END-OF-SEASON CLEANUP

            Tim and I gave a talk to Southport’s Woodbine Garden Club this morning. The hall contains no projector for PowerPoint slides, so Tim spent a couple hours Sunday evening converting them to DVD format for showing on TV. While the disc worked fine at home, we didn’t think to bring the converter box for our antediluvian, non-digital unit with us to the Jaycees Building. Bugger. Back to square one.

Then circumstances turned in our favor. The meeting date had changed a few times, so turnout was light. “Wonderful!” I told president Heather. “We’ll pull the chairs into a circle.” “Oh,” Miss Heather replied. “Like a garden intervention!”

Well, something like that.

Anyway, we had a blast. I promised I’d post the pictures they didn’t get to see on my blog (which we mentioned about 800 times) upon arriving back home. So Woodbine ladies, here's the PowerPoint presentation you've been waiting for. You can click on the pictures to make them bigger. And thank you all for a really good time.

Everybody else, thanks for dropping by. Hope you enjoy the show.

                                                                             Kathy

THE FUNGUS AMONGUS

Today is a day of deadlines. Have an 800-word article due for Carolina Gardener, and a 500-worder for the St. James Plantation monthly glossy, CatTales. (St. James, the golf-course community where Tim and I do most of our gardening work, is not now nor ever has been a plantation. Old Brunswick County maps label the area “Ash Swamp.” Nonetheless, we’ve met many lovely people there who have kept us in food and utilities for many years, and we’re grateful to them.) It is also past time for a GFTGU post. As my posterior has had about all it can stand of sitting (ha-ha: I grow punchy), I propose to repurpose one of those other articles for the blogosphere.

How come Miss Last-Minute procrastinated more than usual? Yesterday, Tim and I adopted a beautiful little part-Siamese rescue kitten at PetSmart. Cats have always been part of my life, but many moons have passed since there was an honest-to-Pete kitten in the house. I forgot how totally entrancing, energetic and exhausting the tiny fur-balls can be. I wish I could cat-nap as effectively as Phil.

Tim named him Phil. I don’t know why.

Phil, charming Dad

Anyway, here’s a picture of baby Phil (I’d include one of feline matriarch Three and doofy ol’ Fred, but they’re both too busy glowering and growling to pose), and a short piece about the genesis of the crop of toadstools ornamenting local lawns as our unusually (pre-global warming) wet autumn meanders along.

****

During the incessant rains of last August, I had a letter from my mom in Williamsburg, VA, asking what she could do about the rash of mushrooms and toadstools dotting her lawn. Her yardman refused to mow them down for fear of spreading the spores. When I called to reassure her that the growths would disappear on their own, she told me they already had.

We super-sanitary, anti-microbial Americans have visceral reactions to anything fungal, lumping them all into the same category with Frito toenails, moldy food and mildewed shower curtains. As usual, we misunderstand the natural world.

Hyphae on rotting log

Soil fungi are absolutely critical to life on this planet. Mostly, their business of decomposing organic matter goes on unseen except for the occasional sighting of white thread-like structures, or hyphae, on the undersides of wood bark chips, firewood, and lumber left outside too long. Hyphae make up the vegetative part of a fungus, called the mycelium, which can expand outward indefinitely from a single spore as long as there is something for it to eat.

Before you start imagining a real-life “Day of the Triffids,” let me hasten to add the purpose of mycelial activity is to turn solid organic matter—tree stumps, logs, buried wooden construction debris—into nutrients plant roots can readily use. No fungus, no plants.

Fairy ring: Wanna dance, Oberon?

Most of us live blissfully unaware of this necessary symbiosis until the mushrooms/toadstools appear in the lawn. (The terms are technically synonymous, referring to any—wait for it—basidiomycetous fungi; in popular usage, toadstools are poisonous mushrooms. Unless you’re an experienced mycologist, don’t be harvesting any of them for dinner.) Often, the mushrooms form arcs or rings in the grass called fairy rings or pixie circles, based on magical woodland lore of Europe. 

The fruiting bodies of
Marasmius oreades 
on a tree stump

These growths are actually fungal fruiting bodies, analogous to flowers. When a couple of dry days follows a rainy period, they sprout up, literally overnight, marking the active feeding edge of any of 50 or so species of fungi common to turf areas. Although many people consider them unsightly, they are generally harmless and soon disappear without human intervention.

But what if I want to intervene? you ask.

Trust me, you don’t. And even if you did, the process—involving widespread fumigation with chemicals far more unpleasant than fungi and/or massive soil removal, replacement and resodding—is labor-intensive, expensive… and, in all likelihood, ineffective. You can knock down or pull up the mushrooms if you like. The fungi will continue anyway.

Thank goodness.

Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                        Kathy

FILLED WITH COLOR

            Tim and I got some hard news this week. A very dear friend and long-time client received a diagnosis of Stage 4 lung cancer. It somehow feels appropriate—if “appropriate” is even close to the right word—that this body-slam should come in the fall, when a transitioning world puts on its gayest and gaudiest dress before fading into grey.

            In southeastern North Carolina, the deciduous trees don’t put on much of a show most years. Except for the maples, reds are muted, browned. Tulip poplar and sycamore leaves turn bright yellow for about ten minutes before their edges go crispy, and they’re on the ground.  Occasionally the sweet gums spark multi-hued, but dull purple is much more common.

            This is not to say the landscape’s gone bland. You just have to take the time to look.  When I did, I found shards of rainbow all over the place.

           

            Red pentas blazing in a windowbox.

 

            An orange sweet pepper, possibly the last of the season.

 

            A yellow-yellow black-eyed susan petal, still hanging on.

 

Yellow-orange tarragon flowers dug from a friend’s house last Saturday.

 

 

 

Chartreuse new growth on ‘Alabama Sunset’ coleus.

 

New green baby iceberg lettuce leaves.

Metallic blue Viburnum tinus berries.

 

 

 

True-blue mealycup sage, one of my favorite flowers.

Yellow-eyed lavender asters hugging the ground.

 

 

Velvety violet Mexican bush sage.

 The magnificent magenta of an ‘Alabama Sunset’ leaf.

Even if you live where sugar maples blaze all October long or where bougainvillea blooms year-round, comfort—and joy—can be found in nature’s saturated colors, even when the world dips into shadow.

Gratitude for what we have is so important. Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                        Kathy