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Keeping your pet safe during the holidays

Untitled by Î’ethan

Pets today are like family and they will be celebrating the holidays this December with their masters. While you are having special foods, you might want to treat your pet to something special. Before you share your holiday food, check the ASPCA’s list of food to see if it is safe to feed to your pet. (see here) For example, I would never share my guacamole with my pets. Guacamole contains too many ingredients that are toxic to pets, like onions, avocados and garlic. You don’t want to spoil your and your pet’s holiday spending it in the veterinarian’s hospital.

Consider making some special food this holiday for your pet. You can use your special Christmas or  Hanukkah cutters to make your pet feel like it is celebrating. Or get dog bone cookie cutter shapes if your pet is more traditional. An easy recipe for these cookies is just baby food and whole wheat flour or wheat germ  or use 2 cups wheat germ with 3 (2.5oz jars) strained meat baby food (be sure there is no onion or garlic in the baby food) to about 1 tbsp water (add more if needed ). Make about 2 dozen  balls  and put on baking sheet. Dip fork in water and flatten the balls slightly. Bake about 25 min. in preheatened 350 F or 175 C oven. This will be yummy for both your dogs and cats. (see here)  Your pet might not be able to eat your holiday foods, but when you make your pet cookies, you know what ingredients are being used and how clean they are, so you can sample your pet’s cookies.

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12 Months of Flowers in TheGardenLady’s Garden – Hardiness Temperature Zone 6

Johnny Jump Ups by TattyBones

TheGardenLady is a cheapskate. So when I can get a plant bargain, I take advantage of that. I love to get plants from friends. Of course, I like giving away or sharing my extra plants, too.  If I want a pricey plant, I will wait for sales of plants in good nurseries in the Fall. Fall is the best time to plant big plants, anyway. (Since there has not been a heavy frost yet in many areas, one can still be planting shrubs and trees outdoors.)  But what makes me happiest is when I want something and I find it in a store whose employees know little about the plant and practically give it away because the plant looks “dead.”

Gardening friends of mine love this, too. One gardener got a really expensive rose that way.  That is how I bought this year’s pansies. I went to one of those big box stores that sold plants and looked for pansies. They had some sad, almost dead looking plants so they sold them to me for pennies. It was a win- win situation. The store thought it was getting money from a fool who was paying to take away their dead plants and I was getting plants that bloom now and then will bloom again next year in late winter or early spring.

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More Chinese Flowers (Videos)

Ice Flowers of China


This video was made in The China National Flower park in Luoyang showing the flower that many think is China’s National Flower, the Chinese Tree Peony; but TheGardenLady read that there is really no national flower because China has so many beautiful and beloved flowers, it is difficult to decide which one to choose. (see here)  Still the Tree Peony is certainly beloved by the Chinese. (And I might add, this GardenLady) The Chinese National Flower Park is renowned for their peonies and every year there is a peony festival in the city of Luoyang that is also very popular among Chinese tourists and among peony enthusiasts the world over. For a website that lists all the peony festivals in China check this out.

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Flowers from China

 This is how flower is written in both Chinese and Japanese.

So many of the beautiful flowers that we love in our gardens come from China. Yet how many gardeners realize where their plants originate? We, especially in the US and UK, are so fortunate to be able to grow these plants easily that come from China. Our gardens would be sad indeed if we did not have these plants. China is home to more than 30,000 plant species, fully one-eighth of the world total. Many, but not all, have the word sinensis in their Latin name. So we cannot always be certain if the plant originated in China. Horitculurtists still go to China to find more plants that we gardeners can grow.

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Getting plant materials from one state to another state

Oxalis corniculata by Joaquim F. P.

TheGardenLady recently received a request from a stranger who said he is a research chemist studying the benefits of Yellow Sorrel (Oxalis Corniculata). He requested some dried yellow sorrel to do this research.

Yellow Sorrel is considered a noxious weed in many people’s gardens, but is considered a herbal remedy by those who believe in the use of herbal medicines.  TheGardenLady would never recommend taking any plant unless it was a known food or a medicine recommended by your physician. I hope that some of these folk medicines would be studied in greater depth in the hopes that modern pharmacopoeia could use them. But until I have medical recommendations, TheGardenLady would NEVER suggest folk medicine remedies for  use. And the FDA seems to imply that Oxalis Corniculata may be toxic.

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Gardening Humor

Garden humor by Mike Willis

One Walter Mitty fantasy of mine was to create cartoons- especially cartoons about gardeners. We gardeners can be a pretty funny lot. For example, do you know a gardener who can visit a nursery who doesn’t find a plant that he or she MUST have- even though there isn’t another inch of land on their property not planted with something, or every available inch of their house is filled with plants? I don’t know gardeners who can resist getting more plants. I know I am guilty. I guess gardeners feel that somehow or in some way we can stretch our property. Certainly this obsessive quality can be spoofed.

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Help Save the Planet- Build an Arboretum

Arboretum by Pictoscribe – Home again

If you would love your community to have more greenery, a pretty space with plantings- perhaps you could start a community arboretum. If one thinks that starting an arboretum in your town or city can’t be done on a small scale, think again. A new arboretum was recently started in Linwood, NJ on just 1 acre.  It was the vision of a retired gentleman and his wife who saw the 1 acre property for sale that held a defunct electrical substation surrounded by barbed wire and cyclone fencing with a concrete building.  No one seemed to know how to best use this property.  Mr. Lacy, who is now 77, proposed building an arboretum on it. (read this)

What is an arboretum? It is a botanical garden devoted to trees.

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Protecting Knock Out Roses

Knock Out Roses by hozn

TheGardenLady received this question from Sharon.

I live in Southern, MA. My knockout roses became overgrown this year so I cut them way back today. Do I need to protect them since they are cut down to about 1 ft high?

Spring is the time to prune your shrub roses- they say to prune when the forsythia is in bloom. The best time for rose pruning in your area should be in March after there are no more snow storms.

But you already did the pruning, so let us be optimistic. TheGardenLady believes that plants want to live. So let us hope no damage is done. TheGardenLady would protect these pruned roses as described in the post on Nov. 6th. And review the article on Nov. 28th, 2007 about winter care for Knock Out Roses.

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Native American Foods for Thanksgiving

Cherokee White Eagle Corn Cobs by unhappybrthday

This is the time of year to start thinking of recipes for Thanksgiving. There are those who like to make the traditional foods- whatever the traditions are in your family- because with a big feast, your family doesn’t want surprises; they want the comfort foods they have grown used to.

Then there are people like TheGardenLady who likes to include new or unusual foods into the menu. I belong to the ‘variety is the spice of life’ group and want surprises on the table.

One of the surprises I have been considering this year is to try to make Native American foods for the table. TheGardenLady read somewhere that the Pilgrims probably didn’t have too many sweets at their feast because they didn’t have much sugar. But surely they must have been taught to tap sugar maple trees for maple syrup. Unless whatever date at the end of November they really celebrated was too early for the tapping of the trees.  Continue reading “Native American Foods for Thanksgiving”

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Get a tax deduction for damage to trees from storm

Fallen Tree by Dendroica cerulea

Did you know that you may be able to take a tax deduction for a tree that fell down because of the storms? To get the deduction will require a specially-trained expert or consulting arborist to assess the value of the lost tree. Read this article to see how to apply for a deduction.

There is an expression that “It is too late to bolt the barn door after the horse was stolen” or some variation on that statement. (see here) TheGardenLady understands this, and this is why she has written two posts on how to prepare for winter or future electrical outages AFTER “Hurricane” Sandy hit. But with the news reporting earthquakes in areas not normally known as earthquake areas or with a second Nor’easter Storm that just hit New Jersey and New York, maybe it isn’t too late to give some suggestions for preparedness in the event of more horrible weather.  (My children have taken to referring to ThisGardenLady as Debbie Downer, the fictional Saturday Night Live character who always sees the down side of things that are happening in the world today. Watch this episode with Debbie Downer celebrating Thanksgiving.)

The Farmers’ Almanac is predicting a colder than usual winter for the Northeast and northern states, if one thinks the Farmers’ Almanac is able to read the crystal ball for prognostication or prophesy. I read that they claim  80% accuracy.