You've Got A Garden
Hosted Tuesdays from 9 a.m. - 10 a.m.
by Carol Ann Baldwin
"You've Got A Garden Slide Show!
This flowering plant is in Larry's yard awaiting to be identified!
Photo by Robin MacBlane
Caryn's freaky squash.
This photo was sent in by Caryn. Caryn wrote, "Grape vine, infested with rubbery like nipple. Insects? Didn't appear to be when I broke it open." Hmmm...sounds like a job for Carol Ann!
Photo by Robin MacBlane
Garden and waterfall at The Cascades.
I thought you all could appreciate this article from the Tampa Tribune.
The Tampa Tribune - Published June 28, 2009
Dear Neighbors,
Please. Kill your lubbers.
I know they're yours because I already killed mine. Months ago. When they were teeny-tiny. I knew what they'd grow up to be so I got 'er done.
You didn't, and now your Eastern lubber grasshoppers are the size of small dogs. Small herbivorous dogs completely encased in body armor. And they've discovered my yard. Which has led me to do things I never thought I would.
It's hard to kill small dogs encased in body armor. It's harder still if you're the kind of person who rights upside-down beetles and rescues lizards from cats. I wouldn't even swat a fly (unlike a certain president).
But it's us against the lubbers. No animal in its right mind eats them.
The other day, while snipping scaly branches off a jatropha, I came face to face with yet another lubber. (Your lubber, dear neighbor.) I reached out and snipped him in two with my garden shears. Just like that. Heartless.
It was a first for me. It is not who I am.
But snipping is, at least, humane.
The next day, I came upon a lubber on a mammoth sunflower. Having no shears handy, I picked up two rocks and clapped them together. The cold spash of lubber guts on my neck was - ohmygosh. But even worse was looking down and seeing the poor crushed creature still trying to get up. The heavily armored do not go gentle...
This isn't the soothing tranquility I seek in my garden. And I don't like what I'm becoming.
So please, beloved neighbors, kill your lubbers.
I'm not asking you to put a Cuban tree frog in a baggie in the freezer, or even to stop feeding the Muscovy ducks so they'll move away. Just the lubbers.
'Cause they're eating your garden, too.
Penny Carnathan
Light In A Shadow
by Karin Imlay Woodbury
Once I came upon a tree
Whose limbs did droop so low
And asking why it felt so sad
It answered, "I don't know.
"My leaves are green and pretty
In spring I flower too
But there's a bigger tree near me
And it makes me feel so blue."
"Sometimes I gaze up to its limbs
So more abundant than I
It's been here long before me
I'll never catch up, why try."
"On bright sunny days I fear
That the sun won't shine on me
Because I sit so alone
In the shadow of this bigger tree."
"But," said I, "You're so green
And your flowers bright and fair
Be assured one passing by
Would stop awhile and stare."
"For you sit in your own light
And all the world can see
Special in your own right
A bright beautiful young tree."
Copyright by Karin Imlay Woodbury
Used with permission from the author
