Gardening

After my bird class yesterday, I hurried over to Bunker Hills where I had signed up for classes at the Home Landscaping and Garden Fair put on by the Master Gardeners.  I was late for the first speaker, Dr. Bud Markhart, who presented the topic of why we should grow, buy and support organic foods.  I was sorry to be late for this speaker because he was engaging, lively and a little like a 12 year old trapped in a grown up body.  He basically said the current agriculture system we have now is not sustainable.  The soil has depleted greatly in the last 100 years.  Even genetically modified foods, pesticides, and fertilizer is not going to be enough in the future because we're sterilizing acres upon acres of land.  Those acres and acres of corn and soybeans we admire when we drive into the country are barren of any insects or reptiles.  He showed charts connecting pesticides and cancers.  He had another chart showing the pesticide residue in the urine of children who ate regular food for a week, organic food for the second week, and regular food for the third week.  Wow, that chart was scary. He had me convinced.  I need to buck up; pay the extra dollar and buy organic.  My next class on was luscious ferns and sensuous shade plants. That class consisted mostly of a power point presentation of plants.  My third class was a hands on class.  I made a fairy garden.  My little garden in a 12 inch shallow dish has a fairy stone path, a fairy arbor, a fairy street light, a fairy birdbath, and fairy gazing ball, and a fairy. I have a fairy tree (sheffelara) and some fairy vine and a fairy bush.  For $20, this was a great deal.  Our third class was named "Mosquito Control" but it was a hands-on building of a bat house.  I got 8 pieces of wood and a supply of screws.  We  helped each other hold wood pieces while we screwed them together with hand held portable drills.  I am supposed to hang this on the east side of a tree right now.  The bats are looking for houses at this time.  My problem is that it needs to be 12 to 16 feet from the ground and I don't have a ladder that goes that high.  I could nail it to the east side of the house by putting a ladder on the deck but I'm not sure if I want to do that.  Bats eat 3,000 to 7,000 mosquitoes per day.  That is a lot of mosquitoes that I will not have to swat.  So I want bats around but not in the house and maybe not right next to the house either. If only I was a better tree climber.  Sigh.  Our last class was a presentation by Arla Carmichael on "Garden Through the Seasons."  She helped design the Noeremburg Gardens, a Three Rivers Park district formal garden on the shores of Lake Minnetonka.  She showed us slides and asked us to change our vision and focus on the beauty of a garden year round.  It's true that gardens are lovely in July when the annuals and perennials are blooming.  But there is beauty in the bloom of a snow drop in the spring, the frost tinted foliage of bushes in the fall, and the snow on interesting seed heads in the winter as well.  We had time in between classes to visit the exhibit fair.  My friend won a door prize from Waldoch Farms - a lovely 6 inch glass star.  I got a free sweet potato vine from Green Valley Nursery.  That same nursery had beautiful pink or white azalea pots, two for $5.  I should have bought a couple.  Some exhibitors sold jewelry, metal flower statues, bird feeding accessories, perennials, pansy pots, hand made soaps, gardening gloves, tools, and fertilizer.  A fellow from Miltona sold plant kandy - fertilizer made from fish.  After resisting all kinds of temptation, I splurged and bought myself a little garden figure on a stick - a fairy riding a bird.  She is my avatar.  I try to post a picture.  All in all, I had a great day at the garden fair and will definitely go again.