What Does Poison Ivy Look Like in Spring?
What does poison ivy look like in spring? A little like a traffic light—red and shiny. Poison ivy’s first leaflets are garnet red, which slowly fades to green.
Read MoreDandelion: Sparkling Wine
Dandelion wine. “The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered.” Ray Bradbury, the great science fiction writer, was a man who knew how to appreciate summer. And he really knew how to appreciate dandelions:”A pride of lions on the lawn.” To make dandelion wine, you need the full-blown blossoms. What’s more, you have to harvest the flowers when they’re open. Since dandelion flowers close up tight on cloudy or rainy days, you have no choice but to wait for sunshine. All recipes for dandelion wine agree that you have to pick...
Read MoreDandelions: Death on the Lawn
It’s the very definition of springtime: the cheerful sight of a robin pulling a worm out of the new green grass. But the robin who goes worm-hunting on a well-tended lawn may be bringing more than a tasty meal home to his youngsters. If the lawn has been treated with a pesticide, the robin and his family may become statistics. It’s been estimated by the Audubon Society that more than seven million wild birds are killed by the aesthetic use of lawn pesticides in the United States, every year. Aesthetic use: that doesn’t mean agricultural pesticides to grow food crops. That...
Read MorePoison Ivy: Hairy Vine
There are almost as many ways to climb trees as there are species of vines. Grapevines have curly tendrils that grab branches, while Virginia creepers use little suction-cups. Asian bittersweet corkscrews its way round and round the tree trunk. But poison ivy’s method of ascent is unique. Poison ivy gets to the top by growing thread-like rootlets all along the length of its stems. At first the rootlets appear as little patches that look like tufts of fuzzy hair. The furry roots secrete a glue-like substance which virtually cements the vine to tree or wall. As the main stem ages, more and...
Read MoreGood Lawn
I saw a sight the other day that froze my blood. There was a toddler, a hapless infant, sitting on a lawn. Not even a blanket underneath him, mind you—the poor child was sitting right on the grass. Made my blood run cold. Why? Because it was a lawn made of nothing but blades of grass. Close-cropped and bristly as a Marine’s haircut. Not a weed to be seen, not a leaf of clover, not a dandelion, not a plantain leaf. Nothing but grass. So what? That’s what a lawn is supposed to be, right? I suppose so. But it doesn’t stay that way naturally. Dandelions, clover, plantain: they’re all are highly...
Read MoreBuds: Springs Yet To Come
Buds, to use strict botanic terminology, are those little bumps on the ends of twigs that no one ever notices. Until one fine day, when the little bumps burst open and reveal the leaves and blossoms of spring that we’ve all been longing for. As miraculous as a chick hatching out of its shell. It’s been a long hard winter, and everyone’s delighted to see the new green leaves bursting forth on the branches—the leaves of this spring. But when did the buds start incubating those baby leaves? Last spring, a full year ago. At the base of each and every leaf on each and every tree, a tiny speck...
Read MoreConnect with Anita
Recent Comments