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By Donna LaPr£
Special to the Rappahannock News ; When the Great Homed owls are nesting and calling, I know it is my signal to look sharp and plan my timing of seed sowing and other garden tasks for the season ahead. No wrist-watch or clock will be of use in this aspect of gardening — I must rely on other means to know when the best window of opportunity will open to transplant, prune, sow and harvest.
Owls, the symbol of wisdom, are not the sole proprietors of wisdom in nature. Every plant or animal life has the innate intelligence and ability to signal a watchful observer of good timing for garden activities.
Insects hatching, birds migrating, flowers opening, seedlings sprouting and foliage color changing are synchronized events, interdependent with each other, the climate and the weather. The study of this choreography is called “phenology”, derived from the Greek “phaino”, meaning to show or appear.
There are many folk-wisdom sayings such as: plant com when new oak leaves are as large as a squirrel’s ear, beets and carrots when dandelions bloom; peas when the daffodils bloom. It is said that when foxgloves flower, Mexican bean beetles hatch, and when aspens and chokecherries leaf out, one should expect no more hard ousts, only light ones. . These sayings derive from Observation and while not infallible, especially with the increase of strange weather events, they have held up quite well and reliably through the test of time. Knowing when to do what is one of the gardener’s greatest challenges. Interfacing well with this self-propelled dance demands not only a green thumb, but green eyes and ears, too.
. Keeping a good garden log has been a very helpful practice for me. Have you ever seen the form and garden records Jefferson kept at Monticello? Though their most riveted audience might be historians, phenologists and obsessive gardeners, these volumes give a good example of shat kinds of notations may be of interest for future planning. * The garden notebook can be any format that captures pertibent garden information. I like to note the weather, maximum and minimum temperatures, appearances of bud, blossom,
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