September 1996

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"Summer, Summer Quite Contrary, How do our gardens scorch!"

-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Charles Willson Peale, August 20, 1811

Itake each sickly plant as a personal affront, even if it wasn't in the best of health when we took over our stewardship. I am sure after a few more months I might begin to feel differently, but right now the sun that helps them grow has become an avenging angel that seeks to burn them right down to their roots. Sometimes I feel I am at war with the sun and more so my own ignorance. I am combing my books for care and feeding instructions and checking the seed catalogs that arrive for cool weather plants and vegetables that can spruce up the garden once the heat abates.

One major failure this month was my first attempt at sunflowers. I am unsure whether it was the heat or some lingering herbicide in the beds, but less than 50% of the seeds germinated and those that did soon wilted and were devoured by the ever present sow bugs. I will try again, but this time I will germinate the seeds in pots first and only transplant them after they have a good start.

Visitors

Since almost the first day we arrived at our new home we have had visitors. This included a huge housewarming, 10th anniversary, New Job/Old Job party which filled both the house and the gardens, but also a few uninvited guests that, nevertheless we have enjoyed having.

My office is a huge, high-ceilinged room once designed as a master suite addition off the rear of the house. It has a beautiful view of both the garden and my bird feeder which hangs from a pergola framing a large bank of windows. One evening, while staring at my computer waiting for words of wisdom to appear I began to hear rustling in the ferns below the windows. Watching closely, I saw a small, probably immature opossum make his slow, deliberate climb up one leg of the pergola. As it approached my height we regarded each other through the glass. He seemed much less impressed with me than I was with him as he continued his climb. Several hours later I saw him again as he made his return trip to the ground and ambled off across the garden.

We see our friend quite regularly now. I wanted to make sure I was opening myself up to some risk, though. I didn't want him nesting in our roof or crawl space or causing other problems so I did some research to make sure we weren't courting disaster by allowing him to stay undisturbed. Turning to my favorite research source, The Internet, I soon had megabytes of information regarding opossums, their habits and problems.

Iwas relieved to find out that of the possible residents of our property, these were probably the most benign. While not entirely immune, opossums are very resistant to rabies. They are omnivorous, eating both plants and animals such as snails and slugs. I like to attribute the fact that I have not seen one snail or slug in my garden to the effects of our new friend. The worst you might expect would be some nibbled tomatoes or fruit. Since my tomatoes are suffering with everything else and not even blossoming and the apricots were heisted by the squirrels, I don?t feel I have much to worry about.

We are careful, though, not to feed the opossum inadvertently. I have a hanging bird feeder that he seems to ignore and we have indoor cats so there is never any pet food left outside or in other opossum accessible areas. A friend of mine taught me this lesson when he awoke one night to find a opossum had crawled in the doggie door, climbed on top of the counter and was completely buried in a bag of dog food. The pictures were cute but probably not something to be encouraged.

Here are a few opossum links for the curious among you.

PAWS: Progressive Animal Welfare Society -- http://paws.paws.org
The Wonderful Skunk and Opossum Page -- http://elvis.neep.wisc.edu/~firmiss/mephitis-didelphis.html

Whenever I feel that the garden has just about beaten me I have a few places to turn for help and commiseration. Usenet news has an excellent forum entitled rec.gardens and rec.gardens.roses. The users there are exceptionally helpful and give you their honest opinion in the clearest terms.

Amore chummy atmosphere can be found on the GARDENS mailing list. Messages to the list are forwarded to all members of the list by special software. You can receive each message separately or chose the DIGEST format which bundles the messages into 32K "digests".

This list has some of the nicest people I have ever met electronically. When I first inherited my garden I bombarded them with questions and they answered all they could. If only I could take them on a virtual tour to help me identify some of the plants in my garden and give me some recommendations. To subscribe to GARDENS-L send an email to the GARDENS address LISTSERV@LSV.UKY.EDUand type:

sub gardens Your Full Name (replace this with your name i.e. Douglas Welch)
SET GARDENS DIGEST

You will receive an informational message back explaining how to send commands to the LISTSERV that runs the list and how to post messages to the list itself. It may sound confusing but once you get going it can fill your mailbox with a wide variety of useful and fun information.

Coming Soon

Next month I will give a report on my latest adventure in removing a misplanted willow tree, repairing and rebuilding a sprinkler system crushed by tree roots and the plan for turning my small patch of (now dead) grass into a native wild flower and shrub garden. See you here, next month. In the meantime remember that dirt under the fingernails is a sure sign of a clean mind!

Douglas E. Welch