Magazines are full of articles, the Farmer’s Almanac publishes a yearly calendar to guide you, and my niece swears it works. What is it that’s so popular in the garden world? It’s the age-old practice of planting according to the phases of the moon.
I’ve pretty much ignored moon planting charts, at least until now. It’s hard enough to find time to plant my garden without consulting a lunar calendar. With our Colorado weather, odds are that the “correct” planting date will either be too hot, too cold, too wet, or too windy—or I’d be getting pelted with hailstones, dodging lightning bolts, or brushing off snow… or all of the above!
Spring flowers are finally filling the fields. Milk vetch, penstemons, wild onions and marsh marigolds all caught my eye as I hiked though the towering cottonwoods along Fountain Creek, at the base of the Rockies here in central Colorado. I was particularly impressed by huge swaths of a foamy white flower I didn’t immediately recognize.
I was rinsing my hands under the faucet downstairs when a huge, aggressive monster suddenly scurried across the bowl of the sink. I screamed. Slamming the faucet lever down, I backed away from the counter, shaking, dripping on the tile floor.
In an attempt to improve my skills, I’ve signed up for a Wildlife Photography class at our neighboring community college. I have starry-eyed visions of rutting elk, growing grizzlies and other impressively large mammals adorning the paneled walls of our family room, not to mention the pages of Outdoor Photographer or National Geographic.
I was hiking on a nearby ranch last week when we came across some spectacular wildflowers. As I knelt to grab some photos, my plant expert companion remarked, “You know that’s locoweed. We should pull it out!”
