BEST HELPER
Handy guide to birds
It can be hard to identify a bird in a book in the short time it flits around your feeder, especially if you’re new to the bird-watching game. Here’s a handy helper: a quick-reference guide to common birds in a maplike fold-out format that makes it easy to take in at a glance.
“Birds at Your Feeder: A Guide to Winter Birds of the Great Plains” by Dana Gardner and Nancy Overcott (University of Iowa Press, $9.95) may sound geographically incorrect, but the 50 illustrated birds — from the tufted titmouse to the red-winged blackbird — also are found in Illinois.
Males and females are shown in large, detailed illustrations. The plastic-laminated foldout, handy to keep on the windowsill, also includes tips on what to feed to attract each species. It can be ordered from bookstores or by calling 800-621-2736.
DO IT
Care for gift plants
The right care can prolong the bloom period of cyclamens and azaleas, says Greg Arendt, manager of City Scents in Chicago.
With cyclamens, the danger is overwatering. “Cyclamens like to be watered, but they don’t want to be soaking,” Arendt says. Your best bet is to take the pot out of its decorative container and water the plant over the sink, letting it drain well before you put it back. Place the plant in a spot out of drafts where it will get bright filtered light.
Azaleas should be kept very well watered, he says, but again, drainage is essential. Neither plant should be allowed to stand in water in the cachepot or saucer. Azaleas can handle a range of light conditions, Arendt says, but will do best in bright light.
Pots of both plants are intended to be enjoyed while they bloom and discarded when the blooms fade, Arendt says.
Neither is hardy enough to be planted outdoors here, and for all but the most avid greenhouse-equipped gardeners, Arendt doesn’t think it’s worth the trouble of keeping them as houseplants and trying to get them to rebloom.
“They’re pretty much a one-shot deal,” he says.
SCRIBBLINGS
Defying nature
“Wherever humans garden magnificently, there are magnificent heartbreaks . …
“Everywhere there are violent winds, starting once-per-five-centuries floods, unprecedented droughts, record-setting freezes, abusive and blasting heats never known before. There is no place, no garden, where these terrible things do not drive gardeners mad. …
“There are no green thumbs or black thumbs. There are only gardeners and non-gardeners. Gardeners are the ones who ruin after ruin get on with the high defiance of nature herself, creating, in the very face of her chaos and tornado, the bower of roses and the pride of irises. It sounds very well to garden a `natural way.’ You may see the natural way in any desert, any swamp, any leech-filled laurel hell. Defiance, on the other hand, is what makes gardeners.”
— From “The Essential Earthman” by Henry Mitchell (Indiana University Press, 244 pages, $16.95), quoted in “American Garden Writing: An Anthology,” edited by Bonnie Marranca(Taylor Trade Publishing, 392 pages, $18.95)
