, compost, or whatever other biomass you have available, top with soil and plant your veggies.
The advantages of a hugel bed are many, including:
The gradual decay of wood is a consistent source of long-term nutrients for the plants. A large bed might give out a constant supply of nutrients for decades. The composting wood also generates heat which might extend the growing season.
Logs and branches act like a sponge. Rainwater is stored and then released during drier times. Actually you may never need to water your hugel bed again after the first year (except during long term droughts).
We had a bit of rain yesterday which is a perfect opportunity to prep the coconut coir and plant seeds. I’ll start with my favorites: mixed greens, tomatoes, beets, chard and kale, cucumbers, snap peas, beans, peppers, and zucchini (of course).
There’s nothing more adorable than watching the first little sprouts emerge, right? I can’t wait!
Hügelkultur image credit to https://www.hugelkultur.com.au/intro-hugelkultur/
Photo credit to Enchanted Seashells
Let’s Play Ball! (Lizard-style)
This isn’t the greatest photo; the sun kind of distorted the sharp lines and colors, but I was lucky enough to capture my lizard friend sunning himself on an orange tennis ball
This other guy visits every day; I can always tell who it is by his sort of mutilated tail. He seems to know when I’m in the garden and runs over to greet me.
Hello, handsome! They might be referred to as cold-blooded, but still have their own distinctive personalities.
Lizards like to snack on mealworms, but I never seem to remember to buy them at the pet store. I know they have enough to eat because they’re doing a great job cleaning the garden of unwanted grasshoppers, crickets, and beetles.
Dawn’s Beauty
Up at dawn, the dewy freshness of the hour,
the morning rapture of the birds,
the daily miracle of sunrise, set her heart in tune,
and gave her Nature’s most healing balm.
~ Louisa May Alcott
Because of all the rain we’ve had, spring blossoms in the garden are exceptionally lush. My Cup of Gold vine (Solandra guttata/Solandra maxima) is bursting with flowers and this gigantic dinner-plate sized golden chalice looked right at me as if to say “good morning.”
What a spectacular way to greet the day!
The Not-Giving, Hateful, Horrible Tree
This is NOT about that giving tree, Shel Silverstein’s sad apple tree who was abused and abandoned after she gave all that she had for years in her attempts to please a narcissistic little boy.
Taking a bit of a detour and as an aside to that, Angel Girl read The Giving Tree to me — well, not really READ it, but she had memorized every single word and wanted to “read” to me, just like her big brother reads to me. Too adorable, right?
Angel Boy, sitting on my other side, was quick to report in a loud whisper, “She’s not really reading like ME, Grandma, you know that, don’t you?”
I replied, “I know, T, but she wants you and I to be proud of her, so we’re just going to go along with it and praise her efforts, aren’t we?”
After she finished “reading”, we chatted a bit about what the story was all about and Angel Boy said how much he didn’t like it because it was too sad for him to think about the poor tree and Angel Girl chimed in with the same sort of commentary, “He took it all, Grandma, and all she had left was a trunk for him to sleep on when he was old. That wasn’t very nice.”
I was impressed by their empathy and compassion.
And then, because these children NEVER miss an opportunity to point things out to me, she said, “And the man in the book is WAY OLDER than you are, Grandma.”
Ha Ha Ha. Thanks for that, my angel.
Back to my rant, but before I begin, I need to make sure everyone is completely aware about how much I love trees. I don’t even hate eucalyptus trees, but they’re a menace and never should have been planted as a residential street tree, especially so close to houses. I mean, it’s not like I have a colony of koalas in my backyard that need a regular source of food, don’t you agree?
What I’m going on a tirade about is a gigantic eucalyptus tree lives in the space between my house and my next door neighbor’s driveway. It’s a city-owned tree so we can’t do anything about it. No birds nest here; even THEY don’t like it.
The California Invasive Plant Council (CAL-IPC) classifies certain eucalyptus as a “moderate” invasive.
They’re a real fire hazard and can disrupt ecological relationships among species that co-evolved over millennia, which is why many groups work to remove eucalyptus and restore coast live oaks. If that’s not bad enough, limbs fall during storms, and the euc’s shallow root system contributes to the whole tree falling, both of which have killed people.
Volatile oils in eucalyptus trees fuel more intense fires which is enough of a reason to permanently remove this tree.
They are a hazard in every sense of the word. Back in the 1900s, these trees were imported from Australia and planted with the hope that they could be harvested and sold as railroad ties. Unfortunately, eucalyptus is a brittle wood and cracks easily, therefore was unsuitable.
Eucalyptus limbs, branches, and trees regularly fall with potential catastrophic injuries. Recently, one eucalyptus as large as mine fell near our elementary school and was removed.
Last January in San Diego at Balboa Park, a eucalyptus tree was uprooted and fell on top of a woman, obviously causing injuries.
In 2017, A man in his seventies was killed by a branch that fell from a eucalyptus tree at Holiday Park in Carlsbad.
This tree continually drops leaves and other litter on the street, our yards, the sidewalk, and rain gutters. Roots are invasive. The leaves and other tree litter can damage vehicle paint.
I’m really sick and tired of cleaning up this kind of tree debris every week or so.
A few neighbors and I wrote letters to the city expressing all of that and requested the tree be removed. That request was denied. This isn’t the first time we’ve made an effort to get the city to do something about it, and you would think they would be intelligent enough to remove a potentially dangerous hazard, but all they suggested was that If we wanted to spend more than one hundred dollars, we could appeal the decision, but so far, we have not done that.
I met with our councilmember and to no one’s surprise, received no help at all. I’m working on a little show-and-tell with exhibits for a future city council meeting to prove my point and will update you to share all the details about well my plan was or was NOT received. Heehee.
This tree doesn’t give apples; it gives me angst and frustration.
The Circle of Life | In Memoriam
This was one of the most heartwrenching scenarios I’ve witnessed in a really long time.
Picture me in my bedroom, folding and putting away clean laundry, when from the corner of my eye, I see movement through the window. My bedroom overlooks the garden, so I have a clear view.
I had a front row seat to watch a red tailed hawk snatch a dove out of the air, mid-flight, wrestle him to the ground, and proceed to do what birds of prey do.
It all happened in a split second as I watched, mouth agape, frozen in place. I managed to grab my phone and take one not very good photo; it’s through the screen and out of focus.
Just like this guy, most hawks practice what is known as mantling. This involves the bird spreading out its wings and covering its prey, hiding it from the eyes of other animals or larger predators that may want to steal their catch.
As quickly as it started, the drama was over, and I’m left with a circle of feathers. His/her spouse was looking all over the garden for her/him for a couple of hours, which made it all even more sad.
Predator versus prey. Rest in peace, little dove.
Later on, a tiny baby bunny was sniffing the feathers with his mom nearby, at least I think it was mom. I clapped my hands so they’d run for cover because I really didn’t want to see it happen all over again. The circle of life can be brutal.
As The Crow Flies
Family can show up in different species, too.
My crow family (I refer to them as my cousins) are getting ready for spring by building nests in the backyard trees in preparation for the next gen. They return to the same location every year.
Did you know that crows are among the smartest animals in the world? Their intelligence is similar to that of chimpanzees. A crow’s brain accounts for almost two percent of its body mass, similar to that of humans.
I talk to them all the time and it seems as if they accept me and don’t even blink an eye when we’re together in the garden, and have brought me many shiny gifts throughout the years.
This crow cousin was gathering twigs and grasses for her nest. If you look closely, you’ll see she likes pine needles, too.
Nest construction begins in early March and will continue through about June. It takes one to two weeks to finish a nest after which the female will lay a clutch of two to six eggs.
Crow nests are made mostly of pencil-width twigs. A new nest is usually about 1.5 feet across and 8-10 inches deep. After the bulk of construction is complete, they’ll line the cup of the nest with soft materials like grass, tree bark, moss, flowers, paper, or fur.
Both partners participate in nest construction. Helpers might aid to some degree but most of the work is left to the parents. https://corvidresearch.blog/
I help too, and gave them the fringe I cut off a pillow that I planned to recover in a different fabric.
It’s raining today, unexpectedly, because all that was forecasted was some light drizzle, and now everything is wet. I hope my crow cousin’s nest is somewhere warm and dry. I’m going to look for more nesting material they might like to use because it makes me happy to think I’m kinda sorta like THEIR family, too.
(All photo credit to Enchanted Seashells.)
Enchanted Seashells by Princess Rosebud 