Once A Garden, Always A Garden

Cindy, her sister Mary and I went back to Indiana two weeks ago to visit friends and revisit some of the places Cindy and Mary grew up.

They told me that their dad, Lou, had created a garden in the back yard of the first house they lived in in Fort Wayne.  The garden was a vegetable garden consisting of two rectangular beds with one side of each shaped like a crescent.  A smaller round bed in front of those contained some beautiful tall, red Canna Lily plants.

As it happened, we drove past the house and noticed that it appeared to be empty, so Mary and Cindy went to peer into the windows and explore the back yard.

They found that the shape of the garden Lou had laid out so many years ago was still visible, although it was now filled with shrubs and was very over grown and unkempt, and Cindy's fingers fairly itched for her pruning shears.

It was obvious that it would take even a passionate gardener a long time to get it back into good shape, but it's also clear that, no matter how many years have passed, once you create a garden, the potential for it is always there.

How To Catch A Grasshopper

Caught!

We were visiting our friend Nan last night and she mentioned that something was eating the leaves of her small lemon tree.  The chief suspect was a grasshopper, judging from the large chunks taken out of the leaves.

As we were inspecting the leaves, Cindy spotted the culprit in the act, chewing away on the leaves, so Cindy showed Nan the way to catch a grasshopper.

It seems that if you approach the grasshopper from either its underside or its back, it will feel the movement of the air as you approach and do what grasshoppers do best:  jump out of your way.

Instead, you need to get something to trap the grasshopper in, and then approach the insect head on, so that when it jumps, it jumps directly into the jar.  Then clap the lid on the jar before it can escape.

What you do with it after that is up to you.

For The Birds

We've been finding quite a few dead birds in our yard lately.  We've found four or five this summer, and that's more than we've found in all the years we've had the bird feeder in our yard.

It's mostly Sparrows and House Finches that we've found.  They usually hang around the feeder for a while, looking puffy and bloated and sometimes showing some downy feathers, which leads us to think some of them might be pretty young.  Shortly after that we find them dead.

We don't know if this is some sort of disease epidemic going around or if they're ingesting something toxic.  We've checked with the company where we buy the seed and they've assured us that they don't use pesticides.  We put in a inquiry to the San Diego Audubon Society, but haven't heard from them.

Cindy also asked the San Diego County Vector Control Program about what might be killing these birds, but they are concerned with larger birds, who tend to be at the top of the food chain and are the ones who may contract and die from the West Nile virus.  They just don't have the resources to investigate smaller birds.

If you find a dead Crow, Raven, Jay, Hawk, Owl or Falcon, please report it to Vector Control at:  http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/deh/pests/wnv/services/chd_wnv_report_dead_birds.html.

I've just found that smaller birds or all types can be reported to the California Department of Public Health at:  http://www.westnile.ca.gov/report_wnv.php

We'll report any future birds we find, although we're hoping we won't find any more.