the Personal blog of DJ Wilson
Weaving Through the Trees
Let Us In!
It wasn’t until I downloaded some photos from my camera that I saw the swirling, Monet-looking reflections on the glass panels of this appealing front door. Before, the spiders were just whimsical attachments to the side of the house. Now, they seem to be in limbo between the world outside and the green and gold one waiting beyond the door.
Rescued Five-lined Skink
We live in the woods and have a lot of small critters outside – lizards,bats, chipmunks, turtles, and non-poisonous snakes, to name a few. I have no problem with any of these creatures – in fact, they help make the garden an ever-changing, entertaining place to be. I just want them to stay outside where they belong.
A few weeks ago I went to the kitchen and was startled to see a blue-lined skink profiled sharply at the bottom of the white ceramic sink. The lizard had climbed down the slick sides, but was unable to get back out. It’s not easy to catch a live, squirming lizard, but I was able to get him into the dish strainer, which I covered with a plastic glass and lifted with a fork into a large stainless steel bowl. Then…outside to freedom!
Blue-lined skinks (Eumeces fasciatus) are actually immature five-lined skinks. They live primarily in wooded areas of the southeast. Some people (my sister, especially) are scared of small lizards, but skinks are very beneficial to the landscape. They eat slugs and mosquitos and are fun to watch as they catch the sun’s rays or chase one another over rocks or under deck surfaces. Kitchen exploration is not encouraged, however.
Red in Carolina
Over the years, I’ve recommended Oxydendron arboreum to my Tennessee clients as a good specimen tree for home landscapes. Sourwoods have multi-season interest, are a realistic size for small lots, and have fragrant, long-lasting white flowers that readily attract bees. As summer temperatures get increasingly hotter, though, sourwoods are having a harder time reaching their full potential for vigor and beauty in the cultivated landscapes of east Tennessee.
In western North Carolina, sourwoods seem to thrive in a diverse range of settings. I see these small native trees along highway ramps (not exactly a nurturing environment), the edge of pastures, even home and business landscapes, and they are lovely and vigorous. I think they just like the cooler temperatures of the mountains and reward us with their magnificent fall color in return.
Greekfest dancers
High school dancers from St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Knoxville, Tennessee await their cue to begin performing a traditional Greek folk dance. Each year, church members share their heritage at a two-day celebration of Greek culture that includes food markets, cooking demonstrations, live music and tours of the church and its iconic religious art.
Reminder for next year: get more loukoumades – fresh, hot pastry puffs covered in a lemony, honey-cinnamon coating. Yum!
Edge of the Field
It’s no wonder Queen Anne’s Lace is so plentiful in fields and meadows across the southeast. Multiple seeds are cradled in the cottony beds of flower heads now, ready to be scattered on the ground or dispersed by wind as cold weather approaches.
Daucus carota is not native to the U.S. and can be very invasive and troublesome as a weed. It is difficult to eradicate and causes problems in agricultural areas where the plants can hybridize with crops of its descendant, the domesticated carrot. Wild carrot can also be toxic to cows and horses that might graze on its roots or stems.
Queen Anne’s Lace does have its charms, however. A meadow full of them is quite lovely, and many a child has dipped the white flower heads into food coloring to see what hue emerges. Herbalists use various parts of the plants, and there are recipes available for those who know not to mistake wild carrot for poison hemlock, which apparently is very similar in appearance!
A Peek Inside
Before I left town for a week, the seed capsules on the bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) were beginning to open slightly. There must have been sixty or seventy stout, perfectly-shaped buckeyes scattered over the shrub, which I had planted at the edge of the woods six or eight years ago.
When I returned home, all except one buckeye had fallen off and disappeared. The squirrels had (naturally) outwitted me again. Every year about this time, I watch and wait until the buckeyes are about ready to fall off. Then somehow – overnight – the squirrels beat me to the bounty. They could at least leave a few runty specimens on the ground to compensate me for their greed, but they don’t.
I did manage to outsmart the squirrels one year and gathered up the nuts for future planting. As many of my seed collections go, the nuts dried up before I could do anything with them. That’s okay, because the buckeye roots wherever the branches touch the ground. The original shrub is now about sixteen feet wide and over ten feet tall, so there will be plenty of chances for propagating more of these intriguing, native beauties.
I recently saw a newly-planted bed of bottlebrush buckeyes. Someone had put a lot of them, spaced only three or four feet apart, in a small bed near a brick wall. The property owner will be in for a surprise someday.
