Wild Flora's Wild Gardening: meme-tag: Seven Random Things

meme-tag: Seven Random Things

Four random ducks: My ducks are one of the seven random things I'm posting about today. That's Run in the front. It looks as though he's going the be the only boy. (Look how much bigger than the others he is.) Behind him are, from front to back, Cover, Hide, and Duck.

I'M SUPPOSED TO BE WRITING ABOUT FARMING for pollinators today, but my friend Jodi at Bloomingwriter issued an invitation to seven of her reader-bloggers to pick up a meme-tag in which you write brief comments about seven random things. Today is a beautiful summer day, it's a holiday weekend, this sounds like fun, and she has only one slot left, so here goes:

Random thing number one: Recently I heard about a biofeedback machine that teaches people with high blood pressure how to use a deep-breathing technique. In one study, people with high blood pressure who used the machine were able to significantly lower their bps. Because I have high blood pressure myself, I was certainly interested. However, before I shell out US$290 for this machine, I think I'll try to get back in the habit of meditating regularly. I've drifted away from that practice in the last year or so and (gee, you think maybe there's a connection?) my blood pressure has been drifting upward. If you don't want to meditate, deep breathing alone may be all that's required. Lately, whenever I start to feel jangled (like every time I see how the weeds are taking over my garden), I stop and take a few deep breaths and take a minute to just enjoy being alive. Doesn't get rid of those weeds, but I do think it may be keeping me from weed-induced high blood pressure.

Believe it or not, the photo at left shows what the ducks looked like just 3 weeks ago.

Random thing number two: Even though the new ducks are a lot of work, my garden is loving them. This morning I was up at 6 am to empty out the wading pool I gave them as a present about a week ago. It took them about a week to get the water to the point where it was starting to smell like a fine manure tea. Ten trips later, all my vegetable and flower beds had been watered with this stuff. Any other duck muck also gets dumped into the garden, and the alfalfa straw I'm using for bedding is The Best Mulch Ever.

Random thing number three: Duck food attracts a lot of freeloaders.

Photo left: That's the BWD in my neighbor's field, having successfully vanquished the Thunder Dog.

Random thing number four: My big white dog Molly, a Great Pyrenees, is afraid of nothing ... except for The Thunder Dog, her mortal enemy. At least, we've decided that Molly must think that thunder is the woofing of a giant dog, because it's the only thing that upsets her. The other night we foolishly left Molly outside when a thunderstorm was on its way, and she must have decided to take a stand against her nemesis. Unfortunately, she decided to take that stand in the middle of my favorite flower bed. A quarter of it is now trampled. I cut the broken stems away, and I think the plants will probably survive. But they likely won't bloom again this year.

Random thing number five: It's hard to think of random things. If it seems as though all my random thoughts turn toward animals and gardening, that's probably because they're such a big part of my life.

Random thing number six: Food is another big part of my life. My Live-In-Love has been doing most of the cooking lately, for which I am very grateful. Here's his trick for cooking the greens we've been getting from our Community Supported Agriculture program: He simmers them in dry vermouth.

Staying connected: Though we live out in the country, the two satellite dishes keep us connected to the planet. The big one is for television, the little one for Internet.

Random thing number seven: The only thing that pops into my mind is how grateful I feel to be able to live the way I do. We live in an exceptional time, when it's possible to be connected to the entire planet via the Internet and yet enjoy the many joys of country life (not the least of which getting to lug around all those buckets of duck manure tea). A trampled flower bed and a few (ok, an explosion of) weeds are nothing in the greater scheme of things. Truly, there's every reason to take a big, deep breath and think about how good it is to be alive.

If you have a blog, please carry this meme forward by posting your own "seven random things." Be sure to leave me a comment with a link to your post!

1 comment:

Unknown said...: Oh, this was also very fun, Flora! I( perfectly understand how it is animals and gardening occupy a lot of your thoughts, random and otherwise...and I must try cooking the greens in vermouth!; June 30, 2007 at 6:47 PM

About this blog and its owner

I’ve lived and gardened in Chicago and the Seattle area, and now I live on 250 acres in eastern Canada. Most of my life has been spent as a journalist and editor, but after moving to Seattle I took a detour and ended up designing and installing wildlife-friendly gardens. For a long (sorry) but (I think) funny essay about this experience, please click here.

In this blog, I try to combine my gardening experiences with journalism-type research to come up with items that I hope will be useful to you, the gardener who wants to be kind to wildlife. The blog will probably be most useful to people living in areas where I have some practical experience, namely the band of states and provinces that are on either side of the United States-Canada border.

Being self-employed, I go through spells when I’m self-unemployed and am able to post frequently, and spells when I’m involved in a project and not able to post. This site is a labor of love and, alas, like so many labors of love it often has to take a back seat to labors of lucre.

If you like what you find here, please consider joining the site as a member or adding it to your “follow” list. The modules for this are below.

Q&A

Question: I have a neat old elm tree in the front yard which is sorely afflicted with mistletoe. I don't know quite what to do with it, as every windstorm drops branches, bark and other parts down on the yard below. I know the infected wood will have to go, at least that is what I'm told, but a considerable amount of tree must be removed in the process. It is a dear tree, and I don't want it to come to fatal harm. What should I do? From Mary

Answer: Dear Mary, old is not ugly, dying is not bad, and dead is part of the natural order. At least if you're a tree.

Old, diseased trees, and the dead trees they eventually turn into, play just as important a role in an ecosystem as the young, healthy ones do--even more important because, thanks to the misguided practices of the past, dead and dying trees have become so rare. Holes in dead and dying trees are vital nesting spots for many birds and small mammals. Dead branches and other litter (which is not necessarily a sign of disease--healthy trees drop litter too), if left to decompose naturally, are also important for ecosystem health.

When working with old trees it's important to get advice from an arborist who understands their value and won't be in too much of a hurry to make drastic changes. Before hiring an arborist, I'd ask him or her to explain the ecological value of dead and dying trees. Ideally I'd want to work with an arborist who could show me examples of dead or dying trees he/she has left standing (aka snags).

I don't know much about mistletoe because I've never lived anywhere that it grows, but I wasn't surprised to read in the Wikipedia that it is an ecologically important species. All too often, valuable native species are classified as pests just because they don't fit preconceived notions of attractiveness. To me it sounds like a pretty cool plant and one I would be happy to have in my garden.

All in all, as long as the tree doesn't pose a hazard to people or property (the advice of a professional could be helpful in making this decision), I would leave it alone to live out its life in dignity and peace. If the tree does pose a hazard, I would look for an arborist who is willing to do the least amount of work necessary to remove the hazard, making every effort to leave as much of the tree as possible and not destroy its appearance.

With any luck you will find someone who appreciates the aesthetics of old trees--who recognizes the beauty, as well as the ecological importance, of big holes, broken limbs, and gnarly wood. (With any luck, we will all find people like this as we get older--but that's another story!)

I like to answer questions! Send me a question at wildflora at gmail dot com and I'll try to answer it. If you provide an email address, I usually respond privately within a few days. (If I forget, please forgive me and send me a reminder.)

Looking for a question and answer that appeared here previously? I am archiving them at my new website. Currently you'll find one question and answer about how to get rid of a multiflora rose and another about how to move a bumblebee nest.

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