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A good grub is hard to find, butt not impossible

I nearly ran my car off the road when I saw it. A monstrous grub looming toward me from a billboard, with the message that I should hire a landscape company to kill it before it killed my lawn. The heck with my lawn! That grub looked like it wanted to plop right off that billboard and eat a few Riverfront Trail bikers for a snack. Grubs are the immature form of the insect class that most people know as beetles. There are so many insects in this class, officially called Coleoptera, that ...

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Gall midges hoping to help clean 
up noxious weeds in Clifton area 


Some new residents moved into a little weed-infested plot in Clifton this week. Their names are Jaapiella ivannikovi and they’re gonna clean up the neighborhood because they have a job to do in the war on weeds. More commonly known as the gall midge, this miniscule fly is the latest tool in the battle against Russian knapweed, a dangerous noxious weed that is poisonous to livestock and difficult to vanquish. Officials with the Palisade Insectary and Mesa County helped establish the ...

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Pantry Challenge going ‘til the last rice grain

I’m pretty sure the Armageddon Pantry Challenge could last a few more months. On Day 65, I’m as surprised as anyone about this. Seriously. I had no idea that the combination of our food-hoarding abilities, penchant for sale-priced dry goods, and knack for making a mishmash of ingredients edible would turn out this well (or awful, depending on who you ask around here). Why has our food storage lasted so long? I’d like to take the opportunity to answer a few questions ...

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Remembering Grandma’s rhubarb

Prepare yourself for a story of loss, longing and serendipity. A tale of happy accidents and proof that life just works out sometimes. This is a story ... of rhubarb. When my sister, brother and I were growing up, one of our favorite things to do at Grandma’s house was graze in the backyard. We ate handfuls of sour cherries and black currants. We gobbled apricots until there were no more, and then used rocks to crack open the pits to eat the nuts. And it seemed like we always had a ...

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Pantry Challenge still going after Day 51

Today marks Day 51 of the Armageddon Pantry Challenge. I must admit, this experiment has gone on much longer than I expected. In fact, it’s dragging on so long that some participants are begging for it to end by May 1 (not me). Meanwhile, I’m struggling to put together passable meals with the bizarre menagerie of ingredients remaining in the cupboard. I’m still dreading the assortment of canned clams, beans, olives and frozen okra. The truth is, we’ve proven that ...

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A plan for attack on alien plants

Coming to a yard near you ... plants that can blister your skin with their milky sap, grab onto your car’s undercarriage, and even use human clothing for transportation. Don’t bother trying to run. Some of these plants can produce more than a million seeds in one summer and they’ll just keep spreading. Although this might sound like a science-fiction movie plot, this is the all-too-true world of noxious weeds. These alien plants take over, crowding out native vegetation ...

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Surviving the holiday on our diminished food pantry

I survived our first potluck of the season, using only the resources we have and strictly adhering to the Armageddon Pantry Challenge rules. I resisted the urge to go buy some deli salad, plop a spoon in it and add it to the picnic table on Easter Sunday. The good news is, the baked beans and the peanut-satay noodle salad went over well. The bad news is, I probably don’t have the stores to make those things again. Good thing this time of year doesn’t include many holidays, or ...

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Armageddon Pantry Challenge: We haven’t expired, even though some of our food has

We’re 30 days into the Armageddon Pantry Challenge, and I have a few confessions to make. Eating only the stores from our pantry and freezer has been both easier, and harder, than I thought it would be. I’ve learned a lot of lessons already, and surprisingly, my husband and I are still plowing through this food together, despite the dust pudding incident (see below). The hardest part of the challenge so far has been planning meals and trying to even out the different types of ...

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Growing fruit trees can be a real gamble

Sometimes, you’ve got to know when to fold ‘em. I know, that Kenny Rogers song is called “The Gambler,” but he might as well have been singing about gardening and life in general. I would argue there’s no bigger gamble in growing something in these here parts than fruit trees. People seem to have this romantic idea about having backyard orchards, but growing fruit is hard work if you do it correctly. Literally, the fruits of your labors are unreliable and can ...

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Armageddon Pantry Challenge still a go

Yes, we’re still alive. For those of you wondering how the Armageddon Pantry Challenge is going, it’s great. Week one was pretty easy, considering we had quite a bit of perishable stuff to eat through in the fridge. I would like to pay homage to our one and only bag of marshmallows, which was sacrificed for some delicious salted caramel Rice Krispy treats for my husband’s birthday treat last weekend. For those of you who missed out on the rules for the challenge last ...

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Bee-lieve it! It’s finally springtime!

I was so delighted to see a bee that I didn’t even mind that it buzzed its way into the house. Bees mean springtime! And so do determined bulb shoots pushing their way up from under dry leaves, and warbling birds singing so cheerfully that I half-expect to see a Disney princess charming them under the locust tree in the backyard. Spring is the light at the end of a long winter’s tunnel for me. It’s also the beginning of work season. It’s time to cut back on the ...

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How long can your food pantry last?

Welcome to the Armageddon Pantry Challenge. It’s going to be more fun than it sounds, I promise. Starting March 1, our house will only be eating from our existing pantry and freezer, and the purpose is threefold: To see how long we can last on our existing food storage, to determine how creative I can be with that hodgepodge of wares, and to see if my husband will leave me for a pizzeria. The idea for the challenge came to me after Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast last year. My ...

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Don’t allow tax time to be a headache

Every tax season I vow to get everything organized earlier, to keep all those little pieces of paper filed away in the right places. The intention is there, but the execution is severely lacking, because it would actually involve keeping all those papers. The stress triggered by crumpled bits of paper, lost or tossed stuff, and making sure everything is filled out exactly right so we don’t get audited starts to take its toll at our house. Some of the receipts are so faded or ...

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Pinterest good for organization, but can be addicting

Like “Googled” and “Facebooked,” the latest technology-related verb, “pinned,” may change the way you use technology for everyday life. The social image-sharing website Pinterest allows users to create a kind of web-based scrapbook of ideas, a method of organizing images and linking back to their original websites. Basically, you can pin anything you find “pinteresting” or want to save for “pinspiration.” The rise in popularity ...

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It’s important to water trees in the winter

I’m pretty sure the lady who drove past my house as I was dragging the hose across the lawn thought I was crazy. But after the last bit of snow melted in the front yard, and I could go outside without a parka, it was time to water my poor trees. Although we’ve had a bitterly cold winter here in the Grand Valley, and a crust of snow that hung around for quite a while, we haven’t had the benefit of much precipitation. Cold winters with little precipitation can damage or ...

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Cold weather’s effect on bug populations

It’s too early to tell if anything good could come of the Grand Valley’s bitterly cold winter. You might think that more than 20 days of below-zero temperatures might guarantee fewer problems with pests in the spring, but you shouldn’t count your squash bugs before they hatch. “I wouldn’t hold my breath,” said Colorado State University Extension entomologist Bob Hammon, when asked if the brutally cold temperatures might kill off future insect ...

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Indoor gardening can be a tough task

You might think that I would take especially good care of my indoor houseplants in the winter, since I have nothing to baby outside. I wish I could tell you that I’m a good indoor gardener, but it’s simply not my forte. My mother grew gorgeous African violets, which I’m pretty sure I nearly killed when I decided to pet them vigorously as a child, and when I watered them from above and dribbled water all over the leaves. She kept them in such beautiful condition that ...

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In dead of winter, the need for seed!

The doldrums of an actual winter have left me pining for green. Anything green. I’m so desperate to grow something and have it flourish that I’m about to buy some grocery store scallions, cut off the tops, and let the bottoms keep growing in a glass of water on the counter just to feel like I’m gardening. Yep, it’s pathetic. Thank goodness for seed catalogs. If you remember right, I confessed to being a seed-catalog addict last year around this time. Apparently, ...

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Revamping fireplace can be inexpensive

Unless you have the ability to build or buy the house of your dreams, chances are that you live in a home with definite pluses and minuses. When we were house hunting, there was a list of “musts” and a list of “deal-breakers.” As in, I “must” be able to have a garden, and that weird mummy smell in that old house’s basement is a “deal-breaker.” We compromised for a sizeable yard, a beautiful view, mature landscaping and a quiet ...

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Post-Christmas rule: One-in, one-out policy

After you’ve cleared the flurry of wrapping paper, Christmas is over and all the new toys and stuff need a place to be. Usually at our house, this meant that the new things either stayed in their former home under the Christmas tree until we put it away, or they found a spot in the corner as a small pyramid caught in a sort of present purgatory — they were in the house, but they had nowhere to be yet. If you have a small home or one that was built before 1990, chances are you ...

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The gift for someone who has everything

Whenever I think of someone who is hard to buy presents for, I think of the birthday present my grandpa received when I was young. A friend of his gave him a turd in a box. I was horrified. Why would anyone want poop for their birthday? It was a fake, plastic turd, but still, it was a turd. My grandpa loved jokes, and he probably enjoyed opening that present, but at the time, I had no concept of how that gift could ever be a good idea. Now that I’m the principal gift-buyer in our ...

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Tips to keep wildlife from taking up residence

After more than 30 years in the nuisance animal control business, Dick Hane knows the way to a skunk’s heart. It’s 9Lives Sliced Beef in Gravy cat food, “the best skunk bait in the world.” The owner of A-1 Animal Control in Fruita is the guy people call when something smells “dead” in their houses or when they have a den of skunks in the crawlspace. During his tenure in resolving conflicts between humans and wildlife, he’s developed a sense for ...

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Spending the holidays with Martha can be chock-full of impractical ideas

Once again, my tendency to buy “good deals” has bested me. I fell for a special discount on Martha Stewart Living magazine a few months ago, and since I had forgotten that I have NOTHING in common with Martha Stewart, I made the mistake of ordering the magazine. Reading the holiday editions of Martha Stewart Living (or most other DIY home magazines, for that matter) only produces a feeling of inadequacy, frustration and frankly, disbelief, for me. I mean, who has time for this ...

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Hey! Quit wasting all those fallen leaves

Fall leaf pick-up time in Grand Junction is a dangerous time for me to be driving around. I cruise by all those piles of leaves and feel like someone piled gold in the gutters. Even worse is when I see black plastic bags holding the potential compost hostage, where it won’t even make it to the landfill composting facility. All that organic material, treated to the right conditions, makes the most beautiful, rich compost for your garden. I already have a small mountain of leaves in ...

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Do you have what it takes to be a Master Gardener?

Earlier this year, I joined the ranks of volunteers called Colorado Master Gardeners. These are the folks you call at the Colorado State University extension office and ask what’s eating your roses, how to diagnose plant diseases, and when to spray your peach trees. They help troubleshoot problems and provide a lot of education to home gardeners. Now is the time to apply for the 2013 Master Gardener course. Class size is limited, so if you’re interested, you should apply ...

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Homemade gifts someone will actually use

When it comes to homemade gifts, they can be meaningful, cost-effective and easy to make. However, I draw the line at anything involving glitter, store-bought pine cones, or ridiculous crafts that no one wants to receive. Sure, making a macramé owl-shaped plant hanger using seashells and yarn shows off your skills, but geez, you probably could have picked that thing up at the thrift store for $2 and just wrapped it up. Same goes for anything involving doll heads and crochet ...

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Boo! Plenty of cool Halloween decorations

One of my most vivid memories of trick-or-treating as a child is a dinner for the dead at Dr. Orr’s old house on Aspen Avenue in Fruita. Mrs. Orr decorated her front room with the scene, “dead” people sitting around a table in their finery. She invited us inside and we gawked at the dead folks while she doled out Tootsie Rolls. I kept expecting one of the dinner guests to come alive and snatch my candy or something. It is one of those deliciously fake-scary moments I ...

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Follow these tips for trimming, replanting iris

When I first started gardening, I quickly realized that some plants are a better investment than others. I know this is risky territory for me to wander into, the whole foray of how much money I spend on our garden (if you don’t believe me, put William Alexander’s “The $64 Tomato” on your reading list for winter). But the reality is, when you plant something, you have a choice between seeds, annuals, perennials and bulbs. Seeds are cheap but require patience. ...

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Tearing down garden tough, therapeutic

I might have jumped the gun a little on cleaning up my garden. I just couldn’t stand to look at the droopy, lifeless former jungle, emaciated after the hard frost. In a way, tearing down those tall okra trees was depressing, but it was also therapeutic. It felt good to know the season is coming to an end, and it’s a relief to be finished with what many gardeners have remarked is one of the most challenging summers they’ve experienced. Before you rip everything out, ...

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Sometimes organizing requires a little trickery

One of my best friends from college called last week and told me of the nightmare she’s living in California. Her husband, who is in the Marine Corps, remains stationed on the East Coast, while she moved ahead to their next destination. She spent roughly a month without any of their belongings, sleeping on an air mattress in an empty place. One day, a moving crew showed up, unannounced, and spent the day unloading all their belongings and dumped them in piles around their new ...

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Tips for adding to your landscape this fall

Fall is my favorite time to plant gorgeous additions to my landscape. I know, most people love spring. But I love autumn, with its crisp air, leaves and everything slowing down in the yard. Luckily, the Colorado State University Cooperative Extension Service’s Tree Auction and Plant Sale is Saturday, Oct. 6, and it’s a great place to buy reasonably-priced plants and rub elbows with gardeners. The tree auction, run by Buster Cattles, usually features more than 100 trees. ...

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Parade of Homes a chance to play MASH

Now I know why I never participated in the Parade of Homes. I’m suffering from a severe case of house envy, and I have only myself to blame. Apparently, I have champagne taste and a beer budget, as they say. The self-guided tour, designed to showcase trends and technology in home building, features eight local homes. You can peruse everything from starter homes to dream houses and remodel projects. As I wandered through the shiny newness of one of the dream houses (yeah, in MY ...

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Canning preserves my memories of mom

I come from hardy stock, pioneers who didn’t have much and wasted little. Survivors. My mother’s mother saved aluminum foil and plastic bags, washing them after each use until they were so ragged they couldn’t be used again. She saved everything, and not in a “hoarders” kind of way, but in a “waste not, want not” way. Canning and pickling were a way of life, an assurance they would have something to eat in the wintertime, a way to survive before ...

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Yes, you can!

There’s something about a row of homemade jars of jelly, gleaming like a stained glass window, that make me smile. A feeling of peace washes over me when I open the pantry and see stacks of jars filled with roasted corn salsa, gently bobbing fruits, jewel-like beets and pickled dilly beans, waiting for the winter. Canning has become a true passion of mine, born out of a nearly-manic desire to control my food quality and waste nothing. When I started, I was the youngun. People would ...

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Tips for newbies, canning faithful

There are so many resources out there for home canners, it can be pretty overwhelming. It’s important to follow reliable information, and you can count on your local extension service for that. Beginning canners and experienced canners look for different information, and I’ve found both of them can benefit from a Facebook group I joined about six months ago. The group is open, but you have to ask to join. Search for “canning” on Facebook and you’ll find ...

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Go halve a cow

It was the pink slime that pushed me over the edge. I’m sure you all remember the news reports about “pink slime,” a term coined by former USDA microbiologist Gerald Zirnstein to describe lean, finely-textured beef. Basically, this product is made of waste trimmings that are processed and treated with ammonia gas to kill bacteria and mixed with ground beef as filler. According to news reports, Zirnstein estimated that 70 percent of grocery store ground meat contains pink ...

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Patches of dead grass require watering change

The best gardeners I know are observant. They notice new insects, spots on leaves, an unidentified weed and the weather. After examining patches of dead grass and rotten-bottomed tomatoes at the Colorado State University Cooperative Extension office, I realized that many people didn’t notice they needed to change their watering habits when the weather changed, or they simply forgot. Yes, we have had a few 100-degree days lately, scattered in with the humid, monsoonal weather ...

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Watch sunflowers thrive in our well-suited climate

When I think of sunflowers, I think of ants. Baseball (the seeds). Van Gogh. Meadowlarks. And Tuscany. The first time I saw a field of bobbing-headed sunflowers and realized they weren’t weeds was on a trip to Italy. The blooms ranged in color from egg-yolk yellow to burnt orange, ablaze in the setting sun. Where I came from, sunflowers were a weed. A volunteer flower in a field, a convenient perch for a meadowlark. Something we picked for my mom when we were little kids, and she ...

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Trellises help vegetables grow up

If there’s no room to grow out, you must grow up. That’s been the primary rule for constructing trellises in my garden in the past. But I’ve recently discovered that trellising has advantages beyond conserving space in a garden. Many vegetables, particularly those with a vining habit, are well-suited for vertical gardening. Certain types of tomatoes are better than others at this, but you can train them to climb a trellis instead of propping them up with cages or letting ...

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Row cover keeps heat, insects off plants

It’s amazing that something as simple as shelter and shade can make such a difference in my garden. I broke down and bought floating row cover last week after several futile attempts at protecting my plants from the harsh environment I’ve begun referring to as “Satan’s fiery breath” at my house. Called “insect barrier” by some companies, row cover offers a few advantages. My initial purpose in using it was to protect my plants from the ...

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It’s squash or be squashed with these bugs

“Isn’t it too early for squash bugs?” my husband asked the other day, mentioning that he smashed one he found in the garden. I shouldn’t have been surprised. It seems like everything is earlier than normal this year. My squash plants are just getting ready to bloom and the enemy has arrived in full force. Squash bugs suck the life out of your zucchini, summer squash and winter squash plants (such as pumpkins), causing the leaves to droop and die off. They also ...

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