How To Make An Easy Backyard Wildlife Habitat

This video is one I made in our yard, showing the different elements of wildlife habitat available within it.  I don't agree with everything the National Wildlife Federation does (sadly, they have really bought in to the Global Warming aka "Climate Change" propaganda - so crazy, since of all people the NWF should know that CO2 is not a pollutant but the air plants breathe!), but I have always appreciated their work to encourage micro habitats. I have seen the difference this can make in local wildlife populations and health - it really works when individuals create habitats in their own little areas.

So I went through their certification process for our yard. Believe it or not, this was made easier by the fact that I did no yard work other than mow this year! These items are within reach of almost anyone, and nearly everything they recommend can be done without spending any money.

The certification comes with a subscription to their magazine, but it costs nothing to follow the steps of their program and know you are doing good for God's littler creatures that share our beautiful world. :-)

The Odd and Wild "Texas Persimmons" Are Ripening Now

The Wild Texas Persimmons are ripe! These turn black when ripe, and unlike orange persimmons, they don't need a frost. The trees are small and look almost like an under-story live oak, except their bark and trunks remind me of crepe myrtles.  They would be a good landscape tree - but they are male and female so you need several trees for them to be fruitful. Here is an excellent page to help identify and learn more about them:  BackyardNature.net's Texas Persimmons Page

Our friend Herb gave me a bunch and I turned some of them into Persimmon Jam. The final product is very tasty, reminiscent of molasses - dark and thick and rich and full flavored. They are don't have much acid in them, so the rest of the pulp I canned in my pressure canner.  Our friends tell us it makes fantastic persimmon bread. They made a wonderful pie, using a recipe that is similar to a pumpkin pie, nicely spiced with evaporated milk. I'll post the recipe here when I get it.

These fruit are quite challenging to process, because they are so soft, and each contains multiple large seeds. Putting them through a collander or a jelly strainer leaves far too much waste. I tried several different methods of separating the pulp and finally settled on using a strong mesh bag with very small holes. The ones with diamond shaped netting are too large and allow seeds to escape into the pot, but the bags that grapefruit, oranges, lemons and other citrus come in, with small square shaped holes, seem to be perfect for it. I just scoop the whole fruit into the bag and squeeze it with my hands until all the juice and pulp is out. This method also cleans the seeds well  - they are surrounded by a tough membrane that is as edible as the rest of the pulp but otherwise difficult to remove.

The color is very off-putting for me. It looks and feels like working in crude oil or blackstrap molasses and gets everywhere.  On the plus side, while the unripe ones make an indelible stain, the ripe ones seem to stain at about the same level as plum peelings. One woman, Deb McClintock, has been using the green ones as yarn dye (and wow does she have some gorgeous colors), and also the green ones were used to make ink. But they seem to reach a point on the tree that they will go ahead and ripen even if picked - which is not the case with the wild orange ones in my experience.

 Overall, the reliable test of ripening speaks strongly for these fruits. The American Persimmon that I grew up with in Oklahoma is difficult to rely on because of the need to be certain every single fruit is ripe before using them. These black ones can be confidently used when they are fully black and soft - no astringency at all at that stage.

I was also excited to get these because I want to save the seeds. I have a little display of native wild flower seeds that I sell at our Farmers Market and other events, and I wanted to add this great Texas Native to them. Also, reenactors may know that persimmon seeds were used as buttons during the difficult times during and after the civil war when real pearl or metal buttons were unavailable. They are very hard and naturally smooth, as well as uniform in size, which makes for good buttons.

There are not many trees that offer such a wide range of potential products in such a small package!

Happy Thanksgiving! The Immigrants Holiday Since 1540 AD

Happy Thanksgiving! It is 6:00 am and a beautiful morning. It will be just the three of us today: Paul, me and our granddaughter. I made the pies and cornbread last night, and Paul has the turkey marinating in brine. We added a ham to the menu, as Granddaughter doesn't care for turkey.

We have much to be grateful for.  We are Christians: assured of redemption, and secure in knowing we again will see our loved ones who have gone on before us.

We live in America, free to live, believe, work, think and speak; free to make for ourselves the best life we can on our own, not shackled into some hereditary "class" or trade, not under the thumb of hereditary governance.

We have great wealth, no matter our circumstances. Even the poorest among us have access to warm shelter, sufficient food, hope for a future better than our past.

I have never figured out how to "bump" posts without messing up the timeline, so here are links to Pecan Corner's most "classic" Thanksgiving Day posts. If you like them, please feel free to share. :-)

The Immigrants Holiday: Thanksgiving and The Original Melting Pot 

First Turkey Days! Thanksgiving Feasts in America 1540 - 1640 (or "The Real History of Thanksgiving")

God bless you, and God bless America!

(PS The Photo is of Wild Persimmon Trees on an Oklahoma byway. I took the picture when I went home for a visit last weekend. Mama and I had a lot of fun picking them - this was something she used to take us to do when we were growing up! They ripen in the fall, and are not edible until ripe - usually after the first heavy frost. But don't think just freezing them will work if they are not ripe yet. It won't! So you just have to stake out your tree and try to get there before the possums do! :-)  )

Roses & Pecan Trees are Blooming!

 These are from the only rosebush that survived the drought, but oh aren't they gorgeous! Paul commented that they "are almost florescent": a beautiful orangey coral color.

Just as glorious in their own way are the fresh, day-glo green, male pecan tree flowers. You can see the long strands of pollen-rich catkins hanging in clusters. The female flowers are too small to see, but they are just above the catkins - Pecan trees only make female blossoms if all conditions are right: enough water, enough sugars and starches....and to date no one has figured out a scientific way to consistently predict the crop. It is so unique each year that pecans are called "God's crop" by the botanists and growers who study these trees.

 

I am betting on a great crop from our trees this year, in part because it has been several years since we had a bountiful one, and we've had good rain (thank you, Father God, for answering our prayers and sending rain to tide Texas over despite all predictions to the contrary. The drought is not gone, but we are grateful things are much improved in most of the state).

One of our trees is a native pecan that has the sweetest nuts. I gathered 100 pounds (before shelling) from it alone our first year here. We are just finishing them up (shelled and froze them in vacuum packs), so it would be a great blessing to have a new crop to stock up again.

If you want to produce as much of your own food as possible, do consider nut trees. You can have them in cities, and even a small lot can have a pecan tree. They produce a huge amount of high-calorie, healthy food with minimal effort once they are established. Pecan trees will not grow everywhere, but here they just come up from forgotten nuts that get buried. So look around and see what grows well where you live, and add the best possible "Edible landscaping" to your yard! :-)

Healing the Burns: References For Wildfire & Drought Recovery Plantings

Every landscape contains some plants that will not grow unless they have gone through fire. These seed lay dormant, awaiting their call to action - awaiting the moment God created them for - and burst into life on burnt ground in due time.

But some locations, such as steep slopes that burned with a kiln-hot blaze, may need a little help. Especially, those prone to erosion may benefit from an extra supply of native grasses (pdf link here) mirroring those in place before the burn, so that the root systems can hold the soil in place.

One of Texas' native plant suppliers, "Native American Seed"aka SeedSource.com, has created a Wildfire Reference Guide that provides information, links to resources, tips and seed recommendations.  This company has loads of information about effective use of native grasses in landscaping and in prairie restoration.

Another excellent website is "Firewise", sponsored by the National Fire Protection Association. Lots and lots of information, not only for professionals, but also excellent resources for homeowners. One full page is dedicated to tips for wildfire readiness & evacuation. Another shares plant lists provided by various State Extension Services.

The NFPA's preparedness efforts include "Ready, Set, Go!" Most of these readiness habits are important for any emergency evacuation, so it's worth reading even if you don't live in a wildfire-prone area.
 
We're "not out of the woods yet", but the future calls. Time to get to work on a Texas landscape that's on the mend, that will overcome the continuing drought. Although this drought that affects the entire states of Texas & Oklahoma, much of New Mexico, and even part of Louisiana,  is not expected to end for another year, the Good Lord sends us rain to tide us over until the fullness of time in this natural cycle.

So now, in time for fall and winter moisture, is a good time for scattering locally-native wild seed.

We have not had major fires in our area this year. Our ecology suffers from the lack of moisture, heat and dehydration. As the rest of my St Augustine lawn dies under heavy water rationing, as have 2 mature apricot trees, a young apple tree, three young grapes, asparagus, herbs, and several perennials, I'm starting to think how to reconstruct our yard once the drought ends. And what I'm thinking is wild.

In addition to the resources mentioned above, the always-remarkable Texas Parks & Wildlife department has a great program for increasing our backyard & urban habitats called "Texas Wildscapes".

Last but not in any way least, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has a Drought Resource Center that is especially inspiring and hope-filling right now.

The one nice thing about this summer has been not having to mow - normally a 3-hour-a-week job. What if, when I put out those new fruit trees on our extra lot,  instead of being blanketed with grass that has to be cut, they were surrounded by permanent paths and un-mown, non-irrigated patches of native meadow and lovely wildflowers, like these from our visit to the Lady Bird Johnston Wildflower Center in Austin:

That could be an unexpected blessing indeed!


P.S. Tuesday, Oct 4th, is when Texas hosts National Night Out, and in our town, with no police force, our local Volunteer Fire Department is having open house - yours probably is, too. Drive over to the fire station and visit, shake  hands with these uncommon young men in your community. Chances are they've spent many hours fighting or preventing fires this summer.

RAIN!!!!! HALLELUJAH!!!

"The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none." Deuteronomy 28:12

Radar Map via WFAA.com 


We are receiving the loveliest rain today  through a large swath of Northern and Central Texas.
Thank you Father God for sending the rain to water the land! We are grateful for your bounty.

This follows on Thursday's (Aug 11) West Texas rain, when San Angelo received nearly 1/2" of rain, the first moisture they've had since June.

 The state of affairs in our drought is becoming dire. Texas lands, plant and animal life and wildlife, cities and towns suffer not only the catastrophic lack of rain, but also from record constant high temperatures that have been so extreme as to make the rare 98 degree day feel like a cool spell.


The Colorado River Municipal Water District, which provides water to most Permian Basin cities, including Midland, Odessa, Big Spring, Snyder, is implementing waste-water reclamation to enable sewage water to be purified for use as household and drinking water.

Robert Lee, Texas, is fast running out of any water at all, down to 1% of its normal water supply from nearly dry Lake E.V.Spence. Anxious to run new water pipelines to bring water from nearby Bronte, environmental and regulatory permitting is still up in the air.

 Kemp, Texas has no water at all temporarily, until the city can repair damaged pipes and refill its empty water towers.

Brown County, in Central Texas, has had water use restrictions since mid-June, and has anticipated moving to Stage 3 restrictions within the next couple of weeks (unless this lovely rain continues to spill out of the heavens).


Even Dallas, normally secure from water limitations thanks to its location in North Texas, has implemented  use restrictions, setting up watering schedules on an odd/even basis.

Please join with us in continuing grateful prayers for the rain we receive, and asking God's favor to speed the end of the drought.

8/13/11 PM UPDATE:  So far today we've received about 2 and 1/2 inches of rain in a nice slow steady downpour that lasted all morning and into the afternoon, and I hear that Brownwood received about the same.  What a lift it is to everyone's spirits! This is an optimistic part of the country, and people try to stay cheery, but the long weeks of heat and absence of rain was beginning to wear on everyone. This bit of rain today will give encouragement to tide us over even if the drought is not over yet (some predictions say it could last another year, since we seem to be moving into a second La Nina cycle).

8/14/11 PM UPDATE: We had another lovely rain late this afternoon. It began raining here before we left for a gathering in town and rained hard all the way through our 15 mile drive. I haven't heard how much total yet but it was certainly welcomed. God is Good, all the time.

Redbud Blossoms on the Table

The Redbud trees are blooming now. Their shocking magenta blossoms cover the branches, visible from far away in their little spots tucked in among the oak and mesquite. Later, after the leaves come on, these little understory trees will melt into the background until their pretty leaves turn yellow in the fall.

Unlike the mesquite trees, redbuds are native here. It's Oklahoma's state tree, and is plentiful in Texas as well, roughly following the "blackjack belt" through the state from east to west. The "blackjack belt" is named for the Blackjack Oak tree - very similar to the Post Oak, with slight differences. Both are small (as the name indicates) deciduous oaks that grow near each other.

The ferns in the vase with the redbud branches are asparagus that got away from me! Less than a week since I checked on the asparagus bed and the first shoots went from invisible to 3 foot tall ferns. This is the first year we can gather shoots since we planted the crowns three years ago so we are looking forward to our own homegrown asparagus.

Redbud blossoms are edible too, in small amounts,and make a pretty addition to salads (well, salad for luncheons. Don't feed it to the kids or they will grow up and tell stories about the weird food you forced on them). My copy of "Texas Trees" also says the young seed pods are also edible sauted in butter for a bit but I have not tried them before. Maybe this year I'll remember to gather some before they have matured, and we'll see if I live to tell the tale. ;-) That is a joke, but it is wise to remember that many wild plants with pea-like leaves and pods are poisonous (some deadly so - see last paragraph of opening article here: Pea Family) , so be certain to verify edibility and confirm identification with experts (& I am not an expert outside my own family) before experimenting with these things.

At any rate, Redbuds make a lovely specimen tree in town too, and are recommended by the Native Plant Society of Texas. With their small size and glossy, heart-shaped leaves all summer, they fit nicely into an ordinary sized yard and require little care. And of course, make very nice bouquets in the Spring: which encourages me to leave the peach blossoms on the tree so they can turn into fruit I KNOW we will eat!

Weather Signs & Lore: Predicting A Spring Frost

What a crazy winter it has been! And our Spring is "acumin in" by fits and starts - like Sandy said "one day 75 and the next day we have 4 inches of snow!" When will the cold weather finally end?

The signs and lore (aka natural history observations by ordinary people over time) are sometimes the only help when it comes to the "last frost" of spring. When can we safely plant tender garden veggies? In Texas, two highly reliable signs are:
(1) Never plant before Good Friday; and
(2) When the Mesquite trees leaf out, all danger of frost is past.


Easter is at its midpoint this year, on April 4th, so we don't have much longer. Especially during years of a Late Easter, it sure is hard to wait until Good Friday to plant, with our warm Texas springtime, but it pays off. One year the only snow we had in Midland was 8 inches on Good Friday.

This past year (2009), the date for Good Friday was April 10th, and we had a late frost on April 7th that was so hard it froze the leaves on our pecan trees on the North side of the house, and so widespread it decimated crops all over Central and North Texas.

In some states this maxim is adjusted: not before Derby Day or not before Memorial Day - but all seem to have a traditional touchstone date that accurately pinpoints the most extreme last killing frost date for that region.

This lore will differ from the standard horticultural guides because they use the "Average Date of Last Spring Frost", which is also useful but a different thing entirely. Here are a couple of standard guides:

Texas A&M University Spring Frosts
Dave's Garden Freeze and Frost Dates

Here is a great article from the Farmer's Almanac about how to tell when a frost is coming:
http://www.farmersalmanac.com/home_garden/a/a-gardeners-guide-to-frost

Another Easter-related bit of lore is "If it rains on Easter, it will rain for seven Sundays". In 2009, it rained on the night of Holy Saturday, and we had rain within 36 hours of Sunday for 6 out of the next 7 Sundays. So there might be some truth to this one. Let's watch and see, shall we?

A House with a Name

An unexpectedly free weekend... and it is too cold to do anything! 21 degrees out right now, my rain guage has a block of ice 8" tall in it, and my onion plants await their beds. Doesn't look like the onions will get planted this weekend unless tomorrow warms up considerably. So, I'll piddle around inside, make potato soup, and dream about Spring.

I an an Anglophile, and I have always wanted to live in a house that had a name. I love the British predeliction for retaining place names over grid numbers. I once got to visit London for work, and we stayed at a hotel with this address: "The Petersham, Nightingale Lane, Richmond, Surrey". My taxi driver from Heathrow airport literally picked his way there one landmark at a time. It was a fabulous hotel and visit and I will blog about it some day.


Our last house, everyone locally associated with the builder, who was well known and had lived in it for a year before we bought it. It never came to be "The Ours' house" - it was always "Oh - you mean the Theirs' house!" This house has been the same. We've been here two years and people still can't place it without the names of people who lived here before us. "Corner of..." Nope, can't place it. "Next door to..." Nope, doesn't ring a bell. "Across the street from...." Sorry, not familiar with it. Even "The house with the Texas Flag painted on the garage door" doesn't do the trick. But if we say "The Theirplace", the light of recognition immediately goes on in every eye.

I want a name for the house that isn't that of the former owners. So I have been thinking of names since we got here, and none seemed to fit.

But now I have just realized that in naming the blog (without much thought, really, since every name I thought out had been taken), I have effectively named my house! "Pecan Corner" is a fine name for a little cottage by the side of the road, don't you think?

Now I need a sign! :-)


* These photos of our house and garage were taken by Lani when she and Nick were here over Christmas weekend. Aren't they great?

The Naturalist's Vintage Calendar

This page for the week of January 10 through 16 from the 1926 John Burrough's Calendar reads

"The apples that cling to the trees, the pods that hang to the lowest branches, and the seeds that the various weeds and grasses hold above the deepest snows, alone make it possible for many birds to pass the winter among us." From "Signs and Seasons"

Hoping For A Pecan Crop Today - and 500 Years Ago

I think the earliest mention of Pecans was in The Journey of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, published in Anno Domini 1542 (on pages 78 and 79 of my copy). He talks about a particularly poor tribe of Indians who go each year to a place where there are nuts on which they will live for two months: "Even of that they do not always have, since one year there may be some and the next year not."

This is a true account, written by a shipwrecked Spanish sailor who traversed what is now the Southern United States, including Texas and Mexico, living with many different Indian tribes, and survived to return home to Spain and write his story.

It is a book worth reading - and surprisingly accessible, even easy to read (skip the introduction until after you've read the actual book). Cabeza de Vaca is a sympathetic and likeable hero and his story is a simple and unvarnished telling of what happened. The various descriptions of differing tribes and their highly diverse ways and means of life is worth the 3 or 4 hours it will take to read the book.

It is a book that may change some of your assumptions about a number of things.

You can download it from archive.org or from Google for free, don't even need a special "reader". You could even print it out. My copy is a facsimile (true copy) of the 1905 translation by Fanny Bandelier, published by Rio grande Press in 1964.

He also talks extensively about prickly pears: "tuna", and how important they were to some of the tribes as the mainstay of their diet for much of the year.



I picked up pecans yesterday afternoon, getting up the ones that have fallen before mowing for, what I hope will be, the last time this year. We have a Saint Augustine lawn, so it is easy to see them and I can move about on my knees comfortably. Year before last, I gathered nearly 100 pounds from this one tree. Last year, there was no crop at all to speak of. This year looks promising, I picked up maybe five pounds yesterday. This earliest tree is a Native, and its nuts are small, but they are richer, sweeter, with a much higher oil content than cultivated varieties.

I've mentioned that my trees all drop at different times. It also takes a matter of weeks for all the nuts to fall from a single tree, because I do not flail or shake my trees. If you have ever driven in the South and seen signs that say "No Flailing", now you know what not to do! No hitting trees with sticks from the road!


When I was growing up, lots of people picked up pecans as part of their living, and kids all did it to earn spending money. Southern Oklahoma is Pecan country and they grow wild all over. They remain a major crop for the area.

I take my pecans home to get them cracked, since the machines up there are set for small natives. Here, pecans are also a major crop, but the orchards are mostly cultivated and so the machines are set for cracking larger ones. The machines that crack them have to be set just right so as to crack the shell without breaking the kernal.

Once they've been cracked, they need to be picked out and stored. They will keep for a while at room temperature but will eventually turn rancid. For long term storage, Pecans can be vaccuum packed and frozen, and they will keep indefinitely.

Hackberries and Hackberry Firewood

There was a small hackberry scrub tree next to the road where I gathered prickly pears, and I had to eat a couple of the ripe hackberries. Wow that sure took me back to my childhood. They were "the" street tree in my hometown when I was growing up. The boys may remember the trees in front of Amos house, and one in Mema and Nandy's front yard? There also used to be hackberry trees lining 5th Avenue alongside Amos' house and going for blocks. These were all removed when they widened the road when I was about 12 or so.


There are many varieties of Hackberry, ranging from those that get large enough to be stately lining streets, to scrubby wild ones that grow out in West Texas. They are a rather short lived tree, maybe 50 years or so, and their wood is soft.


Birds love the berries, and they are a wonderful source of food for them. For people...not so much. Yes they have a great flavor, but have you ever eaten one? Imagine a BB (like you shoot from a bb gun), coated with apple peeling. That's it. The little bit of skin is the only thing edible - the inside is an indigestible hard ball. But that little bit of skin tastes just as good and sweet as apple peeling.

Because the berries are small and have no juice, they are not messy, thus their use as street trees.

People here tell me they use hackberry wood in the early part of the winter or spring when they only need a quick warm up to the house. It burns fast and takes the chill off on those cool mornings when you won't need a fire later in the day. I haven't had any of it, so I can't speak from experience yet. If I get the chance to get some from tree trimmers this year, I will try it.

UPDATE Aug 8, 2013: Winter before last, we discovered that some of our firewood was hackberry. How did we find out? Our neighbor came to beg us not to burn that wood any more because it stinks! Our stove is enclosed so we don't smell the wood, but one low pressure day had driven the smoke a block over to their house. When we smelled it we agreed it smells horrible! I am so grateful that she was willing to tell us about it. We threw away the rest of that and changed our source of wood. So nope, I can't recommend hackberry as a source for heat if you live anywhere near humans. :-(

A Magnificent Ruin in the South Carolina Wildwoods

When I went to South Carolina this summer to see Ethan and Valerie, they took me to the ruins of Old Sheldon Prince William's Parish Church, near Beaufort. The plaque at the entrance reads:

Ruins of Old Sheldon Prince William's Parish Church
Built 1745-55. Burned 1779 by British. Rebuilt 1826.
Burned 1865 by Federal Army. Named for ancestral home
of the Bull family in Warwickshire, England.
Annual Services Second Sunday after Easter

Despite being burned by two armies, the red brick ruins remain solid, the church remains a place of Christian worship, and the chairs were in place for an upcoming service the day we were there.


This old hand pump draws water from the well.



The churchyard graves reflect the history of the people who worshiped here, their losses, their honor, their endurance. This gravestone reads:

George Chisolm Mackay
Born Oct 8, 1803 Died Oct 28 1864
And His Sons
Edward Robert
Born Jan 24, 1830 Drowned Feb 9 1868
George Chisolm Jr
Born Dec 20 1835 Killed in battle
May 12 1864

A pink fairy rose bush cascades over a more recent, but still old, set of family gravestones.



When these trees were injured or became hollow, they were saved by filling the cavities with cement, just as a tooth is filled.

The tree surgeon who did the work had a fine aesthetic sense, and patterned the cement like brick. Isn't it beautiful?


The altar, also made of brick masonry like the outer walls and columns of the building, survived the fire and the ages. It is seen here toward the left of the photo inside the remaining walls, while just outside in the shade of a tree is a tomb of similar size and shape.

Faith of our fathers, we will strive
To win all nations unto thee;
And through the truth that comes from God,
We all shall then be truly free.

Faith of Our Fathers, by Frederick W. Faber, 1849