Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, NC to speak
There’s a wonderful local garden event tomorrow that I nearly forgot to post since I’m unable to attend. Dash out and check out:
Read MoreTony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, NC to speak to Flower, Garden, & Nature Society on Saturday, March 20 at 10:00 am, at NTI in Springdale
Tony Avent, the owner of Plant Delights Nursery near Raleigh, North Carolina, will speak to the Flower Garden and Nature Society of NW Arkansas on Saturday, March 20, at 10:00 am, in the student center at the Northwest Technical Institute in Springdale, 709 South Old Missouri Road (just south of the Springdale rodeo grounds, on Hwy. 265). Please arrive early for best seating.
Tony is internationally known and renowned in horticultural circles as a plant hunter and plantsman. He has personally traveled to Mexico, China, Korea, Argentina, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam in search of new and rare plants to offer at Plant Delights, as well as finding great new introductions of North American native plants in no fewer than 43 plant-hunting expeditions closer to home. He has written numerous magazine, newspaper, and Internet articles, and for the last eight years has been a contributing editor to Horticulturemagazine. He has also appeared on many television shows, including multiple appearances onMartha Stewart Living.
Gardeners who love new and unusual plants, as well as interesting and sometimes hilarious prose, eagerly await the Plant Delights catalogs each year. Who could resist a description of Baptisias, our native false indigos, as “redneck lupines”? Plant Delights has also become a choice destination for plant lovers to visit during the “Open House” weekends each year, to admire the lovely showcase and trial gardens, which have a wider variety of plants than most full-fledged botanical gardens.
Tony will speak on “Exploration to Exploitation: How Plants Make Their Way From the Wild to Market”.
Admission to the talk is free to FGNS members, and $15 to non-members (membership in the FGNS is also $15, and may be purchased at the door). For more information, call 479-521-9090.
Dirty Movies for Gardeners & Foodies
Northwest Arkansas is preparing for another ice storm nearly to the day of the anniversary of the catastrophic ice storm we had in 2009. It’s predicted to be much less severe though, and that’s an anxiety-ridden comfort. Such is our fate I guess now that the rain/ice/snow boundaries of the country have shifted a bit north. I recall with irony my first drive through southern Missouri a few years back thinking, “what on earth happened to so many of their forests with the tops snapped off the trees? Gosh, sure am glad our trees don’t look like that….” Now my backyard and much of the region has looked like that for the last year…
On the comedic side of things, I went to Wal-Mart last evening to add to our stash of emergency candles, like about two billion other locals decided to do at the same time. Nothing like the reaction to a predicted snow/ice event in the South. I love it, being a Southerner. It has kind of a crazy emergency-holiday feel to it. When I lived in places where snow/ice was “normal” I found it such a downer that no one was dashing out to strip the shelves of bread and milk…and emergency candles. (And, um, Beer!) But they were yesterday!!
As I walked toward the store, people pushing huge baskets motioned to the storefront and said things like, “Hope you are ready for that!” and “You’re gonna wish you brought your waitin’ boots!” Clever wordsmith. Somehow, this all puts me in a festive mood. Like the school aged Southern thrill when YOUR school is named on the closures list on the radio just because some road dozens of miles from you has an icy patch. It’s all still a thrill to me. Go figure. 🙂
I had a great time though they were already sold out of emergency candles. The retail maestros had emergency supplies lined up along the center row: deicer, snow shovels, propane, generators…sleds… You would have thought an ice-Katrina was headed our way and life as we knew it could end shortly. Which I guess is always true… But I did pick up a few little camping propane bottles for the cookstove, just in case. Nothing like being without power for seven days this time last year to put a little wintry-mix PTSD in your day, festive mood or not!
But I digress, I’m here to share some of my favorite dirty movies of late: “Fresh,” “Food, Inc.” and “Dirt.” (Yes, Dirt is already a favorite even though I haven’t seen it yet!) Enjoy the links below!
Fresh, The Movie (freshthemovie.com)
I got to see this night before last. It’s both thought provoking and uplifting too as it features interviews with farmers ranging from industrial to conventional to ecological. Calvin Bey moderated our local screening and suggested that we notice the affect (aka the “vibe”) from the various people interviewed. That was a pretty remarkable exercise and sure affirmed the “do what you love” principle of life. A good intro to food issues with a nice balance of hope and portraits of uplifting trends in the midst of our industrialized food system. Don’t miss this film!
Dirt: The Movie
This is the one I haven’t seen yet. But it’s got a lot of my favorite farmers in it AND it celebrates my favorite thing on the farm: soil. (I couldn’t resist the jazzy title of this post, but I have been corrected by teacher-farmers in the past to never confuse the two and never treat your soil ‘like dirt.’ Wise words!)
Food, Inc. (http://www.foodincmovie.com/)
This one is tough. It shows you what’s really at stake when we make food choices. But strong medicine has indeed helped me make better food buying choices because the pain in my wallet to buy what I call “ethical meat” does not compare to the suffering of the animals in the industrial food system. And I want to lessen my contribution to that system, and that suffering.
So check out some food and sustainable-agriculture films, get educated and get gardening! Nothing like dirty movies the whole family can sit down and watch! Here’s to envisioning a lovely snow instead of ice for NWA. Stay warm! Please leave a comment via the link below and let me know what you think of the movies.
Read MoreSneet & Snain: The Wintry Mixes
- Next winter’s warmth
The snow has melted away from the white Christmas we had here in Northwest Arkansas, but we’re still having variations on cold precipitation. Not exactly the dreaded “wintry mix,” as the Noaa weather report often calls for, but yet another of the endless combinations that winter can bring. Back in NC, we made up some new names for the Southern variations on snow. “Snain” was snowy rain. “Sneet” was snow laced with sleet. Glad I’ve got good gardening books to read!
Ada The Farm Dog - 9mos old
Ada loved, loved the snow. She couldn’t figure out who would leave such yummy fluff everywhere. You could run, play with and then eat some! But for Ada, the world is a toy or a meal. Hey what is that she’s eating??
Oh great. She picked her own collards for a snowy snack. Back in the summer, her favorite U-pick snack was yellow squash and young cantelopes. Only fitting I should get a veggie loving dog! But don’t let her fool you. She’s no vegetarian and so the chickens must be carefully kept in their pasture till she’s a more trustworthy farm dog…
- Yum, cold DOES make collards sweeter!
Woodpeckers are back
Once the weather gets cold, the woodpeckers reappear on the suet feeder. With the chilly week we’ve had, it’s rare to look out the kitchen window at the suet feeder and NOT see a woodpecker on it. Above, our adored red-head, the Yellow-Bellied Woodpecker. Occasionally, at the right angle, it’s visible how he got his name.
This tiny Downey Woodpecker has no trouble running off the big guys to get his lunch. They look so small compared to the Yellow-Bellied!
And here’s our 2009 pride and joy: an immature Hairy Woodpecker. It’s so fun to see the young ones figure out the suet feeder. Between them all, they are eating us out of house and home and making homemade suet cakes is on the agenda for the next few days.
Here’s another woodpecker post with pics over at the old blogger site:
Another juvenile woodpecker: a sapsucker??
Which of your favorite birds are showing up this time of year? Please leave a comment and let me know! (Bloggers just love comments….) 🙂
Read MoreA Few Good-Byes (Till We Meet Again…)
As the gold, silver, lavendar, brown and gray tones of winter set in, here are a few fond farewells, if only for a season:
• First lovely blossoms on a young apple tree planted in 2007 with two tiny apples in 2009…
• Fresh lettuce available by just walking out the door…
• Cherry blossoms and birds building nests everywhere…
• Flats of beet seedings just set out into an early spring garden bed…
• Bowls and stacks and buckets of green beans from the garden on every surface in the kitchen…
• Schools of butternut squash ripening along the vines….
May we all meet again as the seasons turn! As I say those good-byes, let me open new eyes to the (easily overlooked) gifts of winter.
What are you already missing from your garden 2009?
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