Book Review: Attracting Beneficial Bugs...

About a month ago I saw notice from Timber Press about a new book that was now available, and I immediately got excited. You see, although they publish so many great books about nature, plants, and gardening already, many of them don't strike a chord with me. Books about plants and gardens are like the plants and gardens themselves, in that they're a personal thing -- sometimes a plant (or book) gets you excited, and sometimes it doesn't.

Well, Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden: A Natural Approach to Pest Control by Jessica Walliser got me excited! Perhaps it was because I really love insects -- they're one of my favorite things about a garden -- but it could also have been the fact that other than a stray hover fly, the odd house spider, and several fungus gnats I hadn't seen any insects for four months, but I immediately sent an email to Timber Press begging to be sent a copy to review.

Tired of mulch

Well, at least my legs are. Tired of mulch that is. That huge (approximately 10 cubic yards) pile of wood chipping on my driveway finally got shifted this past weekend...

...at least partially. Last year I moved the entire pile myself (64 wheelbarrow loads!) over two days, but this year I had a friend helping me for the first day. He loaded while I wheeled, which gave me a short rest in between trips into the back yard. So nice!

Carex, not disappointing

This is the time of the year when the sedges really impress me. Sure they may have been protected from the coldest weather by a blanket of snow, but look at the lovely greenness!

That's Carex 'Everest', showing more green than anything else grassy in my garden right now. The ornamental grasses are brown and most of the bamboos are too, but the Carex just won't quit.

Cactus Survey

Saturday was another mild one here in St. Louis, and I took the opportunity to take a closer look at my cactus bed. I was not sure what I'd find but expected to see some prickly plants that held up better than others.

As I approached, at least I could make out some familiar forms -- they hadn't all turned to mush under the snow. That's a good start, right?

Weather!

Yesterday was a weird weather day for much of the middle of the country. Here in St. Louis it was unexpectedly warm, the temperature of 72ºF (22ºC) at least 10ºF higher than forecast, and wow, was it windy!

Then around 3PM a line of strong thunderstorms moved in and a torrent of rain came down. This is the type of thing my garden needed last summer but never got. Strange to be seeing it in February.

Weeds Find a Way

After almost four years of blog posts, it can be challenging to come up with fresh topics, things that I haven't written about or showed you before. Which is why today's post is so very special, as it's a first for this blog, something I guarantee you haven't read about here before.

It's a review of a gardening book, of sorts. Although I've done several book reviews before, until today I have not reviewed a children's book. So I was excited to give this one a look...

Browns

Lots of browns in the garden now, even those things that are supposed to be green, like the bamboo.

It's still pretty though. Let's take a look...

Melting

Unfortunately, the title of this post seems like it has two meanings today. With the temperature forecast to break 60ºF (15ºC) and reach almost that for the next few days, the snow will surely be gone soon.

Which means that I'm starting to think about surveying the plants that had a not-too-certain chance to make it through the winter. I'll wait until it's warmer to take a close look at each of these, but for now a long lens through the window will get me a preview.

Terrarium Trimming

First, I want to apologize for disappearing briefly. Having missed a couple of days of posts due to a crazy work week which included some travel, I'm back and eager to talk about plants and the garden again. With temperatures expected to get into the 60's F for a few days later this week, I should actually have the motivation to get out into the yard to take some photos too.

But first, I finally decided to do something about the somewhat overgrown terrarium. Remember, I look at this every time I get on the treadmill, and it was really starting to bother me.

Variety.

I learned a little bit about the mulch pile the other day.

Sure you can shell out for high-quality hardwood mulch, a homogeneous mound of oak or other desirable, durable woods. But that seems so boring!

Liars!

That's what Loree at Danger Garden called my bamboo, when the dead and desiccated leaves rehydrated in the rain a couple of weekends ago making it look like the plants were doing just fine.

Of course they weren't fine. I wanted to see up close the rehydration process though, so I grabbed a few leaves...

Shift!

So, that mulch pile that's on my driveway?

It's much larger than I thought it was.

The sounds of warmer times

With a temperature around -3ºF (-19ºC) this morning, I'm looking for anything to take my mind off of the cold and the snow.

So I turned to my favorite wintertime-but-wishing-it-were-summer-again trick: watching videos of my garden!

Inspired by me!

Well, it's happened. I've finally inspired somebody. I've mentioned it before but most of my readers arrive here through a Google search, and recently I was emailed by somebody who wanted to build a planter box for bamboo.

I've posted about this topic several times before, and it's nice to know that somebody is finding those posts to be useful. Let's take a closer look...

Winter Mulch

In what is becoming an annual part of my winter gardening activities, I once again had a huge load of free wood chips delivered.

Unlike last year when the weather was fairly mild and I could easily cart all sixty-four wheel barrow loads of this organic mulch into the back, this year's delivery came at an inopportune time.

All Better Now?

Well, it seems all of my worry about the bamboo leaves all dying or even having the culms die was completely unfounded.

Everything is fine now! No rolled leaves, no dry, papery look. Maybe the color is off a bit, but that's to be expected. Glad to see the plants are all better now... or are they?

The sweet scent of winter

For a week or two every winter, my basement is filled with a strong scent that is difficult for me to categorize and even harder to avoid. It's a sweet, flowery perfume that is almost too strong for me to bear.

It starts in the early evening, is gone by morning, and always takes me a few days to remember what "that smell" is when I walk into the room.