Snails, Slugs and Spittle Bugs

Gardening is fun! It's like a game or even a competition. You put your best effort in and see what your opponent serves up. Offensively, I've turned up the soil, added compost, water and fertilizer - pruned and weeded - optimum growing conditions. But then there's a few pesky things to deter the happy advancement of this game...hmmm - like snails, slugs and spittle bugs - my greatest opponents right now.

These creatures, created for a specific purpose I'm sure, are fascinating and quite clever at times. Snails, for example can be dark or light depending on which plant they're feasting. They usually come out before sun-up or after sun-down. But I don't let them off the hook when I spy one. Even my grandchildren have learned how to look underneath the hydrangea leaves for a culprit.

The Spittle Bug is not so crafty, however. Like aphids, they suck juices from plants and then blow air into it, producing masses of white foam. The bug just sits within this foam - protection against predators and keeps the insect moist but a dead give away (pun not intended)for the gardener since, although invisible in that foam you know within each foam mass lurks a tiny creature. You can simply spray them off with a hose or slide your finger through the white foam - there tucked inside is a tiny yellowy-green bug. This is the infant stage. They develop into adult leaf hoppers which will later ruin the leaves.

The slug (no picture yet) is another creature I don't tolerate in the garden. Although composters, they love to munch at the stems, preferably right at the juncture of stem and flower, thereby decapitating it. Marigolds, iris, tulips, and most annuals are not exempt. Slugs can smell a favorite flower a mile away and make their way to a potted plant, burrow in and set up house-keeping. Frequently I've discovered a plant looking wan, bedraggled and unresponsive only to find an enourmous slug even way down in the bottom of the pot.

So little creatures beware - that trusty trowel is raised and poised - the defensive gardener is on the prowl!

Pineapple-Strawberry Chiffon Cake

Chiffon Cake
(adapted from my tattered old Robin Hood cookbook of bygone years)

1-1/2 cups flour
1-1/2 cups sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
6 egg yolks
3/4 cup cold water
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons grated orange or lemon rind (optional)
6 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
Beat egg whites in a large mixing bowl-add cream of tartar and beat until peaks form
Mix dry ingredients together-make a hollow and add oil, egg yolks, water, vanilla and rind. Mix with beater until smooth.
Fold flour mixture gently into the egg whites using a sturdy rubber spatula.
Pour into ungreased 10"x4" tube pan.
Bake for 55 minutes, then increase temperature to 350 degrees and continue baking 10-15 minutes. Cake is done if top springs back when touched lightrly.
Turn pan upside down resting tube pan on a narrow necked bottle. (I use an old tabasco bottle and then brace it against my toaster oven and a teapot which I have next to the oven.) Let cake stand until cold before removing from pan.
Frost and decorate according to the occasion!

Frosting pictured:
Whip 500ml whipping cream
Add about 2 tablespoons instant vanilla pudding
Add 1 tin crushed pineapple - drain most of the juice
Split cake in half horizontally and put a layer of whip cream filling on the bottom half
Add sugared strawberries
Place other layer on top - press down gently
Cover cake with cream mixture working carefully from top to bottom all the way around
filling in the center whole
Decorate with kiwi slices and strawberries
Chocolate squizzles all over the cake also make a great addition.

An orange or lemon glaze made with icing sugar also is wonderful.

During the summer months I try to keep an un-iced cake on hand in the freezer. It makes for quick desserts when you just take out a chunk at a time, defrost it, and serve with ice-cream and berries in season. I have made dozens and dozens of these cakes over the years and everyone just seems to "eat them up". It's a very large cake and serves 12-16 people easily.

Pansies or Violas?

It wasn't until today that I took a really close look at the face of a pansy...or is it a viola? The lines, markings and symmetry are stunning. Massed together, these five-petalled unsung heroes have brightened my garden in different areas for the past three and a half months.

By checking around, I'm quite sure that what you see are violas - they are not as large as the pansy which has the large blotch in the center. I've found violas to be hardy, long-lasting - the unusual amounts of rain this spring notwithstanding - unselfish and oh so cheerful. My mother always referred to them as "Stiefmutterchen or Veilchen" - (stepmother or violet).

I have the violas in containers with mostly similar colors bunched together. They are not the fragrant variety but there are other lovely aromatic plants in the garden which I'll capture on my camera and post another time.

Summer is just a week away and so will post this little poem since it speaks about the viola. I am also waiting for my trumpet vine whose bright orange blooms appear in July - but let the concert begin:

Summer garden concert
Trumpet vine blares out
bright orange notes.
Canterbury bells
lift open throats.
Violas, dark, soft-petalled,
string along
while, high in hornbeam,
warblers trill a treble song.

– Lois Muehl

Perennials the Faithful

Welcome to my garden! After many days of rain the sun broke through for us late this afternoon. It was such fun poking around the garden, pulling several pails worth of those ubiqutous weeds, transplanting a plant or two and planting a basket of fuchsia colored wave petunias!

The first picture is the focal area of the retaining wall with a close up of the hen planter with Creeping Jenny-which survived the winter beautifully-it is a perennial. The old shoe, which is one of Andrew's old work boots, has been on display for many years by now. It stays out all winter and the hen and chicks inside grow without fuss or muss.

Foxgloves, biennials, come up year after year and I look forward to their blooms. As you can tell this one is just peeping through. I do have a virulent deep rosy purple in another area of the garden but mostly there are white and mauve colored ones. It seems to me that I transplanted a couple of white ones when we moved to this place 24 years ago. Where the purply ones came from-well that's the miracle and charm of the garden.

A few weeks ago (May22) I posted the arrival of the first rose. Today I noticed how full the bush had become. Gardening is so much fun. I thank God for this privilege.

And if you don't garden, no worries...just remember that:

"Kind hearts are the gardens;
kind thoughts are the roots;
kind words are the flowers;
kind deeds are the fruits."
- English Proverb

The Iris

 

"I know well
that the June rains
just fall."
- Onitsura

Oh those June rains keep falling. The hedges and many of the perennials in the garden -hydrangeas, astilbe, asters, purple geranium... just keep drinking it in. Always thirsty they can't get enough. Let them soak in the rain while they can...the dry spell of summer will surely come. The foliage now is strikingly lush and oh so green.

The irises in my garden are few and located in several spots. I got the rhizomes from a neighbour many years ago. I love the simplicity of this delicate periwinkle-hued iris. You'll find no bearded iris in my garden, although I think they're stunning. I can enjoy my neighbours iris just across the street... deep, rich purple flowers. The iris is hardy but oh do the slugs and snails love them too. Just when a bud is near opening, I can at times find one bent right over near the top of the sturdy stalk. Just when I wasn't looking, the snails had a feast.

"Fider Frap"

 

 

 

 

Remember that little white spider from yesterday? Well this morning I checked on my little garden friend and lo and behold there he was nestled protectively inside two opening leaves! (My little 3-year old grandson used to say "Fider Frap" before he mastered the "sp" and "tr" blends-very sweet!) Then I used the macro setting with the flower icon on it (duh!)which Dana commented on and voila some pretty cool pics! Next I looked up "Crab spiders" on the web and da da - after two sites featuring very different looking crab spiders than the one at home in my garden, I saw the identical picture and will insert a description of it as found on this website. You can get a great close-up of that dilly little spider by clicking on him! I was able to coax him out of his "frap" by gently squeezing the leaf underneath him.

Here's what I hastily found on one website:

Crab spiders are no active hunters. They make more use of the camouflage techniques than other spiders and catch their prey with their front legs. The color of the spider is adapted to the hunting terrain they use and is mostly extravagant. They remain unmoved until the prey arrives and catches it. With a poisonous bite (not dangerous to humans) they kill their prey and suck it dry. They can be found on flowers or leaves of plants. Often the crab spider remains for days, even weeks at the same spot. The front two legs, that are often larger and stronger than the other six, are held sideways, ready to catch the prey immediately. Because they sit on easily spotted places they are also easy to catch by the predators. When they spot a possible enemy they move quickly at the other site of the flower or leave. Their eyesight is excellent developed as can be seen on the pictures. They have normally two big front eyes.
Crab spiders are easy recognizable if you tease them. They widen their legs and move side ways like a crab. Their size is between 4 - 10 mm.
The females usually stand guard with their egg sacs. The egg sacs are fastened to the vegetation and are usually flat.

Genus Diaea or flower spider

Garden Full of Opportunities

My garden provides many opportunities for experimentation, not only in gardening where I can only improve, but in photography where I must improve. I have a Canon Power Shot A720 which I got with points a few months ago and am trying to get better at capturing images where they can be displayed to their best advantage.

Wandering through the garden this cool Sunday afternoon I noticed a tiny white spider with a huge belly and two beautiful rosy-red swoosh markings on either side of it. It's legs looked like a crab. It was nestled on one of my hydrangea bushes as I was checking it for developing bloom clusters. This is the best shot I got and I must see if I can find out what kind of a spider it is. Does anyone out there know?

I am really growing fond of purple flowers in the garden. Purple just seems to blend and seems so natural. Yellow is fabulous for that uplifting splash of color but the purples are so calming and gentle like the rhodo above in the picture, taken this afternoon. I love all the colors actually - each definitely has its own merits and on a hot sunny summer day a garden redolent with color is a feast for the senses. This is how part of my garden looked last summer ( I think it's the first picture posted, I'm learning how to do all this stuff so bear with me) - I'm not sure I'll get that much planted this year - too much cool weather so far but then summer has not yet begun - it's only June 1.