lavender

Thanks! The orchids almost show up. There are about 10 plants in bloom.

The reporter did a great job of getting it right, not as easy as it sounds when translating someone else.

And once I have the evidence I can have him arrested for veggienapping.  

Punxy Phil will soon tell you.

Just so I don't see Phil in my garden he is OK. Miserable rodents eat everything!

I don't want to see daffodils until April! They had buds on them in the middle of winter last year. I'm pretty sure not much in that patch bloomed later. I should have picked them and brought them in.

Lucky, Snellma! I don't think that spring is just around the corner in DuBois.

Good to know. Life Buoy was had to find. We also use ammonia too. It works better on groundhogs and coons.

I don't know about the hair. They sure aren't scared of it when it is on my head.  ;D

I've used soap and had it work. What kind does she use? It seems to me that there were only a couple of kinds that were supposed to work. Life Buoy (sp?) was  one, I think.

Last year I got the Dolce Series: Peach Melba, Mocha Mint and Key Lime Pie. My husband doesn't say a thing. He just mows them down.

The tame ones don't compare to the wild ones do they? I don't even want the wild ones in the house they smell so bad.

I'd rather dig holes and pull weeds than prepare for the holidays. I'm beat!

The seed catalogs are coming in. I found some new coral bells (Huecheras). Villosa hybrids.  Pistache is lime green/chartreuse yellow, Beaujolais goes from burgundy/silver in the spring rose pink in summer and Tiramisu goes from gold/yellow in spring to burnt orange to chartreuse/silver. In the fall it is purple with a line green edge. (Gotta have Tiramisu)

Picked up a bunch of these last year they are great plants for semi-shade and are said to do well in the sun too. Even last years drought couldn't kill them and I didn't water much.

I agree. They can be treated like a houseplant in the north. Give it bright light and not too much water. Put it out again in the spring but you may lose the indoor foliage. You actually handled exactly as you should have.

Feb. is right around the corner and that is when I will need to start tilling my garden and getting my early veggies in.  Missed having a garden last year so am really ready this year.

Nope, they say decorators gone wild.

Snellma, I'll start leeks in February and maybe some flowering annuals. You should have seen my leeks this year. They were as big around as a medium sized onion. Still haven't dug them all. Must do it before the ground freezes.

The red poinsettias just don't make it in the room that is sage green and lavender. Men are big on painting everything white. Don't know why.

Catmint is a near relative of catnip but it gets a pretty blue flower. It is a medicinal herb. I did an article on it for our newsletter. It is here http://www.downtoearthgardenclub.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=60&Itemid=29   Excuse the formatting. It was one of my early efforts and I haven't had a chance to fix it. Maybe I'll go do it right now while I'm thinking about it.

For some reason I always think of the trees that are beautifully done in the non-traditional colors as something a decorator would do or someone with no interest in sentimentality. My ornaments don't match but they all have a story.

We do a Lenox tree as well (I collect Lenox) and my husband keeps telling me to quit putting up the traditional tree just do the Lenox one. Like that is going to happen!

I might just get one of the odd colored poinsettias as I have a room that red looks really bad in. I was disappointed to find that they were dyed. I don't like plants that are messed with.

I'm looking for seeds for different kinds of catmint this spring in the catalogs. I have a friend who says the newer varieties are not as rambunctious as the older ones and that it is a great bloomer. Going to give some of them a try. Walker's Low sounds good.  

He probably would. He is 92 and bored because there isn't much he can do anymore.

I think the mimosa will be fine. Haven't had time to do much in the greenhouse lately. Fortunately the plants get along pretty well without me at this time of year.

We have tons of them as cracking them is my father-in-laws winter hobby. There must be a trick to it because he gets them out in large pieces. The rest of us aren't nearly that good. You have to be careful of the shells in with the nuts. They are almost indistinguishable from the nuts and are very hard on the teeth. I don't use the small stuff at the bottoms of the jars because that is where they tend to accumulate.

Try a black walnut pie. I did one last year for Christmas.

Oh, and the mimosa has finally put out a shoot. Thanks!

I'm getting tons of catalog's. We can always dream.

I finally asked today at one of the garden centers about all the wildly colored poinsettias. Last year there were spotted ones, curled ones and all different shades of pink, white and red. This year they have branched out into blues and purples. "Self", I said, "This is ridiculous. I know genetic engineering has done remarkable things but BLUE poinsettias?".  So I asked and was told that they are "sprayed". They look very real.

It is not unusual for a brug to lose its leaves when it is brought in.They often go semi-dormant for the winter. In fact many people overwinter them in the dormant state.

Brugs should be summered on a patio with some sun. They need a big pot and quite a bit of water. Maybe you are not watering it enough in the summer or perhaps it is getting too much sun. If it is dropping its leaves it may be just a reaction to the change in climate. You may want to accustom it to the outdoors by putting it in a shady protected position first and gradually moving it into the sun.

That said there are many different cultivars of brugs. Some are prone to dropping leaves at the drop of a hat. Some bloom more freely than others. Some are a dickens to get to bloom. You just never know. You could try feeding it in the summer with a high phosphate fertilizer. Too much nitrogen will inhibit blooming.

There are sticky yellow strips that you can get that will control white fly. The flies are attracted to the yellow color and stick to the strip.

Jasmine? The plant is worth keeping around just for its leaves. I looks like something from Dr. Seuss. It puts out these long stems at times and the flat leaves will grow from them. I've got another orchid cactus that has red flowers and the leaves are narrower and not as shiny. It is a better (day) bloomer but just doesn't compare with this one.

It quit blooming, I think, because I potted it into a bigger pot and then we started using the guest bedroom where I kept it. It just wasn't getting the long dark nights it needed. It is out in the greenhouse now so perhaps it will start blooming regularly again.

The common name of this plant is Night Blooming Cereus. I am quite aware that it is actually Epiphyllum oxypetalum as that is what the tag in it says. It is called Night Blooming Cereus to differentiate it from rest of the Epiphyllum which are mostly day blooming plants. They are indeed commonly called orchid cacti and are tropical epiphytes.

There is another plant called Night Blooming Cereus, it is Hylocereus undatus. It is a much rarer desert plant.  

Many plants share common names. This is why it is much better, if somewhat pretentious, to use the proper botanical names. I shall be pretentious in the future so as not to be confusing. If anyone was actually confused by my use of the plant's common name.

Have you seen a Night Blooming Cereus in Bloom? Mine bloomed in September. The flower only lasts for one night and they have a very sweet odor. This is the first time mine has bloomed in years. They need total darkness at night to bloom.

Yew're welcome and the Yew part came from Agatha Christie and not a plant book but, I'm sure she got it right. (Actually, I checked her out and it is really bad news as the amount that will kill a dog is so small.)  She likes to kill off people with monkshood, too. And I think there was one time that someone mixed up foxglove and spinach but he must have been as idiot.

Will your pup actually eat this stuff? He would have to ingest it for it to harm him. I never had a dog who ate the bushes and our black lab would drag rotting carcasses home for dinner. The ones that are poisonous to humans are poisonous to dogs as well. If he does eat the bushes you might want to think about things that have thorns or barely edible foliage like the barberry or the evergreens. You can check evergreens on an individual basis as to how urine tolerant and poisonous they are. Yew is deadly.

Stay away from arborvitae.  I just remembered what my mother's male dog did to my Rheingold arborvitae in just a week.

Js pm'd me the info for a local contact and I've passed it on to you in a pm.

You are most welcome, ps. I hope that we can be there for the other wonderful projects you have slated for the school.

The munchkins are sooooooo cute. I have to pass on to the forum what one of them said about the double bulbs. He said he knew quite a bit about bulbs and that the doubles and triples were huddled up to stay warm until spring. I hope they have a wonderful crop of blooms.

I know peonies are poisonous and nothing ever eats my mock orange so I'm guessing that it is too. Lilacs maybe too. The rest I've never heard were a problem. Poisonous is kind of relative. Yew and monkshood will kill you, some will cause your mouth to burn and some will give you an upset tummy. An awful lot of plants will have some ill effect if you eat them.  You can safely eat roses and rose hips.

A dog's urine is high in nitrogen and it causes the same kind on burning that pouring strong fertilizer on the plant would. It is the nitrogen not the acidity that causes the problem. The easiest thing to do is spray the plant often to dilute the urine and wash it away.

I will vouch for the fact that rugosa roses will put up with anything a dog can dish out. They survived for years on the Brady Street parking lot. I have been told that barberry and peonies  are also resistant.

It is possible that plants that are salt resistant may also be resistant to urine. You could try mock orange, potentilla, lilac, dwarf Mugho pine, Colorado spruce, Austrian pine or Tamarack.