All posts by Catherine Feldman

Aphid Festival

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Now that the aphids have been fruitful and multiplied all over my butterfly garden (they seem to be feasting on the diet of soap and alcohol that I have been blasting them with,) I think I’m going to have to fork out for the Green Lace Wings. The price isn’t much, but the shipping is, so I decided  to try first the soap and alcohol recipe that I found on the internet. It definitively did not work. Who else eats aphids? Ladybugs? Is anyone else having this problem? Any good, garden-healthy hacks? Please send them to our Comments section. 
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green-lacewing-adult_0 The Green Hope

 

Catalogue of a Gardener’s Sins: Plant Gluttony

PASSION, PUNCHY, ,

Gluttony

You know that feeling, deep in your belly, when you walk into a plant nursery?

It tingles and it commands action…quick and a lot of it. Right? 

Well, I’ve got it bad.

I have to have that little red Echinacea…it’s calling to me…really, three (3) or five (5) would be better….isn’t that the rule: odd numbers?…well, maybe seven (7.)

salsa redIf there really is no reason for another Echinacea, how about that Cimicifuga? Five (5) of those would fit. 

cimicifuga

And that adorable Sedum, just one of those. But, I’ll need  a small pot for it.

sedum plant gluttony

Luckily, I have found that there is a limit to my gluttony—that’s when my car is topped up with plants. The scent of the  flowers, leaves and bark, the moisture in the air, and the oxygen filling my lungs. That’s satisfaction…I hope you have it, too.

Plant Gluttony photo

–The Plant Glutton Has Spoken

Next Blogs: Garden Sloth

Tree Lawn Conversation

PERTINENT, POLLINATION, PRACTICE

I like to think of my tree lawn as chatting in a neighborly fashion with Jane’s, across the street.  Hers is wild and wooly, grown from seed, self-seeding. a haven for pollinators.  Mine is a bit more conventional, with plants native and otherwise, flowering and edible–aiming for eye-candy in all seasons. We are both a bit rebellious, the only ones on our block to have  transformed our tree lawns, so really we are more alike than different; different enough, though, to have a lively dialogue (see below for Eutrochium purpureum (Joe-Pye Weed)/Asclepias Incarnata  and Rudbeckia Maxima/Echinacea Paradoxa color correspondences)

jane and catherine pink jane and catherine yellow 2 

Did you know that it is only in Cleveland that the term “tree lawn” is used? In other cities  they may be called “hell strips,” or “devil strips.”  I like our term because it evokes some pleasant possibilities for greater greenery, bloomery, and a kind of reckless cheerfulness. Continue reading Tree Lawn Conversation →