I love the Internet. We are able to find out so many things just by googling them up through Google, that the latest dictionaries list googling as a word. When all else fails, as has been the case lately when the dogs were attracted to a strange cheese-like fungus that I couldn't find no matter how extensively I searched the internet, I contacted PA's Susquehanna County Cooperative Extension in Montrose. And lately when I found an invasive vine that I also could not identify through the internet, after contacting the same Cooperative Extension, they couldn't find the answer immediately, but a week later I heard from one of their Master Gardeners, Michele Gottlick. The vine turned out to be Virgin's Bower (Clematis virginiana), and advised wearing a long-sleeved shirt and gloves when handling it. I had already, but seem to have a resistance to it as I didn't get a rash after tearing out some of the vine near the creek, but a word to the "wise" (which in the title of my blog I "claim"(?) to be... kind of with tongue in cheek) is sufficient. I'll wear gloves in the future, and try to control or eradicate this plant by (covered) hand, as I can't apply Round-up or any defoliant so close the water.
When we bought the land in PA, we had visions of raising pheasants, quail, and possibly wild turkeys, and got all the information we could on these wildfowl. Of course, where we got that info was at the Susquehanna Cooperative Extension. There are these helpful divisions in New York from where we moved from, and perhaps all the United States. I hope people realize that and call on them for help when they need it for gardening, raising almost anything from goats to fowl, and controlling garden pests, as they were a big help when our hopes became a reality, and we not only raised pheasants and quail, but had overwintered and tried to get the pheasants and quail to reproduce... which they will NOT do in captivity, but with the help of the Extension, we learned about brooders and were able to hatch and raise our adult pheasants fertile eggs, release the adult birds, and bring up another flock of pheasants to release later. We weren't successful with quail eggs, which are about the size of Jordan almonds, an egg shaped candy that is popular at Easter time. But Agway has sold us quail and pheasant chicks, and we've learned a lot in the raising of these birds. Nature is so fascinating, and by raising birds we see the miracles up close and personal.
As a child in North Woburn, Massachusetts, though most homes there had less than an acre of land, we had 4 acres of swampland only because it was unbuildable... our house was on a rise above the swamp, which would be better termed a wetlands. Though mosquitoes abounded each summer, it was where in my preschool years my brother Jerry, a year older, and myself were free to see nature up close and personal. We'd notice walking sticks, which are almost invisible to anyone but a person who was free to dawdle away their summer afternoons lying in the shade, blade of grass in ones mouth, sucking the sweet end and staring up through branches at the clouds, and catch the slow movement of what looked like a part of the tree becoming mobile. We witnessed a fight between a wasp and a spider; we found out that what looks like molasses deposited on our palm from a captured grasshopper is NOT! Late spring in digging in some sand and clay we uncovered a hibernating toad.
All this and much more was our first schooling for a lifetime of wonder. And when we'd wonder in the way I do now, we have the World Wide Web to question and if we can't find answers, better yet, we have the local Cooperative Extensions.
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