Happy New Year!

♫♫ A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, 

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn ♫♫

- Edward Payson Powell

I know it's blowing the same old trumpet, but it’s hard to believe that it’s this time already, that another year has gone by. I never make resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and moulding my life, is too much of a daily event for me. 

31st december 2012 - i was one of the lucky ones . 365 days of crazy beautiful precious life were gained . for this i feel blessed 

 

one of my favorite gifts of this year . Robins come to stay in my garden . their trill was the music of summer 

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I had this in my garden this year…. another few gifts...

This coming year, give peace a chance, let 2013 be a peaceful year to all and on this last day of the year... I wish you the clarity to see that life is the gift

Can’t wait to connect with you during 2013!

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Companion planting in the garden

“Some people change their ways when they see the light; others when they feel the heat”

- Caroline Schoeder

This year is ending in a BIG bang of a heat wave - we've been suffering temperatures way up in the 30℃'s and heat like this just changes me completely. I end up feeling totally listless and can't get round to doing anything. My brain seems to shrivel and I don't seem to have any clear thoughts. I enjoy temps in the early 20℃'s, then I'm at my happiest.

Even the chickens have been walking around gasping with open mouths and trying to find some solace having sand baths in the cool ground that I've wet for them. Normally I like standing with the hosepipe in my hand, day-dreaming while I give the garden a good wash, but lately I've been putting the sprinkler on and dashing inside to the cool of the aircon.

But on the positive side, we've had lots of rain in the afternoons which helped cool things a bit and my garden is smiling! And nobody shows gratitude like Marigolds do! My kind-hearted gardener, Chrissie, once strew a couple of seeds somewhere in the garden and since then I’ve had them come up in the most unexpected places! If you grow a vegetable garden, plant Marigolds amongst the vegetables. Marigolds are easy to grow and they help keep away aphids. The relationship between plants and insects is known as ‘companion planting’ and it’s by far the safest, natural way to garden organically.

 

Annual Marigolds can be used anywhere to deter bean beetles, squash bugs, thrips, tomato hornworms, and whiteflies. They are also known to repel harmful root knot nematodes (soil dwelling microscopic white worms) that attack tomatoes, potatoes, roses, and strawberries. The root of the Marigold produces a chemical that kills nematodes as they enter the soil. If a whole area is infested, at the end of the season, turn the Marigolds under so the roots will decay in the soil. You can safely plant there again the following spring.

 Another great use of Marigolds is for freshening up the chicken coop. I mix them with nasturtiums, lavender, rosemary and sage, cut them up and sprinkle on the coop bedding. The lovely smells are released as the chickens trample on the 'coop potpourri', keeping the coop sweet smelling.

 

Nasturtium is another annual, in this case a trailing vine, that keeps away potato bugs, squash bugs, and whiteflies. There is nothing not to like about nasturtiums. The petals are bright, vibrant shades of red, yellow and orange. They grow no matter how sandy the soil and the more sun the better. Shade greatly reduces the amount of blooms each plant will produce. Nasturtiums are common companion plants, so plant them with vegetables. They can be used to trap aphids, but mostly they repel insects, particularly squash bugs. When planted in proximity, nasturtiums are also said to make cucumbers taste better!

The colourful blossoms are edible themselves. Nasturtiums make an appealing salad topping for both their look and taste. As a variation of flavoured butter, try mixing together butter, lemon juice and chopped nasturtium blossoms for a mildly, peppery butter, which enhances chicken fish and dips. For a great starter, the blossoms can be stuffed with a mixture of cream cheese or ricotta cheese, chives and pesto. Guacamole also works well as a filling for the blossoms. The blossoms are fairly fragile, so gently pipe the filling down the throat of the blossom.

 

Nasturtium vinegars can be made using the blossoms. Place a variety of different coloured blossoms in a bottle (the more you add, the more ‘peppery’ the vinegar will be), add a clove of garlic and cover with white wine vinegar (make sure the blossoms are totally submerged). Leave to infuse for 4 weeks or so and the vinegar is then ready to use in salads or sauces. As the blossoms lose their colour after a while, remove and replace with fresh blossoms.  

While I'm on the subject of companion planting, I'd also like to mention Sunflowers. They are great companions and beautiful throughout the garden. Plant with Cucumbers, beans, and vining plants to provide a trellis. They are hardy and a great trap crop for aphids and other pests. They typically produce plenty of their own seeds to use next year and I usually harvest the dry heads for my Cockatoo, who just loves to pick out the seeds himself. 

Sunflowers grow best in locations with full sun. They are remarkably tough and will grow in any kind of soil as long as it is not waterlogged. They do fine in soils that are slightly acidic to somewhat alkaline (pH 6.0 to 7.5). Once sunflowers get started, they can tolerate drought as befits plants whose ancestors grew happily in dry prairie regions. They are so easy to grow that they often plant themselves, springing up unbidden beneath a bird feeder. Sunflower seed, leaves and stems emit substances that inhibit the growth of certain other plants. They should be separated from potatoes and pole beans. Where sunflower seeds are regularly used as bird feed, toxins from the accumulated seed hulls eventually kill the grass below. Harmless to animals or people, the toxins eventually biodegrade in the soil. 

Sunflower seeds are rich in vitamins, proteins, and minerals, as well as linoleic acid which helps the body metabolize fats properly. They contain about 24 to 27 percent protein, only slightly less than an equal weight of ground beef. Furthermore, sunflower seeds contain about twice the iron and potassium and about 4 times the phosphorus of beef. Raw sunflower seeds also contain vitamins B and E, and a dash of vitamin A. Sprouted, they also contain vitamin C. Use the seeds for snacks, alone or mixed with raisins, dried fruit chips, and nuts. Add hulled sunflower seeds to salads and use them in fruit or vegetable recipes. Substitute sunflower seeds for nuts in baking.

Apple and Sunflower Seed Salad

4 to 6 servings 

2 green apples - washed, cored and cubed 

1/2 cup sunflower seeds 

1 head lettuce of your choice - rinsed, dried, and chopped 

2 dill pickles, diced 

2 tomatoes, diced 

1/2 cup ranch-style salad dressing 

I hope you enjoy companion planting as much as I do, especially the eating part!

(This recipe from 'AllRecipes.com')

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Season's Greetings 2012!

The magic of Christmas is in the air and New Year is just round the corner. It’s the perfect time to take a break from work and cherish the warmth of the season. Reach out to all your friends, family and loved ones this festive season and, if you're travelling, be safe!

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December gifts

. . . tomorrow’s flowers . winter food for hungry birds . shapes and shadows for a grey landscape . something to look forward to . december's delights ...

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A Hedgehog in your home

Caring for baby or under-weight Hedgehogs 

 Initially the food should be offered in a dropper or a plastic syringe. Each young hedgehog will need to be fed every few hours.

If you find a baby hedgehog on a summer evening, it is probably perfectly all right and is best left alone. But a hedgehog found wandering around during the day is likely to be ill or, if it's very small, might be a youngster trying to feed and fatten up before the onset of winter. It's unlikely to survive without human help, so you should take it to a vet or try to look after it yourself. 

If you find a nest of baby hedgehogs that are still blind and the mother is nowhere to be found, there is little chance that they will live, but it's obviously worth a try. I never advocate taking wild animals out of their environment so please make absolutely sure that the mother is not around by waiting until dusk to she if she might return. If she's not back by then, it's unlikely that she is anywhere nearby or might have been killed and only then may you try and rear the babies yourself. 

If they are old enough to have brown spines, it's more hopeful, but young hedgehogs are very vulnerable until they are at least 6-8 weeks old. 

The mother's milk is obviously the ideal food: it contains immune proteins which protect the babies against a variety of infections, and nothing can adequately take its place. But a variety of liquid foods may help to keep the youngsters going - give them Complan baby food, sheep's or goat's milk (not cow's milk, which is indigestible to baby hedgehogs.) 

Initially the food should be offered in a dropper or a plastic syringe. Each young hedgehog will need to be fed every few hours.

 When they're old enough they can be fed from a bowl

When they reach three weeks old and weigh about 100g, the babies should be offered a wider variety of food. Crumbled biscuits moistened with milk, bread soaked in gravy and scrambled eggs are all suitable. they can gradually move on to puppy food; two or three tablespoonfuls twice a day should be enough. As they get older - and hungrier! - this can be mixed with table scraps or tinned dog food, which my hedgies absolutely loved! 

But caring for young hedgehogs isn't just a matter of food. Hedgehogs are not well insulated and when their temperature drops , digestion becomes slower, movements slow down and gradually they become colder and less active until they die. Warmth will help to reverse this fatal tendency, but not a sharply-focused heat source such as a lamp. the best idea is a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel and frequently refilled to keep the temperature constant. 

Depending on how many hedgehogs there are, a cage or box about a square meter in area, floored with earth, newspaper or an old carpet, will provide temporary quarters. Remember that the bedding will be need to be changed DAILY. And also be aware that hedgehogs are very good at digging AND climbing! Unless the box has smooth sides, it's a good idea to edge it with something along the top. 

If your young hedgehogs prosper, you can release them into the wild when it reaches the necessary weight, I'd say about 450g, the weight they must reach before it's safe for them to hibernate, otherwise wait until spring before releasing them. 

Most of the info and pics from "Everything You Want To Know about Hedgehogs - Dilys Breese"

It takes dedication and commitment to look after hedgehogs taken out of the wild, so be sure you're up to the task before considering it. 

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Saturday pleasures

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” 

― E.B. White 

Fresh bread with home-made Apricot jam for breakfast

Hanging a bottle filled with fresh water and Nasturtiums from a tree

Watching a garden ornament gently spinning in the breeze

A nest discovered in the back yard

A basket of Pecan nuts brought over by a friend

My favourite sugar bowl

Wooden ducks on my kitchen table

Late-afternoon visitors to my garden

Snuggling up in my favourite armchair, reading a friend's poetry book while sipping a glass of red

What were your pleasures this Saturday?

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Rural love affair

People take different roads seeking fulfilment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost.

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr. 

For thirty seven years I've been having a rural love affair. I grew up in various towns and cities across South Africa, and when my husband and I got married in our late-twenties, we couldn't wait to own our own little piece of rural bliss, somewhere in the country, far from the madding crowd. 

We bought our first smallholding in 1975, starting from scratch on a virgin piece of land covered in lush indigenous grasses and lots of blue gum trees. For twenty seven years we fenced, planted, tended animals, built our house, stables, a cottage and other farm buildings, always busy with some project or another.

And after all this time, I still have not tired of travelling the quiet country roads, spotting wildlife and farm animals en route or stopping to pick some Cosmos or wild flowers for a vase.

Driving up one of the gravel roads in and around our area always fills me with expectation - what will I find over the horison? Neat, green fields? A little stream? Or some antelope crossing the road? I can't remember how many times I've been blessed with some wonderful find, a Hedgehog sprinting for the cover of grass, a Duiker quickly leading it's fawn back to the safety of the trees, a Kestrel sitting on a fence post devouring its prey.

 

And going for a walk takes on a whole different meaning. Walks are filled with all sorts of exciting things - unknown plants that need to be identified, bird song and insects, ground-hog families scurrying about their business, the odd snake hurrying to get out of your way - an artist or photographer's heaven!

But country living is not ALL bliss and joy and certainly has its fair share of draw-backs, like the wildfires we suffer every winter, an essential part of our ecology but still with devastating effects on wildlife and properties. A country property always seems to need more maintenance than suburban properties - fire-breaks that have to be cut, fences that need mending, boreholes that either dry up or need a new pump and all the animals that need tending. 

But its a way of life that, once it gets into your blood, you won't exchange for any other way of living!

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My sedges (Cyperaceae)

 Sedges growing amongst the paving in my garden

I have these beautiful, what I thought was grasses, springing up all over in my bathroom court-yard, but upon trying to identify them, found out that they are sedges. Grasses are characterised by 'nodes' along the stem - or jointed stems - as opposed to 'sedges' which have stems with no joints and which belong to another family. 

As in grasses, the basic unit of the inflorescence in sedges is the spikelet. Within the family there is enormous variation in spikelet and inflorescence structure. The spikelet consists of one to several, tiny, male, female or bisexual flowers, each borne in the axil of a boat-shaped glume (tiny bract) which is coloured in shades of green or brown, red, occasionally white or bright yellow. Mostly petals are absent, but when present, they are concealed within the glume and consist of bristles or scale-like structures. 

 

Distribution

The family comprises about 104 genera and more than 5 000 species world-wide, although estimates of numbers vary greatly due to differing taxonomic concepts of individual researchers and because modern sedge floras are available for only a few countries. The largest genus is Carex with about 2 000 species world-wide, followed by Cyperus with about 550 species. Sedges occur primarily in the tropics and subtropics, but may be locally dominant in some areas like the subarctic regions (tundra). 

In rather arid southern Africa there are roughly 40 genera and 400 species. They are found throughout the region, in particular habitats. Some species e.g. in the genus Tetraria are endemic (occur nowhere else in the world) to the winter rainfall region of the Western Cape, South Africa. 

Ecology

In southern Africa sedges are found mainly in wetlands (some are entirely aquatic) and along watercourses, but also occur in moist grasslands and along forest margins. Some genera (e.g. Tetraria) are common constituents of fynbos vegetation, which generally occurs on impoverished sandstone soils, whereas several species of other genera are pioneers on coastal dune sands. 

It is not surprising that adaptations to particular habitats are many. Many species are deciduous, and survive the unfavourable season as rhizomes, corms or tubers. Several species grow in semi-arid areas, and are able to survive periods of drought due to succulent, water-storing leaf sheaths. In arid areas many species have overcome the problem of temporary moisture (such as in pans) by becoming annuals, completing their life cycles in a month or two. Species occurring in fire-regulated grasslands often have protectively thickened and hardened or fibrous leaf sheaths. 

Sedges are generally wind pollinated, although some of the brightly coloured species are thought to be insect-pollinated. On several occasions I have observed thrips (tiny insects) in the flowers of Fuirena species, absolutely covered in pollen. It is almost certain that, as well as feeding on the pollen, they are also vectors. After disintegration of the spikelet the fruits are mostly dispersed by wind and water, and can also be carried long distances in mud on the feet of migrating birds. Some fruits have corky flotation tissue or further adaptations for water dispersal, some have elaiosomes (an oil-rich appendage on the seed) for ant dispersal, and others are equipped with tiny hooks and bristles for dispersal in the fur and feathers of mammals and birds. 

 

Economic and cultural value

The chief importance of sedges lies in their forming a major natural constituent of wetlands and riverside vegetation, where their densely tangled rhizomes contribute to erosion control and water purification. The consequences once they are eradicated are unfortunately all too easily observed. While on the natural theme, the dense sedge beds that form in swampy regions provide food and shelter for birds, animals and other aquatic life-thus attracting ecotourism. In grasslands, terrestrial game birds (e.g. francolin) feed almost exclusively on the small corms of some Cyperus species. 

Info from PlantzAfrica 

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