Late December

Arriving home, we were surprised at how mild the weather was, definitely warmer than Italy. A clear blue sky, with well-dampened earth (a good thing), greeted a morning check of the garden.

Everything is in winter mode now, with deciduous leaves fallen. The garlic is up, as are fava beans, planted in a last minute experiment. The parsley is still green, and the collards look fine. I spent some time reviewing seed catalogs this morning- what fun.

We received a giant load of leaves today, thanks to the city's vacuum trunk, an excellent addition for winter mulching. My gardening companion had called before we left, but flagged the driver down this morning.

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'Recycling' fall leaves

The leaves are almost all down now, and many of our neighbors have raked (or blown) much of them to the edge of the street, for the City's leaf vacuum truck to collect.

My gardening companion already called to put dibs on one truckful (most of the rest are delivered to the Garden, where they're put to good use, too).

Oak, hickory, maple, dogwood, and birch leaves are a wonderful mulch and soil builder and we always wonder why people don't keep them in their yards! Needless to say, ours aren't going to the street; they replenish the soil beneath the trees that produced them.

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Hummingbirds are everywhere

We've had fun watching the hummingbirds whizzing around the garden lately. Right now, it seems that we have five. An adult male, 3 females, and a juvenile male. The adult male has just arrived, probably passing through on his way south, but the others have been here for a while. The females chase each other around, but fairly companionably, and they seem to be friendly with the juvenile male. Yesterday, it almost looked like one of the females was the 'mom' and the juvenile male (he only has a few red feathers on his throat) was wanting her to feed him. We have two feeders near the porch, where we eat during nice weather (basically April to October), with an additional feeder on the other side of the house. But there are also the nectar-rich flowers of the Salvias (S. guaranitica and S. coccinea) and the coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) and the Buddleja flowers for nectar. There are lots of insects, too, in our garden.

My gardening partner has been busy this weekend moving mulch --lots of freshly chipped trees from our campus that the tree service fellows were happy to give us (we gave them a nice 'tip'). He's moved one truckload already, to nourish the front woodland garden. The second two loads will add mulch to the back garden, and other areas. Organic matter is solid gold to add to your garden.

The lovely hummingbird image is from Early Birds: Common Backyard Birds by Millie Miller and Cyndi Johnson, Johnson Books, Boulder, CO.

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