What the Lettuce Taught Me

Barbara: Like most of you, I’ve been doing a lot of end-of-the-year/beginning-of-the-new year navel gazing, which I kind of hate, but can’t stop doing. I’ve been groping around for some profound, life-changing insight, some thought that can carry me into 2010 with energy and excitement, but which I have been having the hardest time generating given how unrelentingly crappy 2009 has been.

Of course there have been many moments, even days, filled with joy and gratitude, but like many others here in California and the rest of the country, I have been struggling to get by and I’ve been finding it harder and harder to keep my spirits up.

And then this morning I was in my garden and I saw this:

I have been walking by my little basket of lettuce for a few weeks now and it always brings a smile to my lips because I remember the story that led me to plant lettuce seedlings in a basket.

A few years ago my daughter visited her college friend, Holly, at her friend’s family’s home in Connecticut. There she observed a very quirky scene. Holly’s father craved summer-sweet tomatoes, but lacked sufficient sun in any one location. His solution was to plant his seedlings in a wagon and he “took his tomatoes for a walk” several times a day.

At the time I thought this was funny and just a teensy bit eccentric, but this summer when I was desperate to grow something, anything edible, I remembered this story and saw it for what it was, an elegant way to solve the seemingly insurmountable problem of not enough sunlight.

So I planted my seedlings and I’ve been walking them around the patio into the pools of sunlight that manage to sneak through the canopy of eucalyptus trees surrounding my property. And every time I do, it makes me chuckle a little thinking of Holly’s dad pulling his bright red tomato wagon around his yard.

This morning though, I realized that my basket of salad greens is more than a solution to not having enough sunlight. This little basket of greens represents one small victory over circumstances that I had been letting get the best of me. And there was my insight, a small glimmer of profundity, proof that creativity and persistence will overcome all obstacles. It might not be the Big Revelation, but it’ll get me where I need to go.

Happy New Year everybody! Mary Beth and I send our best wishes for a love- and light-filled 2010!

Late Season Blossoms

The lovely quince

Mary Beth: I can write this post now because the cold weather has finally come to the Island and my husband won’t blame me for “jinxing” the unusually warm weather we’ve enjoyed recently.

Every time I spoke about how wonderful it’s been and of the flowers that are still blooming around the Island and in the gardens, he shushed me and clapped his hands overs his ears. Apparently, just speaking about the warm weather will make it disappear. I guess having to work outside makes one desperately (crazily?) grasp onto these final warm days.

I’ve really enjoyed these last few weeks, discovering new blooms and admiring how beautiful they are among the fallen leaves, in low light.

As I type this, a gale is blowing and these tough as nails beauties will be swirling away in the whipping winds. Tomorrow’s garden will be a winter garden. In the meantime, here are the miracles in my garden — the last flowers of the season. In December!

Nicotiana

Heritage Rose

One of my sweet girls in lavender

Winter rain on Heritage Rose

Sweet Alyssum

William Shakespeare 2000 Rose - a last promise of spring

Wordless Wednesday — East Coast, West Coast

Tips for Gardeners and Beekeepers

Mary Beth and I were talking about a comment we ran across on a Garden Rant post wherein the commenter was critical of many garden blogs that “contain too many personal anecdotes…and not a lot of useful gardening information.”  Now, in case you didn’t notice, we love our personal anecdotes. It’s one of the reasons we do this blog and that’s not likely to change anytime soon, but we also realized that we’re probably guilty of not providing enough in the way of gardening information. And if there’s anything we have in abundance, it’s gardening information, advice, tips, etc. Whatever you want to call it, between the two of us, we have about a bajillion years worth of it. So we decided to add a new element to our blog. Starting today we’re going to do a regular post (every week or two) of gardening and beekeeping tips. We hope you find them useful.

Garden Gift Tip

In keeping with the holiday season, our very first tip is about where to find a great gift for the gardener on your list. And, you probably won’t be surprised to hear this has a little story attached to it. When I was feeling very down in the dumps (and I mean loooow down) one day last spring, the UPS truck pulled up to my house. I thought that surely the driver had the wrong address, but no that package was for me. I opened it up to find the most beautiful set of green Vermont slate garden markers for my newly planted herb garden from my very best and oldest friend, Liz. Those markers‚ and the thought behind them, really lifted my spirits and they’ll do the same for whomever you give them to.

Liz and her husband make laser-etched Vermont slate garden markers (and other useful stuff). You’ll be amazed at the finely-etched details of the herbs, vegetables and perennials on the markers — really lovely.  Aside from being beautiful, the markers are very sturdy and hold up to any kind of weather. So if you’re looking for a great gift for a gardener, or anyone else on your list, Vermont Slate Images is the ticket. Check out their website.

Beekeeping Tip

This goes under the heading of “slightly weird things you probably didn’t know, but should.” Never, and we mean NEVER, go near your beehive while eating, or just after eating a banana.

It turns out that when bees detect an intruder and sting it, they release an alarm pheromone that contains a chemical that calls other bees to the defense of the hive. This same chemical is found in bananas (and pears, too). Three guesses as to what happens to you with your banana breath!

Two tips — and that’s just the beginning. Check back in a week or so for more.

And wrapping up on yet another personal note: blogging has many rewards and one of the best so far revealed itself this week. We were thrilled to receive a comment (we love comments) on our last post from Christine. She also mentioned that, by the way, she might be our cousin and, amazingly, she is!

Not to air the family laundry, but there was a bit of some people not talking to other people going on for years and years. But now, luck and good fortune have connected us once again and we couldn’t be happier. You just never know!

What About the Bees?!

Mary Beth: Winter is coming, I think, and even though the weather continues to be unusually warm for this time of year, I’ve been getting the bees ready.

So, what about the bees? Every time I tell someone that Ray and I are moving back to Colorado (Ch, Ch, Changes), I hear this question. I’ll say, “We’re leaving.” and then, wait for it, wait for it…a look of dismay and “What about the bees?!” Of course it’s logical, but I’ve been a little surprised and amused that the fate of my bees worries them. On the other hand it’s nice that my friends and readers have become so engrossed in this story that one of their first thoughts is for the bees.

So here is the answer.

Out of the three hives that I ended up with after the swarm season, the Top Bar Hive is the only one that survived.

The Hippie Shack

For some reason the other two lost their queens after they swarmed (read about it here and here) and I ended up shaking out the remaining bees in front of the TBH in hopes that they would be accepted into the hive. Losing the Blue and Green hives made me very sad — I was surprised by how much I’ve come to love my bees.

As for the Hippie Shack (named in honor of the laid-back nature of these bees), I checked it recently and it didn’t have as much honey as I thought it should. I think the hive was being robbed. I put an entrance reducer in to make the the hole smaller to give the guard bees less area to defend. Now, even with the warm weather prolonging the season, I’m worried that they won’t have time to store enough food to make it through the winter.

Since Ray and I decided to leave after the holidays, I’ve been trying to figure out how to leave the bees with enough food. I researched fondant ‘bee candy’ and it seemed like a good solution, so I made a frame to hold it and placed that in the hive.

This small frame holds 5 pounds of sugar fondant!

Another good thing about the bee candy is it won’t cause the moisture problems inside the hive that the sugar syrup did in the early spring. I placed the fondant between the false back and the last comb hoping it wouldn’t attract any more robber bees.

I hope the warm weather will last long enough to let them build up their supplies. Every day they’ve been coming in with a lot of pollen, which is a very good thing.

Dandelions and the last of the aster are blooming, so I think this is where they are getting the bright orange pollen.

Another sign that the bees are preparing for winter is each day a few more drones have been getting kicked out of the hive. I watched this play out one day — those girls are ruthless!

Poor drone!

One poor male was pulled by his leg and tossed out like yesterday’s paper. It’s a cruel, cruel world my friends, but there is not enough to go around in winter for lazy freeloaders.

I moved the hive from it’s original spot so it will get maximum sun exposure all winter. This should allow the bees to break cluster on sunny winter days.

I also wrapped the hive to give it a little more insulation and to keep the wind out. Now it’s up to the bees. Other than a few more feedings before we leave for Colorado, my girls are on their own until March.

You may wonder why I haven’t given the hive away. I did consider moving the hive to my friend’s property, but I was afraid if I moved it up the steep, bumpy road to my friend’s house, a comb or two might break off ruining any chance of the bees’ survival. So I decided to leave them where they are on my family’s property. I’ll fly back east in the spring for a visit and check on the bees and I’ve arranged for my beekeeper friends to check on them now and then. Fortunately the TBH needs little maintenance and the bees will take care of themselves.

Becoming a beekeeper has been a wonderful journey. Learning about honeybees opened up new worlds for me, not just the world of honeybees in my garden, but the important roles of all pollinators and how critical every last one of them is. It’s led me to examine the negative impact we’ve all had on our environment. I’ve been reading about the decline of the honeybee from Colony Collapse Disorder — just one of many examples of our carelessness towards our environment. But the good thing is it’s made me more aware of what I’ve been doing.

So, with that new-found awareness, I try to do my part to help by adding native plants to the existing flower gardens. And I’ve decided that I will delay mowing the outer fields until after the first frost to allow time for the last of the butterflies to emerge from their cocoons and to let the wildflowers reseed themselves for next year.

Of course, at the center of it all is the honeybee, the incredible little powerhouse.  If you have not yet read any books on honeybees, you should. Some of the things you learn will astound you.

It’s been a great year even with the loss of two hives and no honey to harvest. And next spring I will have a hive in Colorado with even more challenges — bears, skunks and who knows what else, but I have a plan!

Butterfly!

Mary Beth: Is there anything more amazing than a butterfly, especially a monarch? From its very beginning as a tiny larva, to the chrysalis, to the magnificent winged creature migrating thousands of miles to begin the cycle anew, there isn’t a moment of its life cycle that isn’t breathtakingly beautiful.

Swamp Milkweed grows wild on the back slope of my garden and for the past three years I’ve been encouraging it to expand. It provides food for my honeybees and for the monarch butterflies that call Block Island home. Both of them love it and, although it threatens to take over the back half of my garden, I’ll keep letting it seed itself because it is a valuable food source for these pollinators (monarchs are second only to bees in that category) and a critical link in the life cycle of the monarch.

Milkweed blossoms in early July

So I provide food and water for the butterflies, and they give back endless hours of fascination and joy — there’s nothing that lifts my heart more than company of the monarchs as I work in my garden.

In a good butterfly year, the elm trees that separate the garden from the rest of the property will be draped in monarchs, though we haven’t seen this phenomenon for some years now. Wondering why they always come back to that spot, I did a little research and found out that some scientists have speculated that the monarchs might leave a scent on the trees that attracts the next generation.

All summer I watched for signs of the monarchs. First there were the little larvae.

Then they fattened up and became plump caterpillars hungrily munching great chunks of milkweed. (Honestly, between watching the bees and the butterflies, it’s amazing I got any work done.)

Hungry caterpillars

Soon milkweed city grew quiet and I started to search for the chrysalis. And I searched and searched. I’d almost given up on that mid-September day when I was sitting in the garden eating grapes. Suddenly a small green capsule caught my eye.

The chrysalis was hard to spot

I kept a close watch on the chrysalis for the next couple of weeks.

Almost ready to hatch

Gradually it turned dark and I could more clearly see the butterfly folded up inside. I knew it would hatch very soon, so I made sure I always had my camera with me at all times so I wouldn’t miss the big event.

The next day the sky opened up. As it had all summer, it rained buckets.  Suddenly, in between downpours, the sun burst through the clouds. I grabbed my camera and ran for the garden. Surely the butterfly wouldn’t hatch in this foul weather.

Minus its inhabitant, but still beautiful

The female monarch — newly hatched and drying her wings

A magnificent creature — her wing webbing is thicker and she lacks the black spot on each of her hind wings that mark the male butterfly

I missed the hatching, but got beautiful pictures of the minutes-old butterfly. This gorgeous creature, the fourth and longest-lived generation of this season’s monarchs, is on her way to Mexico now. She’ll spend the winter there, reproduce, and finally die.

Soon she'll be off on her long journey

Vaya con Dios little butterfly. Send your babies back to my garden!

P.S. See our Resources page for links to lots of monarch butterfly information, including how you can make your garden more monarch-friendly.

A Rant About a Rant

Barbara: I got a call this morning from Mary Beth directing me to Garden Rant blog. Today’s guest rant, “Who cares about honeybees, anyway?” by Xris, the Flatbush Gardener had gotten her all worked up, and rightly so. As I read it, I could feel my blood pressure rising. This rant, by someone who is mostly on the right side of issues we care about, had such a flip, dismissive attitude towards honeybees and CCD that we could barely contain ourselves.

So what’s a blogger to do when she’s spittin’ mad? Well, blog, of course. So here’s our rant — minus the typos in our original comment on the GR site — about today’s Garden Rant rant. (That’s a lotta rantin’!)

“While we agree with the idea of supporting native pollinators, we strongly disagree with Xris’ shortsighted dismissal of the importance of the honeybee which seems to be based on the notion that it is not part of the ecosystem and therefore expendable. Really?! Though not a native species, honeybees have been a part of the ecosystem (which is the relationship of living organisms and the environment), like it or not, since the colonists arrived.

CCD is important not only because it’s killing an irreplaceable agricultural asset, but because it’s a symptom of a greater problem. Honeybees are essentially the “canary in the coal mine”. They are in trouble because they are treated and managed as livestock — fed cheap, non-nutritious HFCs, trucked across the country, worked under extremely stressful conditions, and then dosed with chemical cocktails to eliminate parasites that have taken advantage of their weakened state. This mentality has gotten us into serious trouble with more than honeybees, as a tour of any feedlot will show.

Because of the CCD “alarmists”, scientists have discovered that our unsustainable practices, such as chemical pesticide usage and mono-cropping, have led to the die-off of native species as well — a fact that might have gone unnoticed until it was too late as it did in an area of China that was so overdosed with pesticides that the local population must HAND POLLINATE crops or starve.

Our use of honeybees as pollinators is not the problem. The problem is how we treat them and the rest of the ecosystem as if it were there only for our benefit. Until we realize that we are a small part of the bigger picture and treat the earth and all its creatures as if they matter and with respect for their needs, we are in danger of killing the very things that keep us alive.”

At this point, having gotten it off our chests, we might feel better, except that we don’t. It all matters, every last little bit and time is running short, people. Every one of us needs to give a crap and DO SOMETHING! So, yes, create hedgerows and other habitats for pollinators, keep some hives, plant native species and use organics for pest control. But, please don’t downplay the issue of honeybee disapperance and Colony Collapse Disorder as old news or as not important. The stakes are too high.

Mary Beth and Barbara