By MaryBeth Weisenburger

“Do you really need all these black shoes?” my husband asked innocently as we tackled the semi annual closet cleaning project the other day. Before I retorted something like “Yes! Do you really need all of those golf clubs??” I considered the advantages of crossing over to my husband’s way of thinking.

He owns one pair of black shoes. (Well, two if you count the pair that our 21-year-old absconded with and will probably never be seen again). When he wears dark pants, he reaches for his black shoes. It’s an easy, uncomplicated system that rarely results in mix-ups.

By Nancy Whitaker

JUST SAYING NO

Yes. I did it again. I am a big sucker for the items they advertise on TV that you just can’t live without. In the past, I have purchased egg peelers, microwave spaghetti cookers, shavers, car covers, ice scrapers with gloves, salad shooters, grinders, and battery operated rodent frighteners.

I have bought tanning blankets made of foil material, a fan that you stick in your car window and it was supposed to run while you weren’t in your car to cool it off.

Yes. I have tried lots of new items, but let me be the first to say that they are not all as good as what they claim to be.

By Kylee Baumle

A couple of weekends ago, I traveled to Tucson, Ariz. for a garden writers conference. This is held at a different location every year and when it was announced last year that it would be held in the southwest, I knew immediately that I wanted to go. I’d never been there and gardening in Arizona couldn’t be further from the experience of gardening in Ohio.

As the airplane flew in over Tucson, of course I noticed the mountains. Being from the flat plains, those mountains are a novelty and a wonder. (They also create turbulence for the airplane. Ugh.) But the next thing I noticed was the color. Everything was brown. It wasn’t the brown we experience when going through a drought or the brown of winter. It was a golden color, dotted here and there with oases of blue-green.

By Kylee Baumlee

One of the concerns about having such a warm winter last year was what effect it would have on the insect population. It’s generally thought that a warm winter won’t kill all the bugs it needs to. Every ecosystem has its balance and when things are shaken up by such things as temperature, you have to wonder if there will be changes in other parts of the whole.

I’m no scientist, but I like to think my brain works logically (most of the time). So my initial response to this bug thing was to say that even if many of the bad bugs weren’t wiped out by the usual prolonged cold temperatures of a typical winter, neither would their natural enemies. Balance would remain, right?

I don’t know what your personal experience in your garden was, but here’s mine: I had fewer bugs. That’s right. Fewer. In particular, the Japanese beetle numbers were down. For years now, I’ve kept a running tally of just how many Japanese beetles I’ve caught and destroyed throughout the summer.

I hand pick them off of their favorite haunts – the ‘Morning Magic’ climbing rose and the pink hybrid tea rose, ‘Memorial Day’. These are the only plants I find them on, with an occasional one or two found on the daylily ‘Big Smile.’

In my worst year, 2009, I found over 300 Japanese beetles in the garden. This year, only 33 TOTAL. Since my chickens find these to be a delicious treat, they were disappointed when I walked by their run with no treat, time and time again.

Was this because of the warmer winter? I have my doubts and like to think it’s because I’ve been diligent each year in removing them so there are fewer to reproduce for the next year. I also give the grubs I find when digging in the garden to the chickens, so those never have a chance to grow up to be beetles either.

As far as other insects go, the dry summer reduced the mosquito population to almost non-existent. They increased this fall as we got the badly needed rains, but not to unbearable amounts. I can remember some summers when they were so bad I couldn’t even work outside in the middle of the day without being swarmed by them.

Our garden is a Certified Monarch Waystation and we grow several types of milkweed so that the monarchs have another place to lay eggs. Milkweed (Asclepias sp.) plants are the only things that monarch caterpillars eat, and with much of that habitat disappearing, so are the monarchs.

I love the monarch and its miraculous migration story, so I want to do my part to help increase their populations. They were conspicuously missing in the first part of summer, but returned in the second half, although I never found a single chrysalis in my garden this year.

I didn’t have any problems with squash vine borer, and the flea beetles that usually pepper the foliage of many plants with tiny holes that look like they got hit with buckshot were minimal, too. I had the usual number of tobacco hornworms on the tomatoes (again, chicken treats!) and the katydid nymphs took their toll on the roses in similar fashion as years before. The spotted cucumber beetles were everywhere, but no more than usual and the same goes for cabbage loopers.

One of the most disgusting insects in my garden is the earwig. It can cause some damage to flowers, but I had fewer of those this year, too. If I noticed an increase in any unwanted garden pests, it was the slugs. I never actually saw too many, but my hostas suffered damage from them more this year than in any of the years prior.

This has been a record-setting weather year, to be sure, but I don’t know that it had much effect on the insects. At least not from my observation and perspective as a home gardener. Your experience may have been different and I’d love to hear about it.

Read more at Kylee’s blog, Our Little Acre, at www.ourlittleacre.com and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OurLittleAcre. Contact her at PauldingProgressGardener@gmail.com.

By Nancy Whitaker

PRETTY AND PROUD

The old saying goes, “You can’t tell a book by it’s cover.” A book may look boring from the outside, but once you get reading the inside, it could turn out to be the best book you have ever read.

The same theory holds true for a big, red, beautiful apple. An apple could be all polished and look ready to sink your teeth into, and when you do, out comes a little slimy worm. Yuck!

I have always been a “girlie” girl, meaning I like new clothes, nail polish, makeup and shoes. I love trying new hair styles and face creams.

By Jim Langham

I will never forget my mother’s description of my dad’s first prayer, as she recalled it. My dad, you see, had at one point participated in his share of drinking and “less than Christian” living, as I was told. In fact, there was a point, so said my mother, that she was going to break off the relationship, not because he wasn’t good to her, but she wasn’t going to put up with his lifestyle at the time.

Then, one night, following an evening with her, he decided he was going to do something to change things around. So he drove into the country, sat on the hood of his car, looked at the stars, and said so sincerely, “Okay, Whoever You are, wherever You are, I need You!” Miraculously, he went back to his apartment, poured out his alcohol, and it was done, forever, done.

My search for a red wagon

It was one day last week, when I decided to leave my current world of reality and enter a search that I knew would make a good friend very happy if I hit paydirt.

When I left, due to the nature of the request, I felt that the chances of coming up with a red wagon like I used to ride around in my childhood, were less than spectacular.

I will never forget what seems like a lifetime ago, that I arrived home and discovered a beautiful red “coaster wagon,” as we referred to them, sitting on our property, ready for the ride. Over the years, it became a vehicle to ride leisurely around our neighborhood.

Recently, a good friend asked if I knew where to get such a wagon. She was looking for one because she had an idea of piling pumpkins in such a wagon and use it for decoration for the fall season in the front of her home.

My first stop was at the business of a close friend where I spotted a red wagon behind her floral shop. Since she had one, I thought that she might know where I could get one.

However, upon inquiring, I found that her treasure had come from an antique shop during covered bridge days in a small town nearly 100 miles away in western Indiana.

Ironically, her business is located across the old railroad bed from the small town where I was raised. The small town where I rode the wagon and used it to deliver vegetables to neighbors. Deep inside, I thought, “Wow, if I could come up with a wagon by my own old home place, that would be awesome.” However, the concept seemed too good to dream of, so I started searching through area antique shops. My journey led to an antique mall where I was told the chances would be good.

The entire search was to no avail, so I started back from my illusive search for the little red treasure.

Presently, the thought of discovering a wagon in the little country hamlet where I was raised wouldn’t escape me. I knew that if I didn’t at least make a drive-through search, I wouldn’t be satisfied.

I made the first turn to the north which led to the corner where I was raised. Now I was driving in an area that triggered 60-year-old wagon memories that I hadn’t thought of in years.

By Jim Langham

Presently, I crept past the old home place, allowing myself time to “return” for a few short moments before slowly continuing down the street.

I approached the house where my uncle and aunt had lived, just a few hundred feet from where I was raised. I passed the house, glanced toward the garage, and my eyes couldn’t believe what they saw.

There, sitting against the house was a red wagon just like I had driven. It was located on the property where I had ridden my wagon and 200 feet from the home where my beloved friend, Mert Sprunger, lived. It was there in the neighborhood where my actual wagon experiences had occurred.

With chills and hopes, I pulled into the driveway and went to the door. An elderly lady came to the door and I said, “Is that wagon for sale?”

By Kylee Baumle

Looking forward to spring

I’ve said before that when fall comes around, this gardener is tired. Though I don’t exactly welcome the winter that follows, autumn brings rest from weeding, deadheading, cultivating, and numerous other chores in the garden. Most of those things I love to do, especially weeding and deadheading; if I didn’t, I wouldn’t garden. But the rewards for doing all that are the biggest motivators of all: gorgeous blooms spring through fall, scrumptious fruits and vegetables that taste better than grocery store versions, birds and butterflies that enjoy my garden as much as I do, and even in winter there are visually beautiful images. (Red-twig dogwoods, anyone?)

Nonetheless, I’m about gardened out by now and my numerous houseplants will provide just enough of that gardening fix I seem to need on a regular basis. So who’s going to plant all those bulbs that just showed up on my doorstep?

Because of my garden writing, I am sometimes gifted with gardening products, including plants and bulbs. Companies hope that I will like their products enough to write about them on my blog, thus spreading the word to other gardeners. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. This is the first time I’ve received free bulbs and the great thing about this was that I got to choose which ones I wanted. Well, that and the part about them being free.

SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER?

Have you ever watched the show “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” If you like game shows and trivia, or you just want to brush up on knowledge, they are fun to watch.

I love testing my knowledge; however, I do not consider myself a “genius.” I also like playing “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” on Facebook. Believe it or not, it is really a challenge. Most days I find that I am not smarter than a fifth grader.

I don’t know if I have forgotten all the knowledge I garnered in the fifth grade, or if fifth graders are just smarter today.

By Jim Langham

Recently at an auction, an old dinner bell was one of the first items to sell and it sold at a hefty price. At first the property owner was amazed at the going price for the old relic, but then we started to reflect on the topic of,“suppertime,” and the realization of its value became more obvious.

At our little country home, suppertime around the old wooden table was absolutely the highlight of our family dynamics for the day. My grandmother would sit on one end and my father on the other. Then my mother and I would fit in between.

While it doesn’t take long to recall the aroma of fresh hamburger gravy over mashed potatoes and home made bread, the alluring smell of hot apple pie and sundry other goodies of our kitchen, the real value of supper at our place was the opportunity to gather as a family to visit.