Peony Memories
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on May 18, 2012 in Blogging, Home/Garden | 0 comments
“Back Home Again in Indiana” always evokes childhood memories of my all-time favorite of flowers – the Peony (Paeonia suffruticosa), pronounced by my family members and myself when I was growing up as though it were spelled “piney.” Native to Asia, southern Europe and western North America, the beautiful and fragrant perennial actually has two correct spellings –...
Smokies Off Nana’s Bucket List
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on May 11, 2012 in Blogging, Entertainment, Environment | 0 comments
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is now off Nana’s bucket list, without the rubber stamp for my passport. I forgot and left it at home! Even so I will log our adventure in the same manner as I have for the other national parks Nana had the joy of visiting prior to purchase of the little memory book at the Grand Canyon a year ago. I created my own miniature photo stamps,...
It Felt Good
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on May 4, 2012 in Blogging, Charity/Volunteer, Environment, Government, Home/Garden | 0 comments
One small patch of the once beautiful wild coffee needed a good shot of iron to restore yellowing leaves to the same lush and shiny evergreen displayed by the remainder that provided stem cuttings for youngsters who participated in our popular “It Matters What You Grow” Dirt Day plant propagation workshop held last Saturday at Christina Park. Kids ages 6 to 12 and their adult...
Over-Ripe Bananas
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Apr 27, 2012 in Blogging, Home/Garden | 0 comments
I often wonder if Wonderful Wally purposely buys more bananas than the two of us can eat in a week in hopes that Nana will bake some Banana Nut Bread using the last of the bunch which have become too soft and unappealing to be used for anything else.
Nana’s favorite recipe is one from Recipes and Reminiscences of New Orleans, a cookbook purchased in 1972 when I visited the French...
Native Salvia is Prolific
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Apr 20, 2012 in Blogging, Home/Garden | 0 comments
It is pretty, very easy (almost too easy) to grow and butterflies love it. It is also known to attract hummingbirds, although Nana has yet to see one. That would be the ultimate!
Scarlet salvia (Salvia coccinea), also known as scarlet sage is native to Florida and other parts of the southeastern United States. The “Lady in Red” cultivar is the most common, although there are...
Backyard Discovery
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Apr 13, 2012 in Blogging, Environment, Home/Garden | 0 comments
On his website (http://www.polkcountybirds.com/) local birding expert Chuck Geanangel notes that “wrens will build nests almost anywhere.” Usually low to the ground and no more than eye level, the Carolina Wren builds multiple domed nests and sometimes will raise three broods in a season. Like the House Wren, they build dummy nests to perhaps give the female a choice of...
Diverted by Cuttings
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Apr 6, 2012 in Blogging, Home/Garden | 0 comments
Nana calls it multi-tasking. Wonderful Wally calls it an inability to stay focused. And it drives him crazy.
This past weekend was the perfect example of what might very well be the primary difference between Nana and Wonderful Wally, if not broader based to embrace all men and women. A corner chat with two of my women friends at a party last Saturday evening suggests a common...
Nana’s Red-Shouldered Hawk and Eas...
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Mar 30, 2012 in Blogging, Environment, Home/Garden | 0 comments
Nana shared one birding excursion out to Circle B with Wonderful Wally very early in March to check on the status of nesting Sandhill Cranes. I didn’t download the photos from my camera until two days ago.
Much to my surprise, I had a fairly decent shot of a Red-Shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus), a rather common medium-sized bird of prey that lives here in our neck of the woods...
It’s a Bird; It’s a Plane . . . Oh, It R...
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Mar 23, 2012 in Blogging, Environment, Home/Garden | 0 comments
In the early morning light, the beautiful colors of the Great Blue are blended into a warm glow of brown. Even so, I love this photo Wonderful Wally took this week at Circle B of this magnificent bird which happens to be the largest heron species in North America. Wading birds standing three and a half to four and a half feet tall, with a wingspan of five and a half to six and a...
An Exciting Week
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Mar 16, 2012 in Blogging, Environment, Home/Garden | 0 comments
Nana’s exciting week began on Sunday, most weeks do, you say. I was apprehensive when I got a call from David Price, president of our Green Horizon Land Trust board of directors that afternoon and learned it was pouring down rain in Lake Wales. It’s a good 45-minute drive to Nana’s new office; it wasn’t raining in Lakeland. If it didn’t stop, would we have a poor...
Agri-Fest for Polk’s 4th Graders
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Mar 9, 2012 in Blogging, Home/Garden, Organization | 0 comments
Agri-Fest is a pretty big deal for our Polk County Master Gardeners. Every year in the spring, we host some 6,000 students and more than 300 teachers for a “horticulture” program at the Polk County Agricultural Center in Bartow. Fourth-graders are bused in from all around the County to visit eight agriculture stations in rotation, horticulture being one, where they learn...
White Birds in Nana’s Garden
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Mar 2, 2012 in Blogging, Home/Garden | 0 comments
Magnificent and beautiful white birds were spotted low to the ground in Nana’s Garden this past weekend as I was hand-watering plants under the large oak tree. At first glance, I thought there was only one but a closer investigation with Wonderful Wally, his camera ready, revealed multiple birds with a dark blue tongue about twelve inches in length.
The white birds were...
Woody and His Cousins
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Feb 24, 2012 in Blogging, Environment, Home/Garden | 0 comments
The pileated woodpecker is probably the most readily identifiable of all woodpeckers especially to those of my generation thanks to the cartoon character named Woody, created by artist Ben Hardaway in 1940 and brought to life by the animation of Walter Lantz.
Pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) are the largest of Florida’s woodpecker family, reaching a length of 18 inches. ...
Let’s Count Those Birds!
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Feb 17, 2012 in Blogging, Education, Environment, Home/Garden | 0 comments
Today begins an annual four-day event (February 17-20) referred to as the Great Backyard Bird Count, or GBBC. I can assure you Wonderful Wally will be among the thousands out there photographing, identifying and counting as many birds as he possibly can to help researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society understand how bird populations are...
One Lonely Betta
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Feb 10, 2012 in Blogging, Home/Garden, Pets | 0 comments
There was a time when Nana enjoyed three male bettas, each in a uniquely shaped vase – one an antique, as accents in the kitchen and great room. A fourth display of the handsome Siamese fighting fish graced the corner of my former office desk. Actually, at one point, Nana had a total of five bettas. The fifth was in a huge brandy sniffer-styled bowl holding seven gallons of...
Pretty Little Songbird
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Feb 3, 2012 in Blogging, Environment, Home/Garden | 0 comments
The male Painted Bunting is a beautiful songbird with a dark blue head, red eye ring and green back. It has a red rump and undersides, and is easily identified by its distinctive colors. No wonder, this pretty little bird was once a very popular caged bird. It almost looks like it belongs to the same family as the Parakeet. Instead, the Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris) is a...
Wonderful Wally and His Wonderful Birds
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Jan 27, 2012 in Blogging, Environment | 0 comments
Choosing only one of Wonderful Wally’s prize photos to share with readers is becoming more and more a challenge for Nana. Wally is out shooting birds almost every morning and sometimes makes multiple trips to nearby parks capturing birds and wildlife with his camera, honing his photography skills and improving with each outing. Thank goodness for digital; he must shoot a...
North Walk-in-Water Trek Tomorrow
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Jan 20, 2012 in Blogging, Environment, Home/Garden | 0 comments
Nana and Wonderful Wally’s together activities for this upcoming week will begin with a hike through Polk County’s North Walk-in-Water environmental lands property Saturday morning, and maybe we’ll see the new movie “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” – even though The Associated Press critic David Germain only gave it two stars.
North Walk-in-Water is east on State...
First Week of Retirement Bliss
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Jan 13, 2012 in Blogging, Home/Garden | 0 comments
Wonderful Wally and I received telephone calls from two of his out-of-state siblings to ask what we were doing our first week of retirement. His twin sister found us cleaning out the attic and organizing the garage on Monday. Things were not a lot different yesterday when his younger sister called from Wisconsin, except Wally was out photographing the eagle on Lake Morton. I...
One Last Day
Posted by Nana’s Home and Garden by Glenda Mink on Jan 6, 2012 in Blogging, Home/Garden | 0 comments
Nana has one last day at the office of Polk County Parks and Recreation. Though I have maintained that I am not really leaving, instead that I will simply work in a different capacity from a different location – the truth is I’m outta’ there. There will be this lump in my throat and tears on my cheek as I make my final stroll through the hallway later today to bid my office...
From the Publisher, Marialice Quinn
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