Tag Archives: tree

Landscaping

Many Types Of Buds

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Observing tree buds in Winter can he adventure. Each is a miracle of nature. Each has been packed with care – next Spring’s flowers and leaves in miniature meticulously folded and sealed. Each contains just enough oxygen and moisture to keep alive until the miracle of Spring unfolds them.

A mature elm may hold as many as six million buds, yet only a percentage will open. If squirrels eat some, if others freeze or arc damaged, nature has supplied enough to give a tree full foliage. Winter buds are a tree’s diadem. Some are as colorful as precious jewels. They come in many forms and unusual shapes. The architectural pattern of nature is in spirals and ovals.

Look closely and Winter buds become works of art. Some contain only flowers; some hold leaves, still others contain both flowers and leaves.

The flowering dogwood by your door has fat silver-gray shoe-button-like buds at the ends of twigs. These are next Spring’s flowers. Now observe the gray, slender and sharp buds along the twigs, arranged in spiral form. These hold next Spring’s leaves.

Their colors are kaleidoscopic. Buds of a shadbush are rich brown red, fringed with silver hairs. Sweet gum buds are highly polished mahogany red, broad at the base and tapering sharply. Buds of red maples are crimson tridents, and note how all maple buds arc grouped in threes at the end of each twig, with the tallest one in the center.

A willow bud is half an inch long, tapering gradually to a rounded tip. Pussy willow buds are blue-black mottled with red at the top; swamp willows have an orange hue, black willow buds are glossy, wine red.

White oak buds end in blunt ovals and are clustered at the tip of a twig. The horse chestnut boasts a big end bud, too. Cut one open and inside will be arranged overlapping groups of leaves, folded like a pleated dress, curved and pressed together.

All buds are arranged according to the spiral pattern of a tree and sealed with water-proof wax, or covered with fur-like hair. Apple buds seem woolly. Aspen and horse chestnut buds are coated with sticky resin. Those of a Balm of Gilead seem to have just come dripping from a glue pot.

Next Spring this wax will melt and each little leaf and flower petal will come marching out of the bud in geometric design, like a West Point cadet on parade. It’s adventure to get acquainted with these miracles in-the-making in Winter time.

 

Gardening

Ways To Enhance The Garden Landscape At Night

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There’s no better way to add functionality, aesthetic value, and security to your home than to give your garden light. Your garden has taken countless hours of work to create the perfect atmosphere, so why should you stop enjoying it just because the sun goes down? There are several different types of light your can cast on your garden.

Using solar and low voltage lights are low-cost ways to make your landscape glow. Here are some ideas on how to use garden lights in your landscape.

Use low voltage flood lights in front of an area to create a glowing tableau in the nighttime garden. Spotlight garden focal points with brighter lights. You can use low voltage lights suspended from tree limbs, arches, poles, and hidden by structures to pick out a small area and accent it with a stronger brilliance.

Line the pathways with beautiful lamps for the effect and safety. Lights can follow along a garden stairway for safety or meander along the course of a walkway. A curve of glittering solar lamps snaking up a hillside can trace out an intriguing design in the darkness.

Accent the most dramatic trees in the garden. Illuminating the trunk and branches of a tree from below draws attention to their beauty and adds enough of an ambient glow that the garden can be safely navigated at night. These will simply magnify the beauty of your place.

Low voltage lights use very little electricity and there are styles that are fancy and inexpensive, simple and good for any budget or somewhere in between. You will need a transformer. The size will depend on how many lights you will need.

There is little concern for electric shock with low voltage and you can clip your lights to a running cord, placing them wherever you will get the best effects in your garden. In short, low voltage lights are easy to use and don’t have to cost a lot to be effective.

For those who prefer not to deal with cable, solar-powered lights are available. These lights are more expensive, however, and usually require an average of 8 hours of direct sunlight per day to function properly.

Scott Rodgers is an extremely knowledgeable author on electrician works. His commendable exposure on lighting works has helped a lot many Palmetto Electricians and Adairsville Electricians . You are welcome to reprint this article – but get your own unique content version here.