What's 13 feet tall, likes birds, and lives in my big flower bed???

One day last Fall, when I was visiting Howard, I happened to see this limb laying on the side of the highway to Sunspot.

It was love at first sight.

Howard thought I was crazy, not to mention

the fact that the rangers get a little irritated when you take wood out of a national forest without permission.

So last week I got permission.........and it was no easy matter either. I had to tell them EXACTLY where the limb was located...... and promise that I only wanted that ONE limb. It took 25 minutes to fill out all the paperwork.

This newest member to our backyard measured 15 feet from top limb to bottom. It took both of us to get it into the truck, but we did it! A little tying here and there, with a cute little flag hanging from the end, and we were off!

Howard's just pretending not to be as excited as I am............

Well, I haven't posted in a long time but a lot has happened so it's time to catch up.

I'll start with the good news: the summer garden has been planted and although it's only been a day, I'm sure those little seeds are already in the ground stirring. We planted all the usual characters: okra (fewer every year), corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, limas, LOTS of peanuts, green beans, and black-eyed peas.

Newcomers are purple cosmic carrots----I love the name, don't you?? They're planted under the tomatoes.......we'll see if they like that spot. And then Howard found some funky yard-long green beans and those are also in the ground........I guess we could have ONE for dinner??

As you can see, the snow peas are growing nicely and starting to scale the fence.

Howard noticed some blossoms on several of the plants yesterday, so pea pods are not far behind!

I like to go outside and grab their little feelers and curl them around the fence wires----gotta get those youngsters going in the right direction!

We have both sugar snap and snow peas, but they're equally delicious. In fact, the sugar snap peas often don't make it all the way off the vine and into our house....... :))

In other news, the flower beds are starting to fill up. However, every year it seems as though I have more and more uninvited guests appearing. There are lots and lots of spiky little plants coming up that look suspiciously like dianthus. I've been assured by fellow Master Gardeners that dianthus don't spread, but........... Well, time will tell.

The strawberries have spread nicely and there are about 50 starting to grow and mature. Yummy!

Now for the bad news............you know what they say about the plumbing at the plumber's house, right?? Well, I guess the same is true at the Master Gardener's house.

Howard was gazing at his willow tree in adoration when he happened to notice several large holes in the trunk..........uh-oh.

I may not remember everything I learned in my Master Gardener training, but I know about those holes. As they say in prison parlance, that's a dead tree walking.

Those rather large holes (about the size of a quarter) are the EXIT holes of boring insects. Not boring as in, *YAWN* are you going to tell that story again?? But boring as in bore into a tree. What they've done is go in there, laid their eggs, and left through those holes. Their children are going to hatch and EAT their way out of our poor tree.

The worse part of that story is that there's no solution. There's no killing those little critters----they're in there and they're coming out, and when they do, they'll leave a dead tree behind.

We've pretty much decided on a Chinese pistache to replace it.........nice-looking tree and pest resistant. Poor Howard wanted to spend one more summer with the willow so I guess the new tree will go up sometime this fall.

Such is life.

Well, it's getting to be that time of year again..........The winter garden is dying and preparations are now in place for the spring garden.

Actually, let me rephrase that last statement: The winter garden was a dismal flop that never took off, and now we're ready to grow something (anything) again.

The far left row was the last of the turnips----if you'll look closely you might see a sprig of something green.........the turnips sprouted, took one look around, and promptly refused to grow. Yes, we had one inch plants for about two months.

The next two rows are collards and cabbages. I actually thought the collards looked good until Howard told me ONE plant should fill a pot on the stove and it's taking about three of ours.........

The last row on the right are the cabbages.......actually, they were going to be the cabbages. This fall they were the cabbage LEAVES. They came up, started to make cabbages, then stopped.

We're not sure what happened, but the 13 tons of topsoil (otherwise known as sand in the southwest) that we dumped in the garden might be the culprit. It helped with the salt problem, but had zero nutrients.

This weekend, Howard tilled in all of the dead plants he chopped down from the fall, plus the stuff lying under the debris pile in the corner of the garden. The soil looks 100% better----there are little bits of plants throughout the soil and it's a beautiful chocolate brown.

It's January 18th. Pepita 1927-2006. Feliz cumpleanos mami.......