November 25, 2007

Holey Moley!

Holes and Moles, they seem to rhyme pretty good, dont you think? Holes and moles, also closely associate with each other because moles make holes and that is what they do basically, they tunnel underneath peoples yards, eat flower bulbs, and destroy landscaping lawns.

For all those who garden in their yard a lot, you are probably familiar or heard about moles. They are one of the gardeners worst nightmares. Moles love to be around beautiful gardens and lawns just like people do. But the problem about moles is that they dont treat the yards and lawns like gardeners do. For moles, flower bulbs is like a feeding freenzie, a playground full of free meals.



Moles are like ants, they tunnel in the ground, but ants are small creatures while moles are like rats, they are big, that is why they have more devastating effects in the gardens and lawns than tunneling ants. You cannot really see the tunnels they create but you can tell that they are tunneling below because part of your lawn and garden will have bulky and soft continues curves all around, and if you water these tunneled areas, these tunnels collapses and causing uneven and tiny canal-looking spots. And for meals, they love to eat flower bulbs specially tulips.

I never seen an actual mole, but i can see signs that they are positively present in a garden and/or lawn. Moles are hard to catch and get rid of, but there are some ways control them:

Mole Traps. You can buy mole traps in most gardening and home improvement stores. Most mole traps are mechanically design to fit in one of their tunnels and when the mole use the same tunnel again, they got trapped and clipped. Mole trap is not not our prefered method of hunting moles and keeping them out of our yard and lawns because having to deal with a dead moles body is quite unpleasant and eeky, and sometimes it wont work because moles do not always use the same tunnel again, they usually just make new tunnels.

Poison Foods. Get them to come to the meal, is the key. Attract the mole by using a poison foods that are design to attract moles and poison them, which you can usually buy in gardening and home improvement store as well. A lot of times you can just place them in their tunnel and get them to come back or place them where they are most frequent. Im sure there is a detailed instructions that will be included with the food poisoning product on how to apply them safely. We never apply this product in our yard because we have dogs. I would not recommend this in your yard to catch and get rid of moles if you have pets like cats and dogs because they might attracted to it as well and try to eat it. So better safe than sorry, if you have pets in the yard, this is not the best option for you.

Car Exhaust Suffocation. There are some specially designed hose/pipe for sale that you can use to mount in your car exhaust pipe and place the other end of the hose/pipe in one of the mole tunnel. It is designed to have the car exhaust blown to the mole tunnel and kill the mole with suffocation. This method is probably safer if you have pets in the yard, but might be quite complicated to use because you have to attach the device to your car and all. How to apply it should be included with the product when you purchase itm but I cannot give detail instruction here because we never used this method before.

Chicken Wires. Moles are specially attracted to flower bulbs because it is one of their favorite meals. So if you have flower gardens with bulbs, chances are moles will be tunneling underneath and go towards such garden. Chicken wire application method might work best if you are just planning and starting your garden, before any plants are planted in it. The chicken wire method is done by placing a chicken wire pool about a foot or two deep in your garden area to be, fill it with dirt and plant the flowers above it. This way, when the mole tunnel in your yard, the mole will be stopped outside where the chicken wires are and cannot access the bulbs planted inside the chicken wires. The problem with this process is that moles can start a tunel above your garden and get trap inside the chicken wires with all the bulbs in it. And the chicken wire method doesnt really eliminate the mole, it only diverts their tunneling flow hopefully.

Whichever method you choose, good luck! It is quite a challenge catching those holey moley! Feel free to leave your comments about this post as well.

All Rights Reserved. Written by JAZEVOX.

November 20, 2007

The Signs of Fall

I woke up this morning with thoughts about Autumn/Fall, a season that not all countries got the chance to experience. In the tropical climate there is basically two seasons, rainy days and summer days. There is no such thing as winter and fall like here in the US. Fall or autumn season does definitely has its own unique characteristics and interestings facts.


My hubby and I started talking about the things that change around us when its fall, and here are some of the things that we noticed as:

The Signs of Fall

People started cleaning up the rain gutters of their homes and replacing new gutter screens.

Spiders wanna force their way into your homes! So watch out, they could be just few inches away from your door, ready to sneak in when its open.

You started smelling smoke and seeing smoke in peoples chimney.

People started buying and bringing firewoods and logs and stack them near the fireplace.

The squirrels are double-time and last minute picking acorns for winter foods.

The leaves in the trees are turning yellows and reds.

People gear up with their leave blowers and rakes and started clearing up the yard full of leaves.

You started using your heater almost everyday and the electricity bill started rising!

You see a lot of flower bulbs for sale in most department stores, supermarkets and home improvement stores.

You need to warm/heat the car before you can drive and leave in the morning.

You see pumkins, lots and lots of pumkins, wherever! Decors, stores, farms, etc.

You started hearing the Christmas songs in the supermarket and seeing christmas decors for sale in the stores.

You will noticed more Christmas holiday movies advertised and being played on TV everyday.

You grab your jacket everytime you go out, even for a few minutes because getting cold out. In other words, it is hard to get out without wearing a jacket anymore.

Have a nice and wonderful Fall/Autumn spirit to all!

©JAZEVOX. All Rights Reserved.

Is there something we missed to mentioned here that you think is unique and will happen during fall season? We would like to hear it! Please leave comments :-)



November 16, 2007

Red Cherries Harvest

I took this cherries fresh from our cherry tree last summer (2007). We had to harvest them early before they totally ripen or else the birds would had a feast! This harvest (cherry tree picking) was the first year that we finally have a chance to really enjoy our cherries because somehow we learned how to outwit the birds for a change.


The cherries were only around 3/4 of an inch diameter each, not the biggest since we picked them earlier than we should, but it was big enough to enjoy eating it!

In this photography, I originally did not plan to have it crossed-stem, but each cherries wont stand on its own, and both cherries ended up the way it look in the photo, which i do like how it came out.




November 14, 2007

"Be The Blog" Award

What a nice surprise I got today; my blog, GardenersLand, previously PlantingDiary, has received an award this week, from the Waliz Diary blog. According to their site, "This award is presented to a successful blogger, one who can "be the blog" - making it their own, staying with it, interacting with the readers, and just plain having fun." I am passing the award along to the authors of the following blogs who all fit the bill:
Sweet Lullaby by Marie

and just recently discovered blog
Outfit Inspirations by Simone
Thank you Waliz for this wonderful award and surprise! This is my first blog award ever!

November 11, 2007

Link Exchange with Co-Bloggers

Do you want to Exchange Link with this blog? Just leave me message (or comment) here with your URL and Short Blog Title, add the following link to your Blogroll or Link List:


URL: http://www.gardenersland.com
Blog Title: GardenersLand

As soon as I receive your message regarding Link Exchange, I will visit your blog to verify the link.

Or if you already added my blog to your blogroll or blog links, please let me know if you are also interested to exchange link with me!

Invite hummingbirds in your yard

One of my favorite moments in our garden are the times when the hummingbirds starts flying nearby, dropping by the yard to checkout the food feeder or different flowers in our yard. Hummingbirds are quite a small creatures, you might not always see them coming right away, but you will always know when they are there because of their noisy flapping wings. There are few occassions that i mistakenly hear the rapid flapping noise of their wings as a loud sounds of a big buzzing bee right in my ear, and those times are heart pumping scary moments. But there is no doubt that you will be so delighted to realize that hummingbirds are checking out your yard!



We do try some effort to let them come to our yard by setting up some hummingbird feeders that we bought from the store. Most hummingbird feeders are made of red material or if not clear glass with red contents because they seem to be normally attracted to the color red. You can buy hummingbird food mixture in many stores, just add water and ready to put in the feeder.



Aside from setting up hummingbird feeders, you can also plant some flowers that help attract hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are particularly attracted to colorful bright flowers specially with red colors in them. So if you want hummingbirds to come by to your yard, why not set up some hummingbird feeders or plant hummingbird attractant flowers. They are always so cool to be around the yard!



Facts about hummingbird:
Their heart beats 1400 times a minute!
Written By: JAZEVOX



November 9, 2007

Getting creative with floral arrangement

There is no must-follow rules to arrange flowers, there may be some popular ways to arrange flowers but there are limitless ways and possibilities that you can arrange your flowers your own ways. It is just a matter of being creative, exercising your mind and your imagination.

Out of nowhere, I came up with a way to display some of our daisies and bunch of rose petals. It all started when one day I noticed that we had so many daisies in our yard. The daisies were larger and heavier flowers than what the stem could support thats why some were just bowing to the ground. We did not add stick supports to the daisies because we had so many of them to even try doing it.


So I just cutted the daisies that are too heavy to stand up straight, leaving only an inch stem in each flower. I grab a bowl originally designed for floating candles and filled it with water halfway, then placed the cutted daisies in the water-filled bowl. And to give the arrangement some more decorative touches, I picked one rose and separate the petals to sprinkle them in between the daisies. The result is shown in the photo above. I thought it came out really nice.

So if you have flowers in your yard that might be hiding under the bushes, or grew in a wrong part of your yard where you cannot enjoy, there are ways that you can enjoy these flowers by bringing them inside your house and get creative with your floral arrangement. Just remember that the rule is no rule to being creative.
Written By: JAZEVOX



November 4, 2007

Behind the scene of our spotty lawn

We been having a lot of falling leaves in our lawn area these days from all the different trees that we have around the property. Obviously, the main reason why it is called Fall Season is because most leaves die down and fall from the trees at this time of year.

There are still a lot of leaves that are waiting to fall, but my hubby decided to clean up our lawn area that are full of leaves already. So I decided to take photos of it before he get rid of all the leaves in the ground. While i was taking photos, our lovely doggy suddenly squat in front of me and start peeing in the lawn.


We have two (2) doggies and noticed lately that we have dead spots all over our lawn area. I previously read in a magazine that female dogs urine cause dead spots in the lawn if they urinate in it and the homeowner would not dilute the area with water right away. But our dogs are both house dogs so when we let them out for potty outside we usually dont follow them to see where they do their business. But we noticed that one of them is having a habit of doing it in the lawn area, but we cannot pinpoint exactly which dog is actually doing it so that we can do something about it like train the dog or something. This photo totally break the ice and answer our question that been lingering in our heads for a while.
NOTE: Hope Im not offending anyone with this photo, nor am I a comedian by sharing this photo! Its part of my gardening story! Peace!



November 2, 2007

Deer, Ohh Deer!

Boy, oh boy! Looks like we have a fellow caught in the act snacking on our Hydrangea flowers that we bought for around $15 last summer! I woke up this morning and found this deer eating on our garden area. Our block wall is around two (2) feet tall, so you can tell that this deer is probably around three (3) feet in height?

Living here in northern CA, it is expected that sometimes deers will be checking out peoples yard for meals. And with all the flowers we have, they seem to love to check out are place quite more often. So we took extra effort of fencing part our yard to keep the deers out and keep our dogs in. But sometimes, deer take a gamble encountering with our dogs, they jump in our five (5) feet wire fenced easily sometimes and had to fight face to face with our doggies in some occassions. At this time of year, October-November, i noticed that they seem to be coming by in our yard more frequently, which is harder for us because we dont want anymore deadly encounter with our doggies and we dont want our flowers to be eaten.


 
Written By: JAZEVOX




Oak tree mushroom fungi

Few years ago, we had this beautiful Oak tree that we had to put down by professional tree cutter because it was too near the house and having a huge tree like next to a house is never such a great idea because the roots could penetrate in the foundation of a house, or in other cases, if the tree decided to fall and get uprooted during wet and stormy weather, it could fall in the house next to it specially if it is leaning more in that direction.


Few days ago, while I was taking some pictures of falling leaves in our lawn area this autumn season, I came across this mushroom growing in out cutted oak tree. It looks like a thin fan with multi-color shades of blacks or browns and some dark reds in the edges (see photo above). Im not sure this particular type of mushroom but if you want to read more about mushroom fungi in Oak trees, checkout The Mighty Oak and Its Mushrooms .

Written By: JAZEVOX

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www.GardenersLand.com blog is a daily gardener diary about gardens, gardening, plants, planting flowers, fruits trees, and other plants with tips, experiences, tricks, lessons, techniques. Avid outdoor and yard person sharing stories and experiences. Feel free to leave comments and subscribe to this blog RSS feed above (upper right column). Please note that this blog was previously called PlantingDiary..