The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Sharing My Mountain With Lions

I live among mountain lions.

I share my neighborhood with them.

Did you know that mountain lions (also known as cougars) are the fouth largest cats in the world? Siberian Tigers are first, followed by African lions, then Jaguars, mountain lions are fourth, Leopards are fifth.

The fourth largest of all the cats lives just up our street. Eat your heart out, Isak Dinesen.

Even though their size makes them “big cats,” mountain lions are genetically related more closely to the house cat.

“Here kitty, kitty.”

The sad news is that the only time I’ve ever seen a mountain lion was on the side of the road.

Yes, that’s right. Someone hit and killed a mountain lion. I drove my kids to school the other day and there it was. Someone had obviously hit and killed it in the early hours of the morning.

Mountain lions are crepuscular. (I bet you think I’m smart because I know that word. I do know a few words and that is one of my favorites.) It means mountain lions are active at dawn and dusk—the times when they hunt.

They eat mostly deer, which, as a gardener, makes me very happy because even though deer are cute they are just giant hoofed rats. They harbor ticks with Lyme disease, and they eat my roses.

The only good thing about deer is they provide snacks for the beautiful mountain lions that live near me. Did you know that deer kill on average about 150 people a year?

I say snack away, Mr. Lion.

Now don’t get all worked up. Mountain lions don’t generally lie around my roses waiting for a pesky deer to graze by. They are solitary and shy and they don’t like gardens.

Or people.

Coyote Beautiful

young female coyote in my neighbor's yard

I’ve heard stories that coyotes can be aggressive and I know to be wary of them, but I’ve always been one of those people who give wild animals the benefit of the doubt. Of course I do own a maniacal dog that is part dingo, maybe this is why I feel such kinship with coyotes.

Proof that wild animals can live side by side with humans

My dog even looks like a coyote–see?

 
coyote

                maniacal dingo-dog

I live in the country just outside suburbia, which is an ideal place for the coyotes. But did you know that coyotes do very well in suburban areas. Did you know that coyotes eat mostly rodents and scavenge roadkill? Which means they keep the rodent population down and they act like hairy street sweepers.

Yes, they have been know to nosh on beloved family pets like cats but, excuse me cat lovers, cats aren’t indigenous. As a matter of fact they have been know to wreak havoc on the environment. Please don’t send me any hate mail, just keep your cats in at night if you love them.

Even though coyotes have been known to attack humans, attacks are rare. For one thing coyotes are about the same size as my dog. She weighs about 42 pounds soaking wet after eating a large bean burrito. Of course a coyote may weigh a little more because of the whole tail thing.

Did you know that coyotes sometimes mate with wolves and some of the coyotes that live in the Northeast and Canada are a hybrid of the two?

Did you know that coyotes have been known to mate with dogs and that the resulting offspring are known as coydogs? Personally, I prefer the term dogotes. I think this name is catchier and that if I market the dogote. I could ask $1,000 apiece. It would be right up there with Labradoodles. Hey, what about a poodle and a coyote? The Coyoodle. Just remember, you heard it here first.

Happy New Year 2010

Happy New Year from Gardeners Anonymous.

Go Ask Alice

Our friends the mycologists have given us some information about our feral mushrooms—the ones trying to bust out from under the porch.

It turns out that they are probably a cluster of armillariella mellea or honey mushrooms. Honey mushrooms are common in the fall and early winter. In California, armillariella mellea is also called “oak root fungus.”

This makes a lot of sense since the mushrooms are growing on top of an old oak stump under our porch.

The beautiful spirals on the caps are probably caused by heavy rain followed by unusually dry and warm weather conditions.

The oak root fungus is among the most variable and global of fleshy fungi. It is also very edible.

However.

My husband and I would never eat any mushrooms that weren’t purchased at a grocery store or without a mycologist’s positive ID from a spore print under a microscope.

Better safe (and alive) than sorry (having a liver transplant).

When the men on the chessboard
get up and tell you where to go,
And you've just had some kind of mushroom,
and your mind is moving slow,
Go ask Alice, I think she'll know.

– Grace Slick

Holy Mycology, Batman, They Pushed the Door Open

My dog has always been curious about the space under our back deck. I knew something probably lived under the back deck, but who knew it was a herd of wild mushrooms?

This herd has become so successful that is has outgrown it’s hideout, and burst forth to embrace the day.

Carpe diem!

Thanksgiving

I am thankful for my family and my friends and the place that I live. These fill me with joy every day.

Wake Up and Smell the Free Crepe Myrtle

Life can get us all down sometimes.

No matter how blessed and lucky we are, sometimes (especially with the current state of the economy) we get just plain sad.

Well I have been just plain sad. So sad that I haven’t even felt like gardening or blogging—or blogging about gardening.

But an act of generosity by a friend helped to snap me out of my funk and back into the garden,

My girlfriend Smitha is going through a home remodel and has had to tear up her entire garden. She had a beautiful crepe myrtle that was going to be destroyed so she asked me if I wanted it.

I said, “Yes!” My landscape guys removed it for me and planted it, and voila, a beautiful new tree.

During the tree wrangling process I started to pull weeds and cut back straggly plants and the next things I knew I was gardening again and all was right with the world.

Renew, reuse, recycle—rejoice.

Another Bloomin’ Orchid

I still say that orchids are easy-peazy but I’m also very proud of myself lately because I have several orchids blooming at once—ones that have never bloomed before.

Here is the latest. I wish I knew what it was but, alas, it is one of my garage sale purchases and it came without a label. It is also extremely fragrant in a deep, earthy, musky, feminine sort of way.

The most important factor in growing orchids in your house is a good window with appropriate light.

 

Bubblegum Alley

My idea was to take my son on a little vacation, and spend some quality mom/son time with him before jr. high school.

And of course, I wanted to do activities that he liked. So, there were times during our three-day adventure when I ended up in places that I wouldn’t have chosen for myself.

Like Bubble Gum Alley.

Bubble Gum Alley is located between 733 and 734 Higuera Street in downtown San Luis Obispo, California. It’s pretty self-explanatory. But I’ll go ahead and explain it, even though when I think about it, I throw up in my mouth a little. It’s an alley 15-feet high and 70 feet long that is completely covered in multiple layers of chewing gum.

Used chewing gum.

Now to me, this “tourist attraction” would be way better if it was completely erased from my memory bank. But my son loved it, of course. He read about it and came prepared with two pieces of bubble gum, one for him and, gulp, one for me.


I dutifully chewed my piece of gum, as did my son. I bravely approached the alley, holding my breath, because if I had caught a wiff of some unexpectedly bad odor I’d have hurled on the spot.

I pulled the gum out of my mouth and attempted to stick it to the alley wall. I couldn’t get it to stick, so I started squealing and dancing around, not in a good way but in a manner very entertaining to my son.
I finally got it to stick and ran in the opposite direction from the alley.

 It was my son’s turn, and he seemed almost as disgusted as I was when it came right down to applying his gum to the wall. After the sticking ceremony was complete, I couldn’t wait to get away from that particular tourist spot.

And wash my hands.

ROAD TRIP!

My youngest son is ten.

This is his last year in elementary school, and it’s parent/teacher conference week, with half days all week. What better week for a ROAD TRIP!

I won’t be able to do this next year. This is it, my friend. Next year is the dreaded, evil middle school—aka Jr. High.

Since someone has to stay home and take care of my older son and make the money, I need to go on the trip.

So, this car trip consists of my ten-year-old and me. I had originally planned to take him all the way to LegoLand, in San Diego, a place he’s always wanted to visit. But, because of a meeting that falls smack in the middle of the week (you know who you are) I had to shorten the trip.

And what was my son’s second choice—since he couldn’t go to Legoland? That’s right, you guessed it, The Madonna Inn.
 
What do you mean you didn’t guess The Madonna Inn?

Ten reasons why we like the Madonna Inn:

1. It’s located in one of the most beautiful parts of the country.
2. It’s located in one of the prettiest towns in California.
3. It has one of the best, brand-new heated pools anywhere.
4. In it’s restaurant, it has the greatest men’s room in the world.
5. Pink chenille bathrobes.
6. Every room has a different tacky theme that you will talk about for years to come.
7. None of those silly pillow top mattresses and fluffy pillows–It’s slabs of foam all the way baby.
8. It’s close to Pismo Beach.
9. It’s never crowded.
10. Really nice people work there.