Holiday Wreaths '11

Last year, I posted a how-to on wreathmaking. I know for a fact that at least two people read that post, because this year my mom and my sister asked me for help making their own wreaths.  So the Tuesday before Thanksgiving we got together for a little craft party.

I bought all the goods from Michael's crafts, with these requests: My sister wanted to do something unconventional, with non traditional holiday colors. My mom wanted a boxwood wreath (using boxwood cuttings from her garden).  I wasn't sure what I was going to make.

I saw the above for sale at Michael's and liked the idea of it; I decided to use that as a guide, only I'd scale back the....bling.  I bought fake lemons for my mom and pink and blue Christmas balls for my sister. And I bought wine.  Beaujolais Nouveau in fact. (For the record, the food was tasty too - whole wheat pasta in a butternut squash sauce with toasted walnuts and a salad of shaved Brussel sprouts with pecorino and toasted walnuts).

Above, mom gets started with wire, boxwood and wreath frame.

While Tina starts plotting out placement of ornaments on her foam wreath, using toothpicks to do preliminary placement.

Meanwhile, I took a grapevine wreath and painted it with silver shimmer spraypaint.

Tina's progressed beautifully, though I underestimated how many ornaments we'd need.

Mom's placing an "H" ornament of silver bells on the wreath.

Tina's finished wreath is above - it's Katy Perry's dream wreath, candy colored and fun.

Mom's is above -- very traditional, though I like the off center placement of the bow wrapped around cinnamon sticks.

And mine, above.  It really doesn't photograph well, but not counting drying time for paint, it took about ten minutes to make.

It's simply a grapevine wreath, with silver and red "berries" wired into it.  I would have added more gilt perhaps, but in person it's quite nice.

Drunken Birds

A few weeks ago in class I related a story to my students regarding the berries of Cornus florida.  After the first frost (or soon after) the juices in the berries of the tree ferment.  The birds then flock to the tree and eat them, consequently getting a bit drunk and falling out of the tree.  I've seen this happen at my folks' place on the occasional lazy Sunday when I was growing up and it's pretty remarkable. 

After class, one of my students asked me where I had heard documentation of this phenomena (a fair question!) I remember hearing something, perhaps on All Things Considered about the dogwood specifically, but I went looking on line. And while I didn't find much specific to Cornus, there is no shortage of reports of birds getting drunk on fermented Hawthorne, Photinia and other plants.

It seems the cedar waxwing has the most tendencies to enjoy a tipple. In 2005, USA Today reported that in Columbia, SC, dozens of the birds died by accidentally flying into glass buildings after eating fermented holly berries.  The same species was reported drunk and disorderly in Memphis in 2009, as indicated in an AP report.  And, just this past winter, in Romania, dozens of dead starlings were found in town.  They were autopsied and it was determined they got drunk on grape 'marc' which is a leftover pulp in the winemaking process.

Of course all this talk about bird death brings to mind the blackbirds that had been found dead in shocking numbers in Arkansas.  According to Science News, they died of blunt force.  Some speculation exists that a noise disrupted and scared them after dark.  They are not good nighttime navigators and thus may have crashed into buildings, trees or each other and then died.

As for the partying I saw on my parents' dogwood, fortunately the tree was quite small so the birds weren't injured when they fell off the branches. 

Pineapples

Since I already am on a bromeliad kick today, I thought I may as well share some a shot of a variegated pineapple (Ananas comosus) growing in Longwood Gardens' conservatory.

There it is, that wonderful tropical fruit.  Every time I went to Hawaii this year for site work, I couldn't wait to run across to the ABC store and pick up my day's supply of pineapple.  It's a simple but undeniable thrill to be able to eat an exotic fruit like this and know that it was harvested a mere 60 miles away. 

 

(ABC Stores, by the way, are a chain of Hawaiian bodegas where you can buy food, magazines, sunscreen as well as alcohol.  It's not just a liquor store, like our east coast ABC stores.  I had to explain this recently to an accountant, who saw frequent trips to the ABC store claimed as travel expenses, and began to wonder if I didn't have a drinking problem!)

Agave

So today, we are going to go back to Arizona for a bit.  I still haven't blogged about one of my favorite desert plants, the Agave.  This one below is most likely Agave deserti.  A common name for all Agave is century plant.  It's called this because the plant lives a very long time before it blooms.  It doesn't take 100 years, however, it's more like 30. 

The flower stalk grows from the center of this basal rosette of thick, fleshy, spiny leaves.  The stalk reaches anywhere from five to fifteen feet in height, growing as rapidly as 2.5 inches a day.   The flowers are yellow and can set as many as 65,000 seeds.  This is important since creating such a fast-growing blossom depletes all the plant's resources and after seeds are set, the entire thing dies. 

Agave is an important resource in the desert habitat.  Carpenter ants can live in the leaves and in times of drought (which is often) bighorn sheep chew on the leaves for their only available source of water.  Skipper butterfly larvae also rely solely on these plants for sustenance.

Below, in Central Park Zoo, there's a relative to A. deserti, A. americana. Native to Mexico, this Agave  is most often hybridized and grown as an ornamental. 

Chances are, if you like a good margarita now and then, you know that Agave is what is used to make tequila.  However, don't go harvesting either of the plants showcased in this post.  The plant you're looking for is Agave tequilana.

Aronia arbutifolia

It seems a disservice to laud the best native trees for fall color, without highlighting a few shrubs, too. And so today I am sharing a few shots of Aronia arbutifolia (red chokeberry) that I took in Central Park last October. 

 

Aronia is a native shrub in the Rosaceae family and is similar to its relatives in its ovate, serrated leaves and the presence of small berries which somewhat resemble rosehips.  It readily suckers and spreads, and can survive in somewhat marshy areas.  The flowers look like many others in the rose family - they are small, with five white petals and showy stamens.  I've blogged about many rose family plants before, including crabapples, quince, cherrylaurels, cherries, hawthornes, and most notably the dreaded Bradford pear and the wonderful serviceberry.  

Like its relatives, chokeberry has exceptional fall color and its status as a native makes it an excellent alternative to invasive plants like burning bush (Euonymus alatus) or Nandina domestica. The fruit provide food for birds as well, though it isn't edible for them until a few frosts have fermented the fruit's flesh. (A lot of alliteration for a little laugh.)

Aronia derives from 'Aria' - the Greek name for Sorbus which has similar berries. Arbutifolia literally means that the foliage looks like Arbutus. Chokeberry is the common name because the fruit is quite astringent, though it can be rendered into jams, jellies, wines and teas.  It should not be confused with the similarly named chokecherry, which is Prunus virginiana.

Mesquite

Below is a fairly elegant specimen of mesquite (Prosopis velutina) growing near town in Sedona.  More often than not, this shrubby tree has a much scrubbier appearance, but in either case it is prevalent in Sedona and the Sonoran Desert.  Prosopis is a member of the pea family and looks much like its relatives - it has pinnately compound foliage and, more to the point, it has bean-like fruit.

  

One of the common names is honey mesquite, because the beans themselves are incredibly sweet.  The tour I mentioned in yesterday's post also included a sampling of the mesquite beans and they tasted like sugary candy.  Indeed, the plant is eaten by livestock and has been key to survival of Native Americans during historically tough winters.  

The beans can also be ground into a flour called pinole and can then be used to make tortillas and cornbread, to name a few. They can also be fermented into a fizzy, alcoholic drink, though I didn't see this on the bar menus of any restaurants.

 

The Prosopis velutina is native to the Sonoran Desert, but other species of Prosopis include Prosopis glandulosa, in the Texas and Southern California deserts and Prosopis pallida, a South American native that is prevalent in the drier parts of Hawaii.  Below, a specimen of P. pallida grows on the Big Island. 

 

 Prosopis is the ancient Greek name for burdock and it's speculated that the genus was applied to mesquite due to some similarity between the flowers.