Vol. 14 No. 2 February 2009
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Congratulations to our newly elected officers, Lorraine Altrichter, President, Gail Sklar, Vice-President, Tara Clarke, Secretary, and Liana Bauerle, Treasurer. We greatly appreciate your willingness to donate your time and expertise to leading our organization.
The state coordinator, Ginger Pryor, has asked us to take a Master Gardener Survey. The results of the survey will help the State Coordinator and State MG Steering Committee improve services, training and educational opportunities for the Master Gardener program. If you have internet access, the link is:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=iqtuwek8sei2id7_2bMKgxCA_3d_3d. If you have not chosen to receive your newsletter online, a copy is included in your February mailing. Please complete the survey by March 1st.
We try to plan all of our volunteer opportunities before the start of the year, but there are always a few worthwhile projects that are offered during the year. We have been asked to work with the Cobbs Creek West Community Association. They have volunteers who have cleared invasives from a stretch of the park that borders Upper Darby. We have been asked to help them create a design for a meadow using natives, and establish a calendar for them so that they will properly maintain their meadow. If you would like to assist this group, please contact me.
Another request has been received from the “I Can, I Will” youth program in Chester. The group had a vegetable garden last year, but need some gardening instructions and guidance. The group meets on Saturdays, beginning in February. They will be starting seeds indoors this month, and hopefully move outside in March. If you would like to be involved with this youth program, let me know.
Kathy Hornberger and Fran Alloway, Nutrition Educator at Delaware County Extension, are working with a committee to plan The Changing Face of Hunger in Delaware County conference on March 6th at Widener University. We have been asked to have a table exhibit with gardening information. If you would be willing to help set up the exhibit and/or staff the exhibit during the conference, please contact me. Two of our Master Gardeners will be involved in the round table discussion. For more information on the conference, visit the Cooperative Extension website.
Included in the mailing is the 2009 Membership List. Many thanks to Marianne Martin for helping compile the list. Those of you who elected to receive your newsletter online are also receiving the membership list online. This is a scanned document. You are not able to change the information. When I receive corrections or changes, I’ll send those to you . If you have chosen to receive your newsletter as a hard copy, but would like the directory emailed to you, let me know. This should eliminate a lot of paper and postage, and also can be saved in a place where you will be able to find it!
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Three Sisters
Three staple foods grown by Native Americans are beans, corn and squash. They are called the three sisters and grown together. The concept sounds great. Plant the corn and when the corn is about two to three feet tall and sturdy plant the climbing beans at the base of the corn plants. Plant the squash in between the corn stalks.
The corn gets taller and the beans climb using the corn for support. The squash enjoys the dappled sunlight and thrives in the rows between the corn and beans.
This will be the third year I’m trying this seemingly simple plan. The first year the corn was just at the right height for planting the beans and the squash was just getting established when a rabbit brazenly visited the yard in full view of Bounce my beagle. The rabbit ran through the “three sisters” and by the time Bounce realized that the rabbit was long gone he had flattened the whole center of the corn stand as well as the poor little squashes.
Last year I planted the corn too late and as the clover in the lawn was absent (a whole other story) the rabbit ate the beans but the squash was very happy.
I am trying again this year. I refuse to give up my dream of seeing this combo happily growing together.
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Fellow Master Gardeners,
On behalf of the Publicity Committee, I'd like to extend my sincere thanks for your flexibility, time and patience in showing up, with smiles on your faces no less, for our Master Gardener photo shoots. If you haven't already done so, you can take a peek at the albums at www.flickr.com/photos/mastergardener/. ~ Bridgette Anderson
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ES Committee Tip of the Month
According to the Rodale Institute, “The new Organic Green Revolution will mark a dramatic change, moving from unsustainable, increasingly unaffordable and petroleum-based and toxic fertilizers and pesticides, to organic regenerative farming systems that sustain and improve the health of our world population, our soil and our environment.”
Interested in learning more? Go to http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/files/GreenRevUP.pdf to read the Rodale Institute’s article entitled, Organic Green Revolution.
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4th Annual Delaware County
Environmental Summit
Sponsored by Sea Grant and DCCEC
“Environmental Education in the County”
Saturday, February 21, 2009
8:30 AM – 1:00 PM
Free to the Public – Registration Requested.
For more information and to register, visit http://delcoenvironmental.tripod.com/
Congressman Joe Sestak and State Representative Greg Vitali will be joining us.
Student posters on environmental issues are welcome for display during the event.
Cusano Environmental Education Center
John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge
Main entrance is located at 84th Street and Lindbergh Boulevard in SW Phila.
All residents of Delaware County are welcome and encouraged to attend.
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The Changing Face of Hunger in Delaware County
While many are feeling the pinch of the recession, lacking enough money for food is affecting a larger portion of our population. The Delaware County Interfaith Food Assistance Network (DIFAN) which supports 11 food cupboards in Delaware County reports a 15% - 34% increase in those requesting food at the cupboards this fall. Many of those are newly unemployed and juggling heat, medical and food costs for their families.
The Changing Face of Hunger Conference
The Changing Face of Hunger in Delaware County will be a day to address local hunger issues. Organized by a committee of agencies and universities in Delaware County that work with low income clients and food related topics, March 6, 2009, will be an opportunity to network, help increase the accessibility of fresh food, learn advocacy strategies and encourage community gardens.
Speakers include Drexel faculty, Dr. Mariana Chilton, principal investigator, Witnesses to Hunger: How 42 Low-Income Mothers Can Change the Way We Understand Hunger in America and Advocate Ellen Teller, JD, Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), Effects of the Economic Crisis on the Hunger Issue. The agenda will also include two panels addressing volunteer and funding resources for food cupboards and access to fresh food. Participants will have a chance to gather resources from agency tables during lunch and create action plans with those interested in community gardens, food cupboard support and creating a resource guide.
This conference will be held at Widener University, Chester, PA from 8:30 – 4:00 p.m. Registration fee is $25. CEUs are available for social workers. For a brochure, go to delaware.extension.psu.edu or call 610-690-2655. For more information or to make a donation to DIFAN, call 610-566-7540.
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Earth Notes
Refuse or Refuse?
by Michele Sullivan
The question was recently asked of a waitress in a restaurant, “Is polystyrene (PS)* the only container you use for take-out food containers?” She said “yes”, but flipped it over and eagerly tried to reassure by saying, “But not to worry, it can be recycled”. Queried about if she knew how long it would take to disintegrate, she said, ”I don’t know…but recycling will take care of it, no problem.”
If one goes further and speaks to the owner of the business, the explanation will often be, “Well, it’s much cheaper than paper products. And besides you don’t want to cut down all those trees do you?”
PS does not disintegrate--ever. We use a polystyrene coffee cup once, then toss it. Only a tiny percentage of those containers are recycled. Why? PS is not picked up at the curb.
Instead it requires:
- the awareness of where there is a recycling place for PS
- a person’s willingness to keep accumulated PS
- a trip to the recycling place.
Most people don’t know that the businesses which take recycled materials turn around and sell them by the pound/ton. If the reimbursement for these products is too low, there is less recycling until it becomes worth the effort by these “middle persons”.
Choose REFUSE. Less demand equals less production. The real solution is NOT to buy and/or use water in plastic bottles, coffee or food in PS. You will find it a challenge. Try not using PS for a week to get an idea of how ubiquitous it is.
The real, long term solution for these containers is to legally outlaw them. (You can’t find a PS container in California!) In the meantime consider refusing the stuff and tell your friends about your efforts. Ask them not to use it either. It’s one small step in making a difference. More people are concerned about saving the earth, and as we all refuse, a greener earth will happen. Thanks for your efforts!
(*Polystyrene is the generic term for Dow Chemical’s trademark name: styrofoam.)
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It's Five O' Clock Somewhere
Do you think that in the lyrics of Billboard chart’s number one song of 1974,“Until You Come Back to Me”, when Aretha Franklin sang the words “gonna tap on your window pane” that she was referring to the thumping sound of birds spiraling out of control?
It’s what I thought of when while listening to that song the other day, I was distracted by two loud thumps on my window pane. When I peeked out to seek the cause, what I saw was a couple of wobbling cedar waxwings.
Some quick research on my part led me away from the assumption that something toxic was in the air, and to the conclusion that the birds weren’t dizzy – They were drunk! That’s right…inebriated. Downright loopy!
If you have ever encountered this phenomenon, please note: It’s not poison. It’s your pyracantha. It’s more like a pub-a-cantha for fowl.
According to bird expert, Martha Bentley, “there is plenty of evidence that frozen-and-thawed-and-then-fermented pyracantha berries really can (and do) get birds drunk.”
Apparently, pyracantha is not the only avian tavern around. A 2005 Associated Press article stated that in Columbia, SC, beautiful weather and an endless supply of holly berries put a new spin on the term “Southern Comfort” for some local robins.
According to the article, some birds were so tipsy they fell off of tree branches. Quick thinking on behalf of grounds keepers, and a lot of netting, has greatly reduced the number of incidents of flying-under-the-influence.
Bentley also reported on a bird related “fertilizer” fiasco in Sonoma County, CA during the winter of 1990. A local farmer routinely spread mash from wine grapes on his fields, which seasonal rains broke down and washed into the soil. This particular winter yielded no rain, therefore no decomposition, thus much fermentation.
Two red-tailed hawks watched patiently as a swarm of starlings tied one on. After a stupefying happy hour, the hawks enjoyed a two-for-one pickled feast as they too got “falling-down drunk,” Bentley said.
The hawks were put into an incubator until they recovered from their hang-over, after which they flew
away happy and healthy.
In 2006, spokesperson for Vienna’s veterinary
authority, Sonja Wehsely, reported from Austria that when 40 buzzed birds were examined after being seen having serious landing issues, tests showed liver cirrhosis. “The bird’s livers showed so much damage from drinking that they looked like they were chronic alcoholics,” Wehsely said.
If you find these events to be a bit alarming, fret not. I’m sure that Mother Nature and the powers that be are feverishly collaborating on a 12-feather program for our fluttering friends.
In the meantime:
When your Crows change their coats from satin to Black Velvet and your Swifts become Sloe, while your Cardinals fly sideways into a Canadian Mist, then once again you’ve let me run away with your imagination … And I Thank You!
“God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.” ~ Jaques Deval
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Is It More Than a Garden ??
by Elsie Mueller |
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An antidote is needed to counteract this winter's bleakness. Falling temperatures freeze everything outside, bitter winds pierce the skin and snow, sleet and rain can all appear on the same day. At least a positive image of impending change would be a blessing. I found it - a soul-stirring stimulus that inspired me to focus on the garden.
At a book discussion sponsored by Scott Arboretum Associates, Swarthmore College, in mid-January, I discovered Stanley Kunitz, avid gardener and poet, and the book he wrote "The Wild Braid." This book, a reflection of his life in the garden was published in 2005, the last of 20. He died in 2006; he was 100 years old.
His book made for very profound reading; his words, ideas left me in a wondrous mood about gardening. How about this: "I associate the garden with the whole experience of being alive...There is nothing in the range of human experience that is separate from what the garden can signify in its eagerness and insistence, and driving energy to live, to grow, to bear fruit."
Sure makes one think...a lot. I reread his observations, which sometimes sounded mystical, requiring deep concentration. I realized I agree with Kunitz. My time in the garden can be a search for spiritual therapy - and usually I find it.
A garden held infinite possibilities for Kunitz. He wrote, "it represents individual plants we consider beautiful but also a synthesis that creates a new kind of beauty, a complex and multiple world. What you plant reflects your own sensibility, your concept of beauty, your sense of form. Every true garden is an imaginative construct." This inspired me to look at my garden with new perspective and serious reflection.
Born 1905 in Worcester, Mass., the gardener lived in Connecticut and New Hope, PA, before moving to Manhattan and buying a home in Provincetown, Mass. for summers. Among numerous awards and appointments, he received the Pulitzer and Bollingen Prizes. A Harvard graduate, he was 1995 poet laureate of New York and 2000 United States poet laureate.
A garden communicates to you, he wrote, by what it shows to you and your contribution represents what you are seeking in your life. Okay, I hope to better understand myself with more scrutiny and introspection of what is going on in my garden. My passion grows for the forthcoming spring.
Kunitz developed his beloved garden in terraces on sand dunes at his Provincetown shore home and compared it to a poem. Each terrace contributed to the garden same as a poetic stanza with a life of its own, yet was part of the progressive whole. Variability is required: "too many gardens express only one mood, one state of being, color repetition."
The poet announced the garden is a metaphor for poems and added he doesn't worry if readers don't understand. This is his truth, a crystallization of his unconscious.
A ton of bricks was brought in to make the terraces on the Provincetown sandy front yard. The long, arduous project resulted in a garden that held up "remarkably well." With rockweed gathered from the harbor beach, his garden suggested many aspects of the sea, he explained, and lavender and roses were prolific.
The great joy of the garden since Kunitz was a child extended "across species borders" and he described a "kind of relationship with animals," with hand stroking as communication. On his Conn. farm, he befriended a family of owls in a chestnut tree. Apparently they learned he would not harm them. Carefully able to lift the mother and four fledglings, he placed them on his arm to walk gingerly out of the woods, up to the farmhouse attic. With window always open, they lived there two years flying in and out.
On his Alberta spruce, he saw snakes dangling top to bottom one September. "I stroked them as the wild braid of creation, as co-signers of a covenant,"
Thus, the book title was born: "The Wild Braid." He also created a poem "Snakes in September."
Fascinating was his comment about brushing the flowers when he walked in the garden anticipating fragrant eloquence of their response - a form of communication. I like his quote "my garden, my life, my poems - a planned disorder."
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NEWSLETTER STAFF:
Editor: Barbara Smith
Web Designer: Kristi D'Amore
Committee: Linda Barry, Joe Daniels, Carolyn DiPaulo, Marianne Martin, Elsie Mueller, Marion Nelson, Cynthia Sabatini, Mary Sambor, Carl Pfeiffer & Arlene Pugh
Cooperative extension e-mail: DelawareExt@psu.edu
Blog Address: http://go.philly.com/gardenerjournal
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