This year I can emphatically state that the most practical piece of garden art I ever purchased is a decorative downspout. A chain of copper cups carries rain water from the gutter above my backyard patio into the ground drains beneath the concrete. I couldn't be more pleased with its performance — especially this year with the above- normal precipitation we've experienced.

Depending upon where you live, local rainfall totals for the season are already 20 inches or more. And winter is far from over. Check this link to seasonal totals for the Browns Valley area of Vacaville: www.vacavilleweather.com   

Also known as a “rain chain,” the decorative downspout I chose was the largest cup size available. I placed the bottom cup inside a ceramic pot with a hole in the bottom, then lined the pot with small rocks to center and secure the chain. The pot sits atop a flat drain cover. See photos below.

Japanese in origin, also known as “kusari doi,” these “chain gutters” are not new. They have collected water from rooftops and transported it into cisterns for centuries. Today rain chains are available in a variety of artistic shapes from square to embossed, flared or fluted cups to double loops.

For me, this decorative downspout is worth every cent. It's a welcome addition to my garden. The rushing gushing waterfall flow from a cloud burst is as delightful as the soft sound of individual drops trickling through the cups during a gentle shower.

When I was working at the student farm at UC Davis some years ago, I learned about the use of sowing cover crops on fields which would otherwise lie fallow (which is not a bad thing in and of itself).  Cover crops can be a combination of any number of crops, including, but not limited to vetch, bell beans, clover, etc. There are a number of benefits to sowing a cover crop--increasing organic matter and fixing nitrogen in the soil (i.e., building soil), providing a habitat for beneficial insects and microorganisms, soil aeration, mining nutrients found deep in the soil and bringing them up to the level where future plants can use them, soil erosion control, snuffing out competing weeds--just to name a few.   

Now that I stopped working on the farm, I have recently begun to apply the same principles in my postage-stamped size backyard.  I, like most people, am very busy and my garden is often neglected.  I sow cover crops which eases my guilty conscience of not taking care of the garden, because the garden is now actually feeding and taking care for itself.  Cover crops are generally easy to grow, not fussy, and can be sown wherever you have an empty spot in the garden.  My instructor on the UC Davis farm told me that when the crop reaches about 2-3 feet tall, to chop it down and turn the organic matter back into the soil so that the green waste can decompose (hence, the alternate name of green manure). It has worked out well so far in my garden and I am noticing more earthworm activity, which is always a good omen.

Generally speaking, cover crop seeds are not available for sale at big-box stores.  I have found that generally, you have to order such items on line or by mail.  Given the current movement for urban homesteading, the good news is that cover crop seeds have become more available and can be found through your local farm and garden supply store.  

Years ago I had an apple tree in my garden.  It produced prolifically for a long time, until one day I realized the tree was dying.  Shelf mushrooms lined the trunk and limbs, and finally one limb dropped on its own. I cut the tree down and hired a tree service to drill out the stump. The ground stayed bare, until just recently, when I planted an Australian finger lime in its place. 

Then, while weeding a couple of weeks ago in the general area of that former apple tree, I found a large mass of different kinds of mushrooms.  Having dogs and not wanting them to eat something potentially poisonous, I removed what was visible, until, woo-hoo! - I found some morel mushrooms, at least I thought they looked like morels. 

photos by Michelle Davis

I had to do some investigation.  Mushrooms are fungi, not animal or vegetable.  Their meaty taste comes from a substance in their cell walls called chitin.  This substance is also found in the shells of shellfish and is currently being used in wound dressings to stem bleeding – it causes clotting.  The dressing manufacturers use shellfish, not mushrooms, to make the dressings, but I wonder if you're allergic to shellfish, would you be allergic to the hemostatic dressing???

But back to the mushrooms. I wanted to know if these mushrooms were true morels or false morels? Packaged, dehydrated true morels were selling for $19.99 for 0.5 ounce at the grocery store. Doing the math, that would be almost $640 for a pound.  I wasn't going to get rich.  All I had were 3 mushrooms and not enough knowledge to know true from false. 

A true morel has a uniformly-shaped cap with distinct ridges and pits. It's hollow and smooth on the inside from the top part of the cap all the way through the stem. To check, cut the mushroom longitudinally.  False morels have caps that have irregular lobes that look kind of squashed.   When cut longitudinally, they are densely packed or have white, thread-like fibers inside and are not hollow.

All morels grow in disturbed ground.  True morels often grow near apple, elm and ash trees and usually appear in the spring.  False ones can be found spring through fall. 

False morels contain monomethyl hydrazine (MMH) which can cause dizziness, seizures, vomiting, diarrhea, liver damage, cancer and even death.  Granted, Finland natives parboil them (to decrease the toxicity) and enjoy eating them, but the amount of MMH varies in each mushroom from location to location and even mushroom to mushroom in that location. MMH is also cumulative over time, and the taste isn't as good as the real true morel.  The true morels, needless to say, are MMH-free.

Take a look.  What do you think? True or False?  Or like the TV show (modified) line from when I was really young, “Will the true morel please stand up?”

As to if I ate it – the answer is no.  I know what creatures visit my backyard and where they leave their “deposits”. 

We are lucky to be able to escape the much needed deluge of Northern California for the mostly sunny, beautiful San Diego area.  Here the Bird of Paradise plants are pretty much everywhere. My plant at home has never bloomed and has been attacked by underground creatures more than once. Last year, I rescued it from an invasion of hungry underground creatures and built a fortress type of pot for it. Hopefully, it will thank me by finally blooming this year. One can only hope....

Anyway, I went to my go to sites to look up these beautiful plants, Wikipedia and Gardening Know How.  Be advised that there are actual BIRDS named Bird of Paradise, so you can easily end up there when hitting links, and see lovely pictures of BIRDS!

So, here is just a little bit of what I found:
It is formally known as Strelitzia, with 5 species, from the family Strelitzaceae.  It was named to honor the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Germany, which was the birthplace of Queen Charlotte of the United Kingdom. She was the wife of King George III in the latter half of the 1700s.  The plant is native to South Africa where it is commonly known as the "Crane Flower". It is on the reverse side of their 50 cent coin.  It is also the floral emblem of the City of LA.

Of the 5 species, the S. nicolai and S. reginae are the most commonly grown in gardens, indoor and out. The S. alba is the white flowered plant, (which I would really like to put in my yard.)
S. nicolai is the largest and reaches 10 meters in height (32 feet!) The flowers are blue and white. The specie S. caudata is actually a tree and grows to a shorter height than S. nicolai and has leaves similar looking to those of a banana tree. Other species are much smaller in height.  The "flowers" are an inflorescence with a long spathe. This is where the pollen is contained. The plants are pollinated by sunbirds which perch upon the spathe. The weight of the bird causes it to open and the pollen then sticks on the bird's feet and is transferred to the next plant when it perches there. The "Bird" has no natural insect pollinators, so in areas with no sunbirds, the plants must be pollinated by hand. (There was a link to "sunbirds", so naturally, I had to hit it. Sunbirds are NOT native to our half of the world, but are distantly related to hummingbirds.)

In our half of the globe, "Birds" like to grow in USDA zones 9 - 12. They like bright light, but grow differently in full sun (more flowers and shorter stems) than in shaded areas (bigger flowers and taller stalks). They liked well drained soil with a high organic content. They need adequate water with the soil being kept moist throughout the summer.  The plants grow in clumps which can become quite big over time, like the plant in my mom's backyard. They need to be pruned back and/or divided in the spring as well as "dead heading" and removing the dead leaves. There are articles and videos on-line on how to prune and divide the plants if you are interested.