This is truly the stuff horror films and nightmares are made of:  Last week the RI Department of Environmental Management released a report that the presence of Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB) larva was suspected in a load of firewood delivered to a home in Cranston, RI.  The wood came from a property in Worcester, MA known to be infested.  Even though Cranston is all the way across the Bay from Blithewold, this hits just a little too close to home!  The beetles themselves don’t range far from their chosen host tree, but the scary thing is, we do and it has hitchhiked on green wood from China to New York to New Jersey to Illinois to Massachusetts (not necessarily in that order) and now maybe even to little Rhody.

Remember when the USDA hired US Forest Service smoke jumpers to spot beetles at the tippy tops of Central Park’s treasured American Elms?  That’s when I first became very aware of just how tragic and deadly an infestation would be.  ALB feed on hardwoods – maple, horse chestnut, willow, and elm to name just a few of their favorites – and will kill their host and move on to the next tastiest choice.  Infested trees have to be cut down, chipped immediately and even burned in order to stop the beetles from spreading.  Adjacent hardwoods are also often removed and/or treated with pesticides and the neighborhood put under vigilant surveillance for signs of further invasion.  The good news is, eradication is possible.  Illinois has declared victory over ALB after a ten year push to rid it from several Chicago neighborhoods.

What we need to do is be wary and proactive.  Buy firewood and nursery stock only from trusted sources and keep your eyes peeled for evidence of infestation.  The beetles themselves are large (1-2″ with antennae), fairly flashy Cruella de Vil look alikes (the Chinese call them Starry Skies – a much too beautiful name) and are visible during the summer and as long as the temperatures remain warm.  The females make tell-tale melon scoops in the bark of trees in which to lay their eggs and the other signs of infestation are centimeter/dime sized drill holes through the bark from which the adults emerge.  If you see anything suspicious in any trees or wood around your house, stop, drop and call the DEM (the RI number is 401-647-3367) or report it to the USDA immediately – do not pass go! It’s very important that you not try to handle an infestation on your own.  And it cannot be ignored without truly frightening consequences.

I absolutely can’t imagine life without the trees that I take for granted every day.  Actually,I shouldn’t say that I take them for granted – this time of year at least, I’m completely riveted by them!

For more information:  USDA – APHIS, RI Department of Environmental Management, Seattle Times article  from May 2005 about smoke jumpers in Central Park.

A few typical October flowers opened just in time for bloom day today so without further ado, here are the Chrysanthemums or are they Dendranthema?  Whatever their name is, the ‘Sheffield Pink’ (left) never fails to make me want to stop and memorize that color and I love these mystery deep pinks in the North Garden (right) so much that I’m thinking of dividing them and spreading the love through the beds.  None of us remembers planting them so we’ve blamed/thanked a wedding planner from a few years back who must have thought the North Garden needed a little hit of a late deep color.  I think he/she was quite right.

Here is a late bloomer that I think is less common perhaps because, alas, for us it is a tender perennial.  But I think Plectranthus fruticosa, if you can find it, is well worth making room for.  All season long it garnered compliments for its striking two-toned leaves and now that it’s blooming it looks positively lit from within and everyone wants one or twenty.

Salvia uliginosa has been blooming since, oh I don’t know – July, maybe?  But I think it is worthy of October Bloom Day because its color has recently changed dramatically from a cerulean sky to closer to cobalt.  And to overhear the discussions in the garden, it’s as if everyone is noticing it for the very first time.  We will try to keep the Display Garden bed with these late beauties going for as long as possibly possible…

And what would an October Bloom Day post be without some fall color shots?  No matter how gorgeous the bloomers might be, blazing trees and shrubs are the true attractions and distractions of October (I think my car keys should be taken from me – I am too apt to pay attention to any orange tree rather than the road).  Bristol color is still up and coming but it looks like the stars may have aligned for a spizztacular year.

What are your garden’s October attractions and distractions?

Many thanks, as always, to Carol from May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day every month.  Click on the link and on all of the links in her comments to see what’s in bloom right now all over the country and the world.

I don’t seem to have a lot to say at the end of this busy week (I think all of my word energy must have gone into writing lists – hey, maybe that’s why I got out of the habit!) but as usual I have plenty to show.  Here are a couple of week’s worth of fall(ing) seeds: some in the forms of berries, pods, samaras, something that looks sort of dangerous, something that looks sort of like Phyllis Diller, and maybe even a drupe or two.  (What is the difference between berries and drupes, please?  Is it that all drupes are berries but not all berries are drupes?  I’m so easily confused…)

Hover over for captions and click on for magic picture enlarger.

Have a wonderful Columbus Day weekend – and let me know if you do any seed “shopping”!

I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing lists.  Even though I carry a notepad with me at almost all times I apparently find every excuse not to write in it.  (Usually it’s for lack of a pencil.)  But this time of year, just like spring, I’m so easily overwhelmed with all the things that seem to need to be done this instant – or at least before frost that I really ought to write it all down.  There are so many to-dos floating around in my head it almost feels as if I’m walking around under a threatening thunder cloud – and I’m afraid my demeanor lately reflects that.

So just now I finally wrote a list.  And wouldn’t you know, it’s remarkably short and entirely do-able.

The mansion is open for only one more (long) weekend so we’ve had to begin to say goodbye to the gardens.

We’ve made some telltale holes  – a few stock plants and planted container beauties have come into the greenhouse to roost and the Rockettes began the great container bed move today.  The teasels finally came down yesterday but with any luck you’ll be able to see them again soon reincarnated as Christmas decorations in the mansion.  Next Tuesday will be a Display Garden doomsday as we take out the Cutting Garden to make way for tulips (which arrived yesterday – wahoo!) and we’ll begin in earnest to un-furnish the other beds as well.  My to-do list for the next week or so looks like this:

1. Take more cuttings

2. (which really ought to be #1) Pot up rooted cuttings to make room for new ones

3. Bring in and pot up a few more stock plants – in case my cuttings don’t take

4. Continue to move containers into greenhouse

5. Help Fred and Dan put up the bubble wrap again (maybe)

6. Make room to store dahlias (and decide on a storage medium – saw dust and shavings again?)

See?  Not so bad!

My weekend to-do list for home looks like this:

1. take out stinking cabbages and yesterday’s tomatoes before the neighbors call the pretty police

2. dig out and pot up tender keepers

3. think about cutting the grass

4. make a cup of tea

It’s so easy!

And If I were you and I lived nearby but hadn’t made a visit to Blithewold in a while, I’d add that to my list.  This weekend promises to be gorgeous and this will be the last chance to catch the hat exhibit in the house and an amazingly riotous abundance of color in the gardens.  But if you visit the greenhouse too, make sure you use the “other entrance”.

I always thought that bubble wrap was for protecting precious cargo or more importantly, for obsessive bubble popping sessions but it turns out that it is also an excellent insulator for glass houses – if you can get it to stick to the glass, that is.  In an effort to conserve heat this winter, we have decided expend some energy now in putting bubble wrap up in at least one of the greenhouses.

Fred and Dan began this project last week with a thorough greenhouse cleaning – they washed the glass (the “dirt” you see on the glass is left over shading painted on the outside.  It will be etched off by frost.) and they even scrubbed and polished all of the aluminum and fixtures.  This place hasn’t gleamed so prettily since restoration was completed in October of 2005.  On Tuesday they and I started to install the bubble wrap by spraying it with wishes along with a water and glycerin solution and patting it in smallish sheets directly onto the windows.  It is supposed to stick with watery surface tension alone and the glycerin (plus wishes) is a little extra stickum insurance.  The first few sheets went up pretty easily but as the day wore on there was nothing we could do to keep the sheets from falling back down onto our heads.  Curses!  By Wednesday, most of what we installed had fallen down.  Foiled again! 

This kind of thing brings out the obsessive in me and rather than taking out my frustration by having a good bubble popping session, I tried again.  Turns out that first thing on a dewy morning is the ideal window of opportunity (pun intended) because so far most of those sheets have stayed attached.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that tomorrow morning is dewy enough to finish the job and that all of those pieces stay put and my good humor remains intact.  If necessary, we are armed with an alternative adhesive arsenal – 3M 76 spray.  I’d rather not use that because I can’t hold my breath very long and it sticks so well we might need chisels to get the plastic back off again in the spring.  Do you or does anyone you know insulate a greenhouse with bubble wrap?  Do you have any advice?

So far, the bubble wrap, some advice and the 3M spray has all been generously donated by Stephen Wacha of Heritage Greenhouse Builders, Inc. – the contractor who, the summer of 2005 so beautifully restored/rebuilt Blithewold’s original Lord & Burnham greenhouses.  Stephen has been back all this week to install manually operated side vents in the house we’ve been wrapping.  No doubt, our efforts have been providing him with excellent entertainment…

Gail usually sets a date to start moving into the greenhouse right about now and thankfully there are still no frost warnings in the extended forecast.  It’s much easier for all of us to do what we need to do in there without having to stand on plants!

Meanwhile in the gardens, I think the praying mantises have been gearing up to feel bubbly too.  We’ve noticed several with enlarged abdomens – either they’re eating very well, or they’re getting ready to lay their egg cases.  – Perhaps both!  Anyone know for sure?