Author: LAH

Posted on in Gardening, Green Gardening Tips, Soils

Feeding Your Lawn

lawn_uplandin_20090615_lah_3607The summer is heading for fall, and it’s time to fertilize lawns. Go to any garden center and you’ll see piles of name brand lawn fertilizer, complete with directions on the back. Just follow these simple steps and you’ll have a healthy, green, weed-free lawn.

What these manufacturers don’t take into account is that different parts of the country have different soils. What may be excellent advice for Pennsylvania or Maine may not work for Colorado. Unlike much of the north and east, the Front Range loses more water to evaporation than it gains in rainfall. Combine that with the native rock from which our soils are derived, and we typically have soils that are alkaline, high in phosphorus and potassium, and low in organic matter and nitrogen.

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Posted on in Bird Profiles, Birds

Caliope Hummingbirds

 

calliope-hummingbird_blkforest-co_lah_6692How can a bird be that tiny? And how can anything that tiny have that much stamina?

I’ve been sitting at my dining room table watching the Broad-tailed and Rufous Hummingbirds compete for the feeders hanging outside the window when I notice a third species, even smaller than the pugnacious Rufous male hogging the sugar water. It’s our annual visit of the Calliope Hummingbirds! With a length of only 3.25 inches, and a body weighing in at one tenth of an ounce, the Calliope is the smallest bird in the North American bird area. (more…)

Posted on in Conservation, Gardening, Veggies

Subscribe to Good Eating

264-wheelbarrow-of-veggies-closeup-nxMy daughter supports it in Idaho. My brother-in-law supports it near Denver. My friend supports it here in Colorado Springs—maybe it’s time I join the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement too.

Let’s say you’re eager to enjoy locally grown, organic produce but you don’t have the time or room for a garden (or you just hate yard work). Your first inclination is to head for the neighborhood farmer’s market. But there’s another option. You can buy a share in a farm.

This is how CSA works: one or more small, family farms grow a variety of produce. How much variety depends largely where they are and what will grow there. The growers estimate how much they’ll harvest over the season, and divide the yield into family-sized portions.

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Posted on in Gardening, Veggies

Grasshoppers

grasshopper-on-dahlia_hudsongardens-littletonco_lah_9279

They’re chewing holes in my big, beautiful chard leaves, leaving tiny dark pellets of digested foliage to mark their conquests. They jump aside as I walk through the knee-high grass in our field. Until I moved to Colorado I had idea how plentiful grasshoppers are (we’re home to over a hundred different species!), or how much frustration they can cause a gardener.

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Posted on in Gardening, Plant Profiles

Cupid’s Dart (Catananche caerulea)

catananche-caerulea-cupids-dart-xg-9aug05-lah-262rDescription

Cupid’s Dart comes to Colorado from Europe, where its historical role as an ingredient in love potions gave rise to its common name. Clumps of slender gray-green leaves grow about a foot tall and wide. Wiry stalks extend past the foliage, supporting a myriad of striking periwinkle-blue flower heads, each set off by papery bracts behind the petals. If left to mature, the two inch blooms turn into attractive seed heads that last all winter.

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Posted on in Bird Profiles, Birding Trips, Birds

Mountaintop Birds

mtevans-co_lah_4844nef

My husband and I aren’t the only ones who escape the heat by fleeing to high altitudes. A number of bird species do the same thing. Instead of migrating to the arctic, they head for the hills.

I was a first-year birder, a mere fledgling. Our local Audubon chapter was offering a trip to the high country. Of course I signed up. Surely there were amazing birds to be seen at such rarefied heights. I was expecting something new and exciting— a Williamson’s Sapsucker, perhaps, or one of the rosy-finches. Maybe we’d even spot a well-camouflaged ptarmigan!

We piled out of the cars at the top of the first pass, and I raised my binoculars to scan the scattered patches of melting snow and dwarfed willows. There! What as that moving in that patch of wildflowers? It’s a… it’s a… robin? I came all the way up here to see a robin? I have plenty of robins in my yard, munching on my gooseberries and chokecherries!

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Posted on in Gardening, Public gardens

Cool Wildflowers

alpine-paintbrush_mtevans-co_lah_4409We’re in the middle of summer, that season I’ve waited for all year. All those December dreams of dahlias, March musings of marigolds—and now it’s too hot to go outside! A friend and I have been planning, then delaying, a trip to the Denver Botanic Gardens for several weeks, hoping for a cooler day that will allow for a more enjoyable visit and better photos. Meanwhile, what’s a sweaty flower lover to do?

Head for the hills!

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Posted on in Birds, Humor

An Anthropologist’s Take on Birders: Part 2

birding_venetucci_20090916_lah_06671If you missed Part 1, I’m summarizing some observations made by our daughter, the anthropologist, about our birding tribe.

Language

Any interest group will have it’s own special vocabulary, and birders are no different. For example, there’s a difference between birdwatchers, birders, and listers (or twitchers, if you’re British). Each word has its own nuance. “Birdwatchers” are recreational birders, enjoying birds wherever they find them but not really going out of their way or keeping track of what they’ve seen. They may actually have the most fun, since there’s no pressure and they take the time to really look at the birds they see.

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Posted on in Gardening, Veggies

Wilted

I know July is summertime, but this is ridiculous. We live in Colorado at an elevation of 7,000 feet. Yet day after day the temperature climbs into the 90s (tomorrow’s forecast is for 97°). I always though we’re too high to be this hot!

bok-choy-bolting-home-2003jun30-lahAs I sit here in front of a fan, lemonade in hand, I can see my garden out the window. Of course the lettuce is bolting (as I mentioned last week). The cilantro is in full bloom, with delicate white flowers that attract a variety of beneficial insects. The bok choy is blooming too. Its bright yellow flowers of four petals arranged in the shape of a cross declare that it’s a crucifer, or mustard family member.

In this heat, keeping things watered is essential. Last week we had hours of rain. This week all that mud is baking into pottery. Mulches help, and the soil is still damp where a thick layer of straw shades it from the hot sun.

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Posted on in Gardening, Veggies

Oh Hail!

hail_home_plh-1It was the house-shaking boom of thunder that first caught my attention. As my ears recovered, I heard a drumming on the roof, a steady beat that rapidly got louder and louder. More flashes of lightning. More thunder. I stopped chopping up celery for the stir-fry I was making, and looked outside. Sure enough, that wasn’t just rain I was hearing. It was hail.

Vicious icy balls almost an inch in diameter were pelting the house, bouncing on the driveway, burying the flower borders. I switched windows so I could see my veggie plot. That was a mistake. It’s such a helpless feeling to watch a lovingly tended garden, the beds I had so carefully weeded just hours ago, turn into lime sherbet.

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