GiGi Amateau

May 2008

What I'm Thinking About

If you could choose one bird to be, which would you choose? I choose the Great Blue Heron. Solitary, yet communal, too, the heron inspires a kind of stillness. I see the heron flying solo nearly every day. Yet, downtown on the river there is a rookery of more than thirty. How can you walk along a river's bank and not pause to watch the heron? Do you ever cross a bridge and seek out the heron just to have one second of its graceful flight imprinted on your busy, hectic day? To read about downtown Richmond's Great Blue Heron rookery or see a slide show, visit this link: www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx. -content-articles-RTD-2008-03-11-0121.html

My favorite part of gardening is discovering the spring volunteers -- plants that decide on their own, without my encouragement, help, or flattery, to come back, multiply, and double the fun. Whether deposited by birds, gifted by the wind, or sowed by self-seeding, volunteers turn gardening into an adventure. Despite the drought of last year, our garden is full of volunteers: false-forget me not, dogwood trees, a nice crop of bleeding hearts, and my pet -- a volunteer southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) -- the state tree and state flower of my native Mississippi. Want to learn how to identify trees? Visit the Arbor Day Foundation's What Tree is That animation: www.arborday.org/trees/wtit/