Q: Why didn’t the Turkey Vulture pay the airline’s luggage surcharge?
A: All he had was carrion.
Frequently portrayed as sinister black birds hunched over a dying cow or feasting on road kill, Turkey Vultures could be the perfect Halloween birds. But are they really as evil (or disgusting) as the image suggests? Get to know them a bit better, and you might be surprised at how interesting these huge birds can be. You might even find them endearing.
My houseplants had been looking fine all summer, but now they were obviously ailing. No leaves were drooping, no obvious critters were chomping on the leaves. It was more of a general sense of decline—and a dappled, grayish pallor to the foliage.
Closer inspection revealed that many of the V-shaped joints between leaf petiole and stem were filled with minute webbing. My skin crawled. My plants were infested with spiders! To be more accurate, my plants had spider mites. These tiny bugs are not insects. They are arachnids, just like spiders, scorpions, and ticks. Like spiders, they have two body parts and eight legs. Unlike spiders, all of whom are predators, spider mites are more like vampires. They suck plant juices.
Carrots thrive in my garden. I have sandy soil that is dug and amended about 18 inches deep. The sawdust I added years ago is now dark humus. The roots are safely underground, and when hailstones pummel the ferny foliage it bends rather than breaks.
Growing carrots is easy, once they germinate. When planted in cool soil, the seeds can take three weeks before sprouts appear. Yet, if you wait too long, it’s very difficult to keep the seedbed damp as the weather warms. My solution is to plant around May 1 – 15, then use a drip irrigation mister attached to a timer to keep the soil from drying out.
What comes to mind when I describe a tree that has heart-shaped leaves, is in the poplar genus, grows well in Colorado and turns a brilliant gold in the fall? Chances are, you didn’t immediately think of cottonwoods. Yet, when it comes to putting on a show, cottonwoods are every bit as spectacular as their close kin, the aspen. In many ways, they are the other iconic Colorado tree. Find any stream, pond, or irrigation ditch, and chances are there will be at least one cottonwood growing next to it. They are riparian trees, and prefer to have their feet wet.
The tiny bird fluffs its feathers against the cold, while the north wind whips sleet into the pine branches surrounding its perch. With all water sources frozen, it has to use precious body warmth to melt the snow it eats. Last year’s crop of seeds is buried under a layer of white. Wild birds are amazingly hardy creatures, but even the sturdiest Mountain Chickadee (above) finds conditions like these a challenge.
There are a number of ways we can make our yards more hospitable to wintering birds. They need food, water, and shelter to survive. With increased urbanization, all three of these are becoming more scarce, so our efforts may make the difference in whether or not a bird survives until spring.
Some are ephemeral, shattered by the slightest breeze into a thousand tiny parachutes. Others hang on all winter, beautifying the garden like subdued flowers. At this time of year, with most flowers past their prime, seedheads come into their own.
When creating a landscape, designers usually consider shape and form, colors, texture, flowers and leaves. Rarely are seedheads part of the equation. But in a climate such as ours here in Colorado, many plants are dormant at least as long as they are in active growth. Their winter appearance matters.
Plants with persistent seedheads abound. Just as when we combine flowers of differing shapes and colors to produce a pleasing synergy, we need to consider the color, shape, and texture of seed heads.
Are you tired of gardening? We’ve had a longer-than- average growing season this year, and the weather is still warm enough to encourage flowers to bloom and pumpkins to turn orange. If your kitchen counter is piled high with zucchini, and you’re actually getting a tad tired of vine-ripened tomatoes, this is the perfect time to plan next year’s garden.
Most gardeners wait until spring to decide what to grow. This is a dangerous mistake. In spring, we’ve been staring at a brown and dead landscape for the past many months. Anything green seems like a miracle.
Stands of bright gold aspen shimmering in the sunlight are a spectacular sight, so it is no surprise that many people plant aspen in their home landscapes. Sadly, aspen is probably not the best choice for local gardens. The same qualities that make aspen perfectly suited for colonizing mountainsides denuded by fire, rock slides and avalanches create problems in more constrained spaces.
The first crocus of spring. Sunny yellow daffodils naturalized under trees. Beds full of crimson tulips—it all starts now.
After gardening all summer, it’s hard to add yet another chore to the pile of things to do this month, but planting bulbs should be near the top of the list. Getting them in early not only affords you the best selection at the garden center, but gives roots time to grow in still-warm soil, preventing frost heave and providing the best start to next spring’s bloom.
Pick a location that gets plenty of sunlight, particularly if you intend for your bulbs to come back year after year. Most bulb species bloom well the first year, but here in Colorado they tend to diminish with each successive growing season. Especially in the case of tulips, assume that you will need to replace them annually for the best display. Even other species will need ideal growing conditions if they are to increase in size and number.
While most fall and winter berries are red, or perhaps dark blue, snowberries sport showy clusters of pristine white, berry-like fruit. If not eaten by the birds, the fruit will adorn the bare branches in winter. The upright, finely-branched shrubs are about three feet tall. Moderate growers, they are long-lived, with tiny pink, bell-shaped flowers that appear in early summer.
A Colorado native, snowberry is well adapted to our growing conditions, and is hardy to zone 3. Soil type doesn’t matter, so long as it’s moderately fertile and reasonably well-drained. Plant in full sun, and water until established. While mature plants are highly drought tolerant, they also survive once-a-week watering, which also results in heavier fruit crops. Prune only to remove old, dead wood.
While the slightly toxic berries are considered inedible by people, deer will browse on the plants. With its dense foliage, snowberry makes a good foundation shrub. For a woodland feel, plant with other natives such as Oregon grape and ponderosa pines.
Mountain Plover 