Fragrances for Your Home

Friends are coming over and your house smells like onions or fish. You can pull out the exceptionally expensive candles or scents that are available through any number of stores, or you can quickly create an aromatic environment using natural ingredients.

For a cozy ambience: In a pot full of water, add a quartered orange, cranberries, cloves, and cinnamon sticks. Simmer on low and replace water as needed.

For a classy ambience: To create a fresh, clean scent, let two cups of water come to a boil with a sprig of rosemary, vanilla extract, and the juice from half a lemon. If you toss in the rind, too, it’ll add zest.

Sweet fragrance: Add orange slices, fresh ginger, and a spoonful of almond extract to a pot; cover with water, bring to a boil, and then simmer.

Tropical: Fill a saucepan about halfway with water and add lime, coconut oil, and vanilla. As with the others, simmer on the stove replacing water as needed.

Woodsy environment: A pot of water containing cedar or pine should be brought to a boil. To remove a strong odor, try adding two bunches of bay leaves to the mixture.

Calm: To conjure a soothing scent before bedtime (or anytime), mix dried lavender, anise, nutmeg, whole cloves, and a cinnamon stick with water and let it simmer until the whole house fills with the lovely fragrance.

By planning ahead to gather and save the necessary ingredients from your garden each summer, you’ll be prepared to create the perfect sensory experience in your home.

What was Buzzin’ in Your Backyard Last Summer?

By Janet Wissink

As a gardener, I understand the importance of having bees in my yard. But I didn’t always appreciate the buzzin’ around me, nor did I distinguish between bumble bees, honey bees, solitary bees, wasps and hornets. Now, I realize that bumble, honey and solitary bees are not aggressive towards me as I work in the garden among my flowers, vegetables and fruits. These bees are too busy working to worry about me. Instead of running away from the buzzin’, I stop to take a closer look at what kind of bee is diligently visiting blossom after blossom.

Bees play a key role in agricultural production and the beauty of our yards through pollination. The disruption of natural habitats, the widespread over-use of pesticides, and many bee diseases and parasites has brought bee numbers down precariously low, especially honey bees. The honey bee crisis is broadly termed Colony Collapse Disorder.

Almost 20,000 known species of bees populate the earth. 3,500 live in the United States and close to 400 in Wisconsin. Less than 2% of these are honey bees and bumble bees. The other 98% are mostly solitary bees. Solitary bees live on their own, not in colonies with a queen and workers like honey bees and bumble bees.

Bees are unique among all pollinators (hummingbirds, bats, butterflies, flies and some beetles). Not only do they sip nectar to fuel their own flight, bees are one of the few animals to actively gather large amounts of pollen which they inadvertently scatter widely between flowers. The pollen of many plant species serves as the primary food source for bee larvae because it is rich in protein.

Bee pollination is an ecological service valued at $20 billion a year in North America. More than one-third of the world’s crop species such as alfalfa, sunflower, fruits and vegetables are dependent on bee pollination. Honey bee numbers in North America have been de- clining since the 1950s while the amount of crop acreage requiring bee pollination is at an all time high.

WE CAN HELP BEES

1. Plant bee flowers everywhere! Flowers provide nectar and pollen for bees. Bees obtain all of their carbohydrates from floral nectar, and all of their protein from floral pollen. Honey bees convert nectar into honey and use the protein in pollen to feed their young. Provid- ing a diverse array of plants will help ensure that you support a diverse array of bee species.

2. 60-70% of bees dig burrows in the ground preferring dry, sandy soil bare of vegetation. You can attract ground-nesting bees to your property by leaving some spots of exposed, undisturbed soil. The other 30-40% are cavity-nesting bees. These bees use hollow plant stems or holes in wood left by wood-boring beetles. You can attract cavity-nesting bees by providing tunnels in a man-made structure.

Pesticides are designed to kill insects. Depending on the formula and concentration, they can be harmful or fatal to bees and other benefi- cial insects. Herbicides kill flowers that provide nectar and pollen for bees.

In June 2013, over 50,000 bumble bees were poisoned in Wilsonville, Oregon, after a insecticide was sprayed on linden trees to control aphids, which secrete a sticky residue while feeding, making them a nuisance to parked cars.

“The Oregon bee poisoning is a clear warning. We have to stop pesticide use in cases where human health or food security is not at risk,” stated Dr. Marla Spivak of the University of Minnesota, a leading global authority on bee health. According to Spivak, neonicotinoids are now the most widely used insecticides. They are long-lasting in soil and readily move into water. Sadly, most neonicotinoid insecticides have no warning labels to alert consumers about the potential hazard to bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects.

To learn more about Wild Ones Fox Valley Area visit www.wildones.org.

Resources: University of Minnesota Bee Lab, http://beelab.umn.edu

The Xerces Society, http://www.xerces.org 

Ice Storm Mitigation

Winter is far from over and it seems like we get at least one or more days of freezing rain in late winter. The freezing rain will cause ice to build up on the branches of trees and shrubs, and you might wonder if there’s anything you can do to help mitigate potential damage in your garden.

Usually, it’s best to just leave everything alone as a coating of ice for a day or two rarely hurts a plant. Branches may sag a bit, but then the ice melts or cracks off and all is well.

If, however, the ice is quite heavy and more ice is due, you can reduce the weight, and therefore the risk of damage, by carefully removing some of the ice. Use a soft broom and gently tap the branches, cracking the ice so it falls off. You don’t have to worry about removing all of it — just enough to lessen the weight on the branches. Be careful not to hit the branches too hard or you may end up damaging the bark or breaking off the buds. Also, use caution with large trees or shrubs so you don’t drop ice or branches on your head!

Putting Down Roots – Gardening Insights from Wisconsin’s Early Settlers (book review)

by Karen Des Jarlais

Ever wonder why we plant what we plant and who decided it? Putting Down Roots has some answers. British (called Yankees in this book) German, Norwegian, Irish, Danish, Polish, and Finnish are the Europeans which the author reviews.

You can actually see these recreations of the original gardens at Old World Wisconsin-the largest of the Wisconsin Historical Society’s living history museums. It’s in Waukesha County-576 acres in Eagle. These are historically accurate gardens which complement the settings of a dozen homes from the above ethnic backgrounds. These researched gardens, according to the author, are filled with vegetables, flowers herbs and fruits of varying colors, textures, flavors and fragrances.

Each nationality has its particulars expressed in this book. Common to all are the drawings of tools which are charming in their simplicity and practicality. If you are faced with a distance between your water source and your compost for example, the “garden engine” might solve your aching back, shoulder, or hose problems. It’s kind of like a wheel barrow with a pump. It’s in the Yankee section. We can also thank the Yankees for replacing the scythe and grass sickle with the lawn mower which paved the way for acceptance of the labor intensive lawns which we “enjoy” today.

The German section details much of the German industriousness which we witness as we hear news of the stable German economy. I want to look up “black salsify” or scorzonera to see if we can find it today. They pioneered gardening in rows and separated the kitchen garden from the flowers. They also gave us the wheelhoe, a form of cultivator.

Peruse the Polish section and you discover that rosemary and myrtle were important at weddings. Stovewood construction or incorporating whole logs with concrete is also from the Poles.

The Finns gave us an intricate root cellar idea.

You’ll very much enjoy the photos of the restored homes which have been moved to Old World Wisconsin. The orderliness of the gardens and the lush growth make me want to drift back in a time machine to the late 1800’s. The seed catalogs from that time period and the drawings they contain make this book worth a look for those alone. The appendix is a bunch of tables which highlight the plants each ethnic group planted to eat. Also informative is the section on plants for dyeing. It’s well indexed and there’s a great bibliography for each nationality so that you can learn more.

Here’s the biggest bonus—recipes for each group of settlers! I’m anxious to try the Irish “Boreen Brack” which is a kind of bread.

There’s lots to see and learn in this book. Your library has Putting Down Roots.

I hope you’ll dig it out!

Kentucky Bourbon Trails “Black Secret”

by Bev Kindschy

Last fall we moved our daughter to Louisville, Kentucky to finish up her college training in Radiation Therapy. This move was exciting, since it presented many new learning opportunities including the culture of Kentucky.  One of our first learning experiences was the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, which is a program of nine Kentucky distillers that promote the bourbon industry.  Kentucky produces the majority of all bourbon made world-wide, because of the limestone water supply.  Since our family is a fan of wine and beer tastings, we decided to expand our taste buds and start bourbon tastings/tours on the trail.

On a walking tour of the historic Jim Beam distillery, I couldn’t help but notice that the buildings were all black. As I looked more closely I noticed the trees were extremely black and looked like they had their bark blow-torched.  I learned that it is because the trees and warehouses have been tainted by Baudoinia compniacensis, a unique whiskey fungus, found near distilleries.  This particular type of black fungus is common near distilleries because it uses ethanol as a source of energy for growth.  During the whiskey maturation process (expanding and contracting in and out of the barrels’ oak panels), at least 2% of whiskey escapes from the barrel as ethanol vapor. It is this airborne ethanol that stimulates fungal germination and provides some additional heat protective proteins to the organisms. Since ethanol is denser than air, when it meets the slightest bit of moisture (limestone water supply) you get whiskey fungus all over the place. At an eyeball distance it appears as a crusty coating. At a greater foot distance, it appears like ink staining.

 

One final point in case you plan to participate in a bourbon tasting, Makers Mark has the best bourbon balls at the end of their tour and you get to sample four types of bourbons!