With temperatures dipping into the low 20s and our first (finally!) snowfall, the bugs in our gardens are either dead or in hiding. But before we collapse into that comfy recliner with a garden book and a cup of tea, we need to take a good look at our houseplants. It might be winter outside, but indoors the bugs are having a field day.
At least they are at our house. I’m currently at war with some aggressive invaders. They’re about an eighth of an inch long, are covered with sticky, gooey, white fluff, and are wedged into the leaf axils of many of my favorite houseplants. Yup, my indoor garden has mealybugs. (more…)
The seasons have changed. The grosbeaks, hummingbirds, and other birds of summer have left for more tropical climates, but they’ve been replaced. Ducks, loons and grebes that spent the summer in the far north are showing up on local ponds. Rough-legged Hawks sit where Swainson’s hung out a month or two ago. Sandhill Cranes are headed for their winter feeding grounds in New Mexico. Instead of Chipping Sparrows at my millet feeders, I have flocks of Juncos.
I recently posted my 
Just the title evokes images of a Japanese horror movie with giant beetles running down the streets of Tokyo, grabbing screaming people and crunching them between its mandibles.
You’ve never noticed the shrub before. Its rounded green leaves and vase shape let it lurk unobtrusively in the background, where it may eventually grow to 15 feet tall and wide. Then, seemingly overnight, there’s a neon-fuchsia beacon glowing in the landscape. Fall has arrived, and the Burning Bush is on fire.
Gardening in Colorado is not easy. Late freezes, early snow storms (though not this year), hail, drought, torrential rainfall, over 100 species of grasshoppers… there is plenty to complain about.
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.
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.
Mountain Plover 