The Wrath of Grapes

Grape vines down by the river are encountering a foe: it's me. They grow unbelievably stout down there, soaring to the tops of the tall deciduous trees.  Eventually, they act like the one percent, gobbling all the sunlight and leaving none for the trees or forest floor plants.

Here is a biggie I disconnected with the chain saw.

Another one sneakily looked like a tree at the base, but got up into this Osage Orange (hedge apple to us here in Missouri) and was in the process of doing its boa constrictor routine in the canopy.  Feeling downright gleeful, I sliced it off at ground level.  The lower tree limb was dead, so I cut it for firewood.  There are some beautiful trees that get brought down by the grape vines, so every big marauding one I cut saves several trees, like not subscribing to the newspaper.

This is one of the smaller ones I cut recently.  It doesn't look like much, but had already gotten up into several trees, with the sky as the limit.

Between the grape vines and the climbing poison ivy, those invaders are doing their best to take over the woods.

Even when the vines are cut, they get busy sending out slender new shoots. Before long, they will find young trees on their way up.  Latching onto one of the branches is how they wind up looking like they have made it on their own. When their victims die and fall over, it matters not to the vines. They start scouting around for another leg up, even though they have no legs.  They are determined but I am on a vendetta.

My motto is Hell hath no fury like an avenging woman with a chain saw.

Half Over or Half to Go?

When I asked my family and friends if I ever happened to mention that I hate January, they all said, "Yes!" rather testily, I thought.  The gardeners among them were much more sympathetic.

It's so hard to hold out hope for spring when it seems so far away.  It seems more distant now than it did in November, because of Christmas being such a nice distraction from Old Man Winter.

We do get occasional warm-ups here in the Midwest, for which I am grateful.  When the ground thawed, I checked for tulips coming up.  Not too surprisingly, none were seen.

Then along came another  cold spell and the ground is once again hard underfoot.  It makes me feel cranky.  There's nothing to do for it but get outside instead of looking out the window and dreading the cold. Time to use all those woolies I knitted last summer.

My favorite sycamore tree had dropped some limbs, so I went up there with the pruners to make a path through the underbrush to reach them.  This is the time of year to cut the poison ivy vines at the base. Since my last vine disposal work, the little upstart vines resumed their upward climb.  Those guys look harmless compared to the huge tree, but they soon get big, branch out and hog all the sunlight.

It's a delicate matter to pull them down because I daren't touch them with my gloves, and must use the pruners to grab them.  As a last defiant act, the vines seem determined to slap me in the face as they fall. "Take that!" they say.

Nearby smaller trees appeared to be jealous that I was giving special treatment to the giant tree.  I believe I heard, through the resurrected grapevines, muffled accusations that I might be a member of Congress, the way I favored the big guys. Ouch, that hurt.

So I had to free some of them from these nasty greenbriar vines.  They don't hug the bark like the poison ivy vines, but hitch a ride on other brush until they can get a grasp on anything headed toward the treetops. The purple one on the left is a blackcap, which has tasty berries and doesn't climb.  It just got in with a bad crowd.

Now the big limb is ready for me to cut up with the chain saw, so I guess there was some sort of reciprocal benefit going between me and the big tree, after all. Maybe I'll run for Congress.

My pruning never makes a lasting difference to the rampant vines, but it does get me outside in January. Outdoors, I never feel cranky.

Time to Pick Peas

With the Winter Solstice just passed and snow on the ground, it's time for me to pick peas.  Looking at the new seed catalogs on Christmas Day is a big treat for me, as I explained in An Odd Christmas Tradition, December 28, 2011.  In winter, this older woman's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of gardens.
What fun it is to get out the leftover packets and check them against my seed viability chart.

My gardening notes from last spring and summer make rather depressing reading.  Hardly anything succeeded after the last of June. We can usually count on the heat-lovers, tomatoes, corn and beans, to come through for us. The record heat and drought put a stop to all that.  Even veggies that soak up heat found it was all to much of a good thing.  They swooned and had to be carried from the field.

While the solar scientists try and make up their minds as to if Solar Cycle 24 has passed max, I'm betting the garden that it hasn't.  My prediction is we are in for another hot dry year.  Accordingly, I'm going to plant early varieties of the spring crops that did so well for me last year. Packman broccoli were prolific. Many await in the freezer.

Little Sweetie snow peas, from Stokes, were great.  I had plenty to eat and froze a few packages.  So now I'm looking for some regular peas to try. Wando peas are billed as being able to withstand drought and heat. When I finally understood what was meant by growing peas on brush, I've gotten good results.  If they had said grow them on sticks stuck into the ground, that would have been better.  "On brush" made me think they meant a brush pile of sorts, an idea too silly to try.

The more seed catalogs I reference, the more confused I become.  Mr. Big peas take 72 days to mature, according to one catalog, but only 58 in another.  One source says the vines will grow to six feet; the other says 30 inches!  Who to believe?

Then there was the Romanesco broccoli, the big green mound in the middle of the garden above.  It grew for months.  The seed packet said 80 days to maturity.  Somewhere else, I read it took much longer.  It took even longer than that. It never got a head.  I know the feeling.

I'm making my list and checking it twice for the annual trip to Planters' Seeds in Kansas City. Probably they will have the  appropriate pea seeds for our region. Meeting up with my daughters and grandkids there is the high point of late January.   Bulk seeds are such a great value.  We get several years' planting for the price of one package from some of the stingy seed companies.

Green Arrow peas look good, but I must decide if  little or big peas are what I want.  Back to the piles of seed catalogs. I'm looking forward to burning my mind to a crisp deciding on varieties.  My all-time favorites are already on my list:  Tom Thumb lettuces, Cocozelle zucchini, French Breakfast radishes, Long Season beets, among others. We gardeners are fearful we're missing out on some fabulous taste treat, so we keep adding to our repertoire.