outdoors

Thrips

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

2016-02-12 10.51.28I can’t help but think about thrips at this time of year. They seem to love my office. They crawl everywhere. I’m constantly swiping them off my face and arms, and they end up in drifts on my desk when they die.

Thrips are tiny cigar-shaped insects with hairy wings (the order name, Thysanoptera, means fringe-winged). Most suck plant juices, and they leave characteristic little puncture wounds in leaves. Some transmit plant diseases.

Thrips are fascinating insects for a number of reasons.

Their development from egg to adult is not quite incomplete metamorphosis (in which the young look like the adults, but lack wings), and is not quite complete metamorphosis (in which the young look very different, and go through a pupal stage before adulthood). It’s a mix of both, and differs among species within the order.

Thrips are also left handed. As a south paw myself, I appreciate this. Instead of having a symmetrical mouth, like most other insects, with mandibles on both sides, thrips only have a left mandible. No one knows why this is the case. I like to think it’s because left handedness is just better.

Another thing I find intriguing about thrips is that some species will bite people, though they feed on plant juices. Our thrips, which I believe are Limothrips cerealum, the grain thrips, have this annoying tendency. They don’t bite often, but now and again you’ll feel a little stab and wonder what the insect is playing at.

Even linguistically, thrips are interesting. “Thrips” is both singular and plural—one thrips, many thrips. Thus, in the following poem, I couldn’t rhyme thrip with trip, it had to be thrips with sips…;)

 

Thysanopteran

Little thrips,

What does it think

As it delicately sips

The juices of plants?

 

Does it prefer

My prizewinning rose?

Or does the pollen

Tickle its nose?

 

Does it find

The broccoli sweeter?

And how can it be

Such a big eater?

 

 

Attack of the Killer Squash

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

2016-02-08 14.12.02 smOne of the new varieties in my garden this year is the Jumbo Pink Banana Squash.

It is neither pink, nor banana-like, but it IS jumbo—both plant and fruit.

Really jumbo.

Like, scary jumbo.

Like, “how are we going to eat even one of those?” sort of jumbo.

And earlier this week, they grew to, “OMG they’re going to take over” jumbo.

45 cm (18 inches) long and still growing...

45 cm (18 inches) long and still growing…

I walked down the centre path in the garden, past the sweet corn, and something grabbed my face.

It was a pink banana squash tendril, a good five metres from the closest plant and hovering at eye level. As I recoiled and realised what it was, I couldn’t help exclaiming out loud, “It’s a pink banana squash!”

I was sure I heard a deep, “Mwahahaha!” in response.

The Homework Table

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

homework table2My daughter started high school last week.

I don’t know who was more terrified about that—her or me.

She had been attending a special character school in which she had a great deal of freedom about where she did her work, she could climb trees at lunchtime, and which didn’t assign any homework.

She still attends a special character school, but one with a different philosophy.

Her classes are almost entirely indoors, tree climbing on campus is forbidden, and she has homework.

For a girl who NEEDS to be outdoors and moving, I’m sure the transition is going to be rocky.

But she recognises her needs, and she’s getting better at asking for what she needs.

So when she came home with her first homework yesterday, instead of bemoaning the fact she couldn’t go run around outdoors after school, she came to me with a suggestion.

“Mum. We need a table outdoors in the shade somewhere so I can do my homework outside.”

homework table1As it turned out, we had a table that fit the bill perfectly—an old picnic table that I’d recently banished from the shed because it was in the way. She scrubbed it up, dubbed it the homework table, and brought her desk chair outside to complete her homework.

No grumping, no tears, no stress.

If the whole school year goes like that (yeah, right), it’ll be a fantastic year!

Sunflowers

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

sunflowersI am of the opinion that you can never have too many sunflowers.

I have Golden Toasted sunflowers in the vegetable garden, with big fat seeds for eating, and I have half a dozen other varieties of sunflower in other places around the property.

Sunflowers don’t like the wind here, and they tend to grow short and stocky or to fall over unless they’re staked or well protected from the wind. Still, I plant them wherever I can.

Sunflowers serve many purposes in my garden, beyond the seeds for eating. The blooms look great in the garden—pale yellow through orange to deep russet—and make stunning cut flowers, too. They also attract lots of insects. Though there are many pollenless varieties, I steer toward the varieties that produce copious pollen, because they are more attractive to insects. Pollen provides important protein for—bees flies, parasitic wasps, beetles, ants, and many other insects.
2016-01-22 07.43.48 cropThe pollen attracts some insects, and they, in turn attract others. Preying mantises regularly visit my sunflowers.

When autumn comes and the blooms are spent, the sunflowers (the entire plant), make a nutritious snack for the goats.

Beauty, food for me, food for my livestock, and food for the wildlife—what more can you ask of a plant?

 

Onion Excess

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

onionsWhat does one do with 270 onions? That’s in addition to the 50 shallots and 50 purple onions ready to harvest.

Onions can be hit and miss for me. They’re so susceptible to birds, dry weather, excess heat, and weed competition when they’re young, that some years I get lucky and some years I don’t.

This year I got lucky.

We won’t be able to eat all these onions before they start sprouting. Long about October, they’ll know it’s spring and want to grow.

I’ll dehydrate some to use in backpacking food. I’ll be generous in my onion use all year. Perhaps I’ll introduce my kids to fried onion rings…oh, that’s dangerous!

And, like all good gardeners, I’ll give some away. My greatest pleasure as a gardener is having excess to give to friends, neighbours and strangers. I never plan on it, but it almost always happens with a few crops each year. Nothing beats sharing food.

Mullein

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-02-07 10.22.37Today we discovered a new weed in our yard—that brings the total tally of weed species on the property to 57. The new plant is mullein (Verbascum thapsus), a native to Europe, and a common weed all over the world. Our specimen was young–just a tiny floret, but during its second year, mullein can send up a flower stalk almost 2 metres tall.

Like many garden weeds, mullein was almost certainly brought to New Zealand on purpose in the early 1800s. It seems to have been used for nearly everything by various peoples at various times in history.

The Romans used the flower stalk dipped in tallow as a torch.

It has been used since ancient times as a remedy for coughs and asthma (in people and livestock), either by drinking a tea made of leaves or flowers, or by smoking the leaves.

It either ensured conception or prevented it, depending upon what place and time you lived.

It’s fuzzy leaves, rubbed on the cheeks, impart a rosy hue, like rouge. Preparations made from the leaves can also soften the skin.

A yellow hair dye can be made from the flowers.

A green dye can be made from the leaves (probably best not to use this on your hair—it’s apparently permanent).

It was supposedly used by witches and warlocks, and was considered a charm against demons.

Its fuzzy leaves can be used as a thermal lining in your shoes.

And, of course, as any Boy Scout knows, it makes fine toilet paper!

Just remember to keep track of which leaves you’ve used as toilet paper, so you don’t use them for tea…;)

Garden Companion

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

DSC_0033 smI was tying up tomatoes this morning.

I plant most of my tomatoes along one long edge of the vegetable garden. That edge is made of 1.8 metre deer fencing (a remnant from a previous owner who ran greyhounds and divided the property into six long narrow runs for the dogs). On the fence, I’ve run black wind block cloth to give the tomatoes a little sheltered heat island. I train the plants right up the fence.

So, anyway, I was tying up tomatoes when I heard a rustling on the other side of the fence. I assumed a chicken had gotten out, as one of them has developed an annoying habit of getting out of the chicken paddock to eat raspberries.

But then a furry white paw shot through a hole in the wind block cloth to snatch at my fingers.

It was the cat, intrigued by the rustling on the other side of the fence.

When he got bored of attacking me across the fence, he lay against it for a while. When I finished the tomatoes, he followed me to another part of the garden, and lay down in the path to watch me while I worked.

I don’t know why the cat sometimes does this—acts more like a dog than a cat. Most of the time he ignores me in the garden, but now and again, he follows me around as though he doesn’t want to be out of sight.

Must be my annual staff performance review…

Boletes! Cepes! Porcini!

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-02-05 18.22.23 smIt’s that time of year again. A little rain last week, and we’ve got porcini mushrooms (aka Cepes, Boletus edulis), collected from a location that will remain undisclosed, lest others beat us to them.

The wonderful, earthy flavour of these wild mushrooms makes any dish special. Bored with the “usual” meals, I decided to make Friday’s dinner a Fun Friday sort of meal.

2016-02-05 18.28.40 smInspired by the mushroom packets in Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Plenty, I put together these divine little parcels that turned dinner into Christmas morning.

 

The following quantities made nine packets.

 

600 g small boiling potatoes, cooked

500 g fresh green beans,

125 g fresh oyster mushrooms

1 medium fresh porcini mushroom

½ cup chopped cutting celery

½ cup chopped fresh parsley

¼ cup chopped fresh oregano

1 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme

½ cup olive oil

1/3 cup half and half

Salt and black pepper to taste

 

Chop the vegetables and mushrooms into small cubes. Gently mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Place portions of the mix in the centre of large squares of baking parchment. Scrunch up the edges of the parchment and tie with cotton string. Place parcels on a baking sheet.

Bake at 200˚C (400˚F) for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to sit for a minute before serving.

That Gunk on Your Car

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

IMG_0514Back in 1997, entomologist Mark Hostetler published the book That Gunk on Your Car, a serious and funny identification guide to the flattened bodies you might find on your front bumper in the southeastern U.S.

I think there needs to be a companion book to Mark’s—The Ecology of That Gunk on Your Car.

Why?

This morning, I sat and watched sparrows descend upon cars in a carpark, picking off splatted insects. How these birds discovered that cars are a great source of protein, I don’t know, but they were certainly enthusiastic. They flitted into crevices to pick out tasty bits—a gooey abdomen here, a crunchy thorax there.

It made me wonder how important car-splat insects were in their diet. Birds inhabiting an urban environment are likely to have difficulty finding insects to eat—the bodies carried in by cars could be incredibly important to them. What other species make use of car-splats? How much nutrient flow is there between rural and urban areas, just on the front ends of cars? Do these nutrients affect the populations of urban pests like sparrows? How does a good mass-transit system affect the flow of nutrients into the urban environment?

So many questions, so few answers! How little we really know about the world around us!