All the leaves are down...

Photo by Rachel Shaw

I admit fall is not my favorite season, mainly because of what follows all too soon. But it has its charms on  lovely mild days when the light is just right and the leaves have a golden glow. 

Raking leaves used to be one of the things I enjoyed about fall, and still do, though I’m doing a lot less of it. More and more people are making the case for not raking, or raking minimally, or composting raked leaves rather than bagging them. They make the case that leaves make a nice mulch, and and are a source of nutrients. After all, that lovely humus in the woods builds up naturally; it doesn’t come out of a plastic bag! 

So last year I raked only our small patch of grass, and left the beds pretty much alone. This year I’ve heard another good reason to let the leaves remain: they are protection for overwintering insects, including caterpillars. OK! Good enough for me. 

I do keep an eye out to make sure there aren’t too many maple leaves mounded around individual plants, as they have a tendency to form a dense wet mat. And I probably should have thought sooner to scoop up the leaves off the little patch of erstwhile lawn that I'm trying to convert to moss. I'll keep sweeping leaves off the flagstone front path, so it won't get slippery with leaves when it rains.  Otherwise, no raking.

And here’s a link to a beautiful blog on leaving the leaves, as well as on different styles of gardening: http://www.ecosystemgardening.com/leaves-in-wildlife-garden.html

Certified Wildlife Habitat

Photo by Rachel Shaw

 This summer I decided to look into getting my yard certified as wildlife-friendly through the National Wildlife Federation. I'd seen the occasional "Certified Wildlife Habitat" yard sign, and thought it was pretty cool. Plus, the entire City of Rockville, MD, where I live, is trying to get certified, so I thought I'd do my part.

Photo by Rachel Shaw

Certification, it turns out, is not that hard. It is a self-certification process, relying on you to honestly report whether you meet certain criteria. These include such things as providing sources of food, water, cover, etc.;  there are various ways you can meet these criteria. There is a $20 fee for certification, and a $30 fee if you want the standard yard sign. To me it was well worth it, just for the value of being able to say, yes, this is important to me; I want my yard to be a haven for wildlife.

a white loblia

My blue lobelia, Lobelia siphilicata, has always seemed a rather raggedy plant compared to the Lobelia cardinalis, or cardinal flower, which the hummingbirds love. By mid-summer the blue lobelia looks a bit dried up and not terribly attractive. Perhaps, I thought, it's less robust than the cardinal flower, which seems to handle drought pretty well for a water-loving plant.

While the cardinal flower happily seeds itself in throughout the yard, the blue lobelia has not reproduced at all...until this year. I was actually on the verge of pulling it out, when I discovered a flock of low growing, flowering new lobelias around the mother plant. Not only were they quite pretty, they also included some white flowers as well as the usual blue.

I realized that what I seeing must be the result of a mutation. Now I'm fascinated. What will happen next year? Will I have more white plants? And is the much shorter height also a mutation? I don't recall that in its first year of flowering the parent plant was short like these. For now, the blue lobelia stays!

Bottle gentian and bees

The bottle gentian, Gentiana clausa, is a fall-blooming plant; the deep blue flowers provide a welcome splash of color as the summer-blooming plants die back  Also known as closed gentian, the mature flower looks like it is about to open but never does.

I wondered how such a flower was pollinated, and read that it is done by bumblebees, the only pollinators strong enough to force open the flowers. So I started watching. I had assumed that the bees would force the flower open from the top. But from what I observed, the bees clasp the bottom of the flower, facing downward to get pollen from the base. Fascinating!

Last Monarchs of the season?

I was excited to see Monarch caterpillars chewing on the leaves of my newest milkweed, Aesclepias incarnata, or swamp milkweed.  I have several other swamp milkweed plants, which have seeded themselves in from one I bought at a garden center several years back. But those other plants are cultivars of Aesclepias incarnata, probably 'Ice ballet.' The flower of this cultivar is white, whereas my new plant is the straight species, with pink flowers. There is always the question with cultivars of native plants as to whether wildlife, especially insects, will be be able to feed on  them. I'm for the true natives when possible, and perhaps the caterpillars felt the same!

Several days later, I saw a lovely chrysalis hanging from one of my tomato cage supports. The  Monarch chrysalis, with its beautiful jade color and delicate threading of gold near the top always makes me think of stunning piece of jewelry.  In the photo you can actually just make out a bit of the colors of the caterpillar from inside the chrysalis!

Not too many days later there was just a papery empty shell left. Hopefully there's one more lovely Monarch flittering about, or perhaps heading down to Mexico. Here's a neat link with some information about the Monarch lifecycle plus video of one emerging. http://www.monarchbutterflyusa.com/Cycle.htm

Ruby at Rest

OK, I finally got a hummingbird picture where the bird is at least visible. Next goal - Ruby in motion. I talked to someone recently who is an international birdwatcher and photographs all the birds he sees. He explained that to capture a hummingbird in motion, try using the sports setting on a digital camera.

Tomatoes, tomatoes

The tomato harvest is coming in nicely. Patience is probably the key; they do seem to stay at the hard green stage for quite awhile, but once they start ripening it is pretty steady. We've been having lots of good salad, sometimes using lettuce that we've grown indoors on our Sunstation.

For eating fresh, the Brandywine is still my pick for the best flavor. The yellow pears are tasty and are low in acid. Brown berries are an excellent cherry tomato. The Cherokee purple are a bit of a disappointment, not terribly productive, especially after one of the main stems broke.

An interesting new one for us is a patio tomato with the uninspired name "Patio hybrid" from Totally Tomatoes seed company. The tomatoes felt so firm that we wondered if they were ripe, even when bright red. However, they sliced well, without the hard white core that the heirlooms are inclined to, and proved quite ripe and nice for sandwiches.

Last week we decided to try making tomato sauce.This was so much easier than I had imagined: dip the tomatoes in boiling water for 20 seconds, and then put them in a bowl of ice water. The skins really do slide right off! Our recipe was simple: garlic, onions, fresh oregano and basil, and our secret ingredient: ground buffalo meat. I don't know if it was the buffalo that did it, but the sauce was fabulous! A later batch made with ground beef was not remarkable, though other factors such as cooking time and the amount of fresh herbs added may have been in play.