I’ve never loved January/February weather so much. We can go outside almost as much as we want.
We toured the hospital yesterday. I’m having a baby in six weeks! (more or less) I’m very excited. I moved the crib into our bedroom, and up to baby height. This was actually kind of a pain because the crib was exactly one inch too wide to fit through the door so I had to take it apart and put it back together. But now it is set up and ready for a nice cuddly bundle that will hopefully come soon. 🙂
I read this book right before I move to Georgia. To me, this year long stay in Georgia is just a year long adventure. I’m planning on being back in the Intermountain west after we are done here. (We moved out here for my husband to finish his schooling, by the way). My gardening heart is still very much rooted to the Intermountain west. I’m finding little desire to learn about what plants grow well in overly moist acidic soil, rather than the calcium carbonated dry stuff I’m used to.
I need to own this book. I actually checked it out from the library, read it straight through, and had to return it when I met the renewal limit. I would love my own copy to mark up and use. It will probably wait until we are no longer on a student budget and I actually live in the intermountain west again.
If you live out in Utah or nearby, and have any interest in growing native plants, you should own this book. It is basically a database of almost all plants that are native and one would consider growing in the garden. The layout is great and makes it easy to find specific details and growing conditions on each of the plants. I basically read this cover to cover, but it’s probably more of a reference book. The front section is wonderful, in that it spells out the different native plant associations that are in the area, and the specific growing conditions associated with each. Even if you are mostly using it as a reference book, the front sections is worth reading straight through.
One caution about this book, is many plants that are in it are not available to go buy, and certainly not at the local Home Depot. Sometimes the only way to get your hands on a native plant is to propagate it yourself. But that can actually be a lot of fun too.
The amazon price is $43. When I worked at the Extension Office we had a large pile we sold for $40 a piece. So if you are going to buy this book and live in Utah, go try the county extesnsion office first.
Also, I am considering re-purposing my blog. I have another blog that I use for anything not gardening related, but I am thinking of combining the two into a new unique site. But I’m not sure about that, and wonder what my readers would think, if they have any opinion.
Last month was horrid on the food budget. I had to restock the kitchen, and I wasn’t exactly the most frugal. I still cringe at how much I spent on food. So this month, I have decided to be better. Part of that was using food that I already have. I had picked up a huge bag of spinach from Costco, and looked in one of my favorite recipe books for a recipe involving spinach. The recipe book was borrowed from my mom and I love it. It’s the original Moosewood Cookbook (the link is for the new one, good luck finding the one published long enough ago to be given to my mom as a wedding present), and features a variety of vegetarian recipies. I’ve loved everything I’ve cooked out of there, and it usually involves lost of vegetables and no meat which is nice.
So this is what I cooked last night for dinner. It was delicious, so I thought I would share it. This is exactly what I did, not necessarily what was in the recipe book.
Cut together in a food processor. Mix with 3 Tbs. cold water. Chill for over an hour, then make a crust in a 9 inch pie pan.
Sauteed onions in butter with pepper, salt and basil, add spinach until wilted
Mixed together everything, put in pie shell. Top with 1 c. sour cream (that was too much, I would use half that next time) and paprika.
Here’s the link for an updated version from the author
Just a few links that were interesting :
An interactive version of the map, where you can zoom in and see the details of the zones here.
Half-way through this article is more information about how the map was created.
The old 1990 version for reference of changes.
Another old version if you want to get even more confused:
Also, my main gardening website is down. I spend several days getting it all fixed up, only to come back to it and have it not working again. This is frustrating, because I haven’t touched it in the meanwhile. The blog seems unaffected luckily. In many ways I don’t care: this year is turning into a sabbatical from gardening work. With a baby coming and less family around to help out with the other kid, that’s fine by me. If I don’t post here that regularly, just know I’m enjoying kids and focusing on other things.
I finally feel like I’m finally settling into our apartment. The entire living area has pictures up (although some frames still need to be filled). We had a couple of friends over for a while and they’ve left now, allowing Peter to go back into his normal bedroom. And I also paid my first month of regular rent.
I’m enjoying my apartment. I already had to get an appliance repaired. I was cooking a carrot cake in the oven and heard a strange noise. Upon further investigation, it looked like my oven was trying to time travel, with a bright white light coming out of it. Part of the heating element burnt through. Luckily, the carrot cake was saved by the toaster oven, and the oven was repaired in a couple days.
We do have a couple of horrid neighbors that have managed to keep us up at night. One morning I was going about my business and heard a strange noise. I couldn’t decided if it was the wind, an animal, or a baby being horribly mistreated. I opened the window and scared away a cat. There are these two cats that will stare each other down and start this kitty chorus of meows and howls and all sorts of strange cat noises. This can happen in the middle of the night, right outside the bedroom. My husband has contemplated anti-freeze. I think it might be useful to at least have a bucket of rocks we can throw from the patio. The kitty chorus only deserves boos and rotten fruit, but occasionally ends up with a captive audience that would much prefer sleep.
The new USDA Plant Hardiness map is out. The old version was from 1990, so now there is added information from almost two decades, plus better interaction and more detail. You can see it and read about it here.
This measure the average yearly temperature for an area, and is usually used for determining what plants will survive the winter. The current map bumps many places up by a zone. (You can look at this map here. They are comparing changes for a map made in 2006, not adopted by the USDA, but it should be similar.)
I am currently living in a zone 7b. Previously I was in a 7a. Doesn’t sound like I’ve changed much, but winters are very different in both locations. Utah county looks like it’s mostly in a 6b situation. I’ve always said a zone 5/6, so it’s just a little warmer. Where I lived before, Cache County, has changed quite a bit. It used to be mostly 4/5, now it’s all in zone 5, even with pockets of zone 6.
I still believe in being a little reserved in choosing plants. I know a zone 5 plant will survive about any winter in Utah county. But if I decided to strically go off of the USDA map I can suddenly plant something hardy to zone 7. I might go ahead with some perennials, but I would always recommend being on the safe side with larger, more expensive plants including large trees and speciem shrubs.
For instance, last winter was pretty cold and the temperature pattern made for a lot of winter kill. Boxwoods, peaches, roses, and similarly tender plants saw a lot of damage. The hardiness rating on these plants are in the zone 5-6 range, which is well within the current USDA hardiness rating.
Because the map is based on average temperatures not lows, cold winters and different weather patterns can result in winter kill for what was supposed to be a hardy plant. There are many plants growing here that would not survive the winters back in Utah, even though I’ve apparently only changed half a zone. Experience and knowledge is much better than strict numbers. Still, the map does provides a good starting reference point for determining plant hardiness.
We went on a walk/hike yesterday to a local greenway. I forgot the camera, so no pictures, but it was lovely and you can try imagining it for yourself. The weather had scattered thunderstorms, so I brought an umbrella, but didn’t think much else of the weather. Scattered thunderstorms back in Utah usually means you might hit rain, but you are probably going to be okay and I never worry too much. The drive there was fine, but the sky continued to deepen in color as we pulled up to the parking lot. We exited into a slight drizzle and headed out along the greenway.
Within ten minutes it was pouring rain and we were huddling under the one umbrella I brought. I remembered that I had thrown a couple of ponchos into the van while I was at my mom’s back before we moved here. I thought they might come in handy and after putting them in had I promptly forgotten about them. With the three of us huddling under one umbrella, they were quickly brought back into mind and we walked back to the car to pick them up.
At this point, we decided to go to a different starting point of the greenway and on our drive there found a covered pavillion and had a little picnic. Then we took off again, this time better equiped for the still pouring rain with our ponchos. There wasn’t a poncho for Peter, so he got the umbrella. This resulted in a lot of funny moments of a parent running after him trying to keep an umbrella over his head, while he didn’t care one way or another about getting wet.
The greenway headed off into a wetland and the majority of what we walked was a wide board walk. We did pass a few other people, one runner who was as wet as if he dunked himself a pool but still going at it anyway, and the rest with appropriate variations of rain gear. Mostly it was pretty quite and we were by ourselves. In the wetland something was making a terribly loud mating call or other sound. I wish I knew enough to know what it the world it was. Combine the mating call, rain, and mossy surrondings, it was quite an enjoyable walk.
It only lasted about a half mile, and then we all were sufficiently done with getting various exposed parts of our body wet and headed back home. But I’m glad the rain didn’t stop us from having an enjoyable time outdoors. With all the rain here, I think I might find myself indulging in a pair of cute galoshes for Peter.
*For all those interested we hike the Ivy Creek Greenway in George Pierce Park.
There are evergreen deciduous trees and I have no idea what any of them are. Huge evergreen deciduous trees just don’t grow in Utah. I also found this shrub in flower. In January. So super incredible for Utah-grown me.
Being in an apartment, I doubt I’m going to actually work in the soil. But it intrigues me. Not good soil, but it also has some of the opposite problems that Utah soil has–acidity and quick weathering due to humidity and heat.
Another thing that I’ve noticed lately is using pine needles as mulch. It’s always been on my list of items you could mulch with, but I didn’t realize people actually buy pine needles in large quantities and use it for more than just around a pine tree. Here are some bales they just spread out all over around my apartment complex.
Some landscaping blunders are the same, however. My apartment complex has some landscaping that is trying to be fancy, but is really just the overuse of hedge clippers. Even the trees are hedged into nice little prickly squares. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it could be the desired result of intensive formal landscaping. But that requires a lot of knowledge and work. More often it’s done by people just imitating that, and results in these hedges:
The bottom of the hedge is starting to die out. When pruning a hedge it has to be pruned in an gradual, upside down V shape. That way, light can reach the lower branches and they won’t die back.
I have 10 foot ceilings in the living room of my apartment. The walls looked pretty barren without any pictures, and I came with a total of two pictures to stick on the wall. (Neither of which are up yet, but I have plans for them.) I really wanted to come up with something that would fill up the space, look great, and not cost a lot. So here it was I ended up doing:
I found a stencil design I liked online, scaled it to the size I wanted, and printed it off. I used the printed pages as stencils on colored paper. The pieces were then laid out on a large piece of foam board and mod-podged on. It worked great, except the foam board warped, so the end product was curled. I mod-podged the back and held it down flat with books while it dried and that worked to fix the curling.
I made the large one, and then cut up another couple pieces of foam board to do smaller ones. I made seven panels in all, and it cost me under $30. All the cutting ended up taking a lot of time–a simpler design would have made it a lot faster, but I like how it turned out. As seen in the pictures, my wonderful husband helped with some of the massive amount of cutting. (For a bonus you get to see some pictures of the apartment too.)
Liz Braithwaite 