Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Click here for a map to the plant sale

Happy Groundhog Day!  February 2nd is a date that’s got a lot of folk wisdom and tradition associated with it.  Besides being Groundhog Day here in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, it’s also Candlemas in the Roman Catholic calendar, and Imbolc, or the First Day of Spring, according to the old Celtic calendar.

Groundhogs are native to North America. They can be real pests in the garden, but good fencing will keep them out.

Groundhog Day is an old Pennsylvania German/Dutch custom.  According to legend, if a groundhog sees his shadow at sunrise on this day, we’re in for 6 more weeks of winter weather.  If not, then we’ll see an early spring.  The early settlers to our region brought the custom with them from their European homes, where a badger was the “prognosticator,” since Groundhogs are native only to North America.  Punxatawney, Pennsylvania, is the most well-known of the Grundsow Lodges (Groundhog Lodges) celebrating this holiday.

(In reality, groundhogs usually don’t wake up from their winter hibernation until well into March, when the first green grass is available for them to eat.)

Candlemas was celebrated as the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Mother by the Catholic Church. It marks the day that, according to the New Testament, the infant Jesus was taken into the Jewish Temple for the first time, to be accepted as a member of the Jewish faith, and his mother Mary was admitted for a rite of purification, traditionally held for women about 6 weeks after giving birth.  Candlemas occurs 40 days after Christmas.

When I was a child (in the days before Vatican II),  this was a really wonderful celebration in the Polish Roman Catholic Church. The celebration started very late at night and at dawn on the 2nd, boxes of beeswax candles would be brought into the church to be blessed.  These blessed candles were then distributed to the congregation, so that they could be burned in the home for blessings and also–and most importantly–to be on hand in cases where the sacrament of Extreme Unction (Last Anointing) might be needed.

Imbolc, a very ancient Celtic holiday, marks the beginning of the spring season.  Although today we accept the first day of spring to begin at the Spring Equinox on March 20-21, logically, the equinox marks the midpoint of the spring season, just as June 20-21 (traditionally called Midsummer’s Day) marks the middle of summer, not its start. 

For gardeners and nature lovers, you’ll note that trees and shrubs are showing fat and swelling buds, birds are becoming much more active at feeders, and houseplants are starting to perk up.  All this because the days are getting longer and the sun is getting stronger…despite those cold temps and the snow!  If you keep chickens (as I do), and you don’t keep them under artificial light during the winter, you’ll notice that your hens begin to lay eggs again around this date.

January and February are great months to prune many of your shrubs and small trees.  Contrary to what you might read, pruning isn’t rocket science.  If you follow a few simple guidelines, you can prune just about anything in your garden.  (Late winter is not the time to prune spring-blooming shrubs like forsythia, rhododendron, or azalea…if you trim them now, you risk cutting off the buds that produce this spring’s flowers.  Wait until late May or June to prune those.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Another 3 inches of the white stuff fell overnight. Our weather reports say to expect warming temps and possibly rain later today, so I’m out to enjoy this beautiful snow while it lasts.  This has been the snowiest winter in our area in many years. I’m beginning to think that I should buy some extra hay for Percy the Sheep… Although, getting him to actually eat it may be a chore. He’s very old and very spoiled and only wants my hand cut, homemade hay. None of that mechanically baled stuff for him, thank you very much!

Zinnia ‘Zahara Starlight Rose’.  Remember those tall, spindly zinnias your mom used to grow? The ones that got that awful white mildew on the leaves just about the time the flowers were in full bloom? The ones with the carnival colors that really didn’t go with anything, but at least they grew in that patch of hot, dry, sunny dirt near the driveway?  Well forget all that: ‘Zahara Starlight Rose’ (don’t you just love that name?) is a brand new zinnia Read the rest of this entry »

After all that snow, we’re experiencing a slightly early “January thaw.”  Like “Indian summer” this spell of relatively mild weather following a really cold snowy period is a movable feast.  It’s a welcome little break from the cold, sometimes enough to trigger a few early blooming snowdrops into flower.

We had an early major snowstorm here in Southcentral Pennsylvania.  About 20 inches of the white stuff fell from Friday night through Sunday morning (December 18-20).  This is unusual for us, because our winters are usually mild and we really don’t see much snow until mid-January.  In fact, we haven’t had any real snow like this for several years!

There’s a lot going on under that snow! Read the rest of this entry »

If you ever need to identify a Pennsylvania wildflower, check out this very awesome website: http://www.mywildflowers.com/. You can narrow your search by flower color and size, leaf shape and size, plant height, etc. In less than five minutes, I had identified my flower (wild bergamot). Please use and support www.mywildflowers.com.

My Easter Lilies are up and in full bloom, right on schedule. A lot of people are surprised to see these lovely Madonna Lilies blooming in mid-summer, but this is the natural time for them.  Florists force lilies to bloom in early spring by keeping them in artificially controlled lighting that “tricks” the bulbs into thinking that it is time to bloom.

Madonna lilies naturally bloom in mid-summer

Spinach season is over until the end of the summer, I’m afraid. I decided to see if I could save seeds from the plants for next year, so I didn’t rip out all the plants. I left about ten of them in place, figuring it had something to do with the bolts and flowers and such. Read the rest of this entry »