Amaryllis

I received an amaryllis as a Christmas gift. I've always wanted one, simply never got around to buying it. I have a plant-free house (all the plants are on the hundred acres around me), except sometimes with bouquets arranged from wildflowers or especially lilacs in spring, but not by design. So I intend to plant this amaryllis bulb and watch it magically grow and bloom. What color will it be? Don't know. Or rather, it'll be the perfect color. Plants are simply magical.

That's Not Spit On That Plant

Looks like somebody spit on it, but at the center of the white foam seen in crevices of roadside plants like these is the "spittlebug," well-hidden although you can find him if you want to look through the spittle. But he's counting on you to pass by. What happens is that a spittlebug egg has overwintered in the host plant, has hatched and become a nymph which drains the plant of its sap. The nymphs create the camouflaging "spittle" foam and hide in it for up to seven weeks as they develop into spittlebug adults. Adults lay a new set of eggs so a new set of nymphs can come along next year, and that's God's truth and the way He made 'em.

Underground Cable

This week's work, hating and subverting Japanese-honeysuckle vines, invasives with woody runners as thick as your wrist, that snake out of the earth and twine their way up trees, strangling them. To complete the kill, they load the treetop with so much vine that the trees topple. This vine is dead, but it only shows you how the thing wants to squeeze the jesus out of everything in its path.

Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) is most evident in winter, and I sever as many "cables" as I can, finding them so grossly offensive I feel driven to cut them even knowing the cut end will sprout five more tentacles. Easy to I.D. the living vines because their leaves, dammit, are evergreen. In some areas the vines droop from branches practically forming curtains. There are only two ways to kill it dead: a springtime controlled burn, or cutting and painting the root end with Roundup herbicide. Obviously those are jobs for pros and I can't do it throughout my hundred Divine acres. If I had a magic lamp one of my three wishes would be: No invasive species!! This plant is of the Devil.

Alas, it is said that the entity that introduced it to the state was the MDC as ground cover for home gardens. It escaped and is ripping down rows of trees everywhere I look. Positively grievous. Picture taken on the Timberstone trail.

Free Chives

Longing for the sight and taste of greenery this time of year, I am always delighted by the chive patches appearing in the lower, wetter parts of the woods during January thaw. Go find some. Use scissors to clip 'em and scissor them over your squash soup, potato soup, or carrots; sprinkle 'em over your omelets; chew on 'em and blow onion breath to gross-out your best friend, dig up a clump to plant in the herb garden. Keep clipping and using your chives or the plant overgrows and gets grassy.