Winter's coming

To date, we have had only two light frosts--the pictures are of the fence with the moonvine reduced to nothing and also of the last basil plant, which I rather admire. Because of its sheltered location it is still standing upright and a leaf or two of basil could even be extracted if one wanted.

We ordered rather a large amount of mulch which was eventually delivered, once the rain stopped, by the nice owner of the nursery (Bill Harris of Acer Gardens) who of course had to be taken around to visit the plants he had sold us. He seemed impressed that they were all still alive, especially since he thinks they were all planted too deeply. His advice to Roger was "don't give up your day job." But he also spotted signs of a particularly nasty beetle/grub which had to have been sold to us with the plant (a rhododendron from Walmart). You could tell by the scallops in the leaves. So we promptly dug it up and will have to use an insecticide on the area before replanting in the spring. That's a not very good picture of Bill and Roger doing plant inspections.

One of the odd pleasures of blogging, I find, is that it leads me to document my observations with pictures. I certainly wouldn't have taken any of these three pictures without the blog but it's nice to have them.

Last weekend we took a full day course at the Connecticut College Arboretum on gardening--presentations varied from a discussion of ethnic gardens around the US by a woman named Patricia Klindienst who has just won an award for her book, The Earth Knows my Name, to a very technical presentation on soil science by an expert from Rhode Island who debated the safety of composting kitty litter with me. We enjoyed ourselves immensely and are planning for another go at learning when the Bronx Botanical garden does its spring training in March.

The somewhat frustrating result has been an attempt to buy a pH meter of a specific highly recommended kind--I found a reputable looking company in California selling them, bought and paid but my PalPal payment got detached from the order and nothing has happened other than that the company now has my $70.00. I have tried phone and email on my own and have now escalated to a PayPal problem resolution--surprisingly, no response from that either. I suspect this is a VERY small company and that the owner is on vacation or surfing or doing whatever else they do out there in California. The company sells materials for hydroponic growing--I think that may mean, to some people, pot grown indoors under lights. Fortunately, I have found a used version of the meter on eBay and can get that--no one else has bid and we have only a day to go.

Nostalgia

The nice pictures of the market in Maputo are not new. Roger was there only a few days ago and various people he spoke with remembered and asked about me so I have put the pictures up to cheer myself. We hope to go back in late January. The short woman sold only green things--spinach, cilantro, parsley--always excellent. The hot pepper lady once had, unbelievably, chanterelles. We bought a great handful for very little money, poured over pictures produced by Google to be sure they weren't poison, and then greatly enjoyed eating them. Every time we went back we'd ask for them again but they never reappeared and eventually she would see us coming and shout down the aisle "no mushrooms"! We bought hot peppers from her anyway.