LINKS AND SITES TO VISIT
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Pictures: Erik Hals ; Bubba 'n Dad (Mike Burger); Nancy Bea Miller; Walter Muma. (last 3 shots are contributed photos);
Bubba N Friends -- home page of Mike Burger, the technical genius (and great father) who makes the site happen.
Ontario Wildflowers -- some of Walter Muma’s amazing work- check his other sites, too! He’s been a loyal friend and supporter of TheMondayGarden.com since the beginning.
Genrecookshop -- My cousin Nancy Bea Miller’s blog—just awesome- make your day.
Erik Hals' photography -- the photos of Stamford resident, Erik Hals, who generously shares his prodigious technical know-how to improve the quality of the photos on this site.
Friends of Felines -- cat rescue and adoption, Fairfield County, CT – good-hearted people, working hard to do good with great cats needing good homes. Please support them.
Flint River Ranch -- source of my Kerry’s prime-quality dry cat food. The sellers, Paul and Dixon, are terrific people. You can post your pets’ pictures in their pet gallery, and, if you’re lucky, win pet-of-the-month and get a free bag of food for your favorite animal welfare group.
picture: The Mill River Park at cherry blossom time, spring 2006
The City of Stamford, CT -- the City where I live and where most of the pictures on the site were taken. Here's our tree ordinance, the Keep Stamford Beautiful site (with recycling information), and our first Community Supported Agriculture group.
The Bartlett Arboretum, Stamford, CT – a relatively small but delightful garden with acres of uncultivated forest, swamp, and meadow and, of course, the pond. It’s connected by a woodland trail to the Stamford Museum and Nature Center , which has even more acres of mature forest, suitable for hiking, beeches, owls, and an occasional coyote.
The Rippowan River, known locally as the Mill River, runs through Stamford on its way to the Long Island Sound. This totally cool USGS site shows the river’s flow in real time from a satellite uplink just north of Stamford’s Scalzi Park/Cubeta Stadium. Along this stretch of the Mill River , the spring beauties, ducks, kingfishers, orioles, muskrats, pussy willows, and alders flourish (or at least make some kind of a living), in a narrow corridor between a major highway and the sports fields.
A few blocks further south, the river banks are being redeveloped according to the Mill River Corridor Plan, with help from the Mill River Park Collaborative (includes an awesome aerial view of the river winding its way through town) and the Army Corps of Engineers. The project includes liberating the river from high cement walls that have prevented this body of water from being a proper river, with wet lands and flood plains, since the time of the mill. They are also taking down the old mill dam, and perhaps, someday, the salmon will be back.
SoundWaters --conservation education group- based at Stamford CT’s Cove Island, one of the most popular places in town with the birds and the humans.
StamfordPlus is Stamford’s brand new (in December 2005) quarterly lifestyle magazine, which, of course, includes horticultural information from TheMondayGarden.com.
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Picture: Jack Scheper of Floridata.com, a world-class horticultural site (contributed photo); visitors come from all over the world to see the Brooklyn Botanic Garden-- ditto their web site; Michael Waddell, a Wikipedia volunteer (contributed photo).
My thanks to one and all for making this wealth of information only a mouse click away:
My Favorite Top-Flight Plant Data Bases:
Floridata
Virginia Tech
UConn
They are all excellent. Floridata, in particular, has to be a labor of love.
Germplasm Resources Information Network - (GRIN) -- USDA, ARS, National Genetic Resources Program. Serious taxonomic information; good links
USDA - Natural Resource Conservation Service -- -- invasive plants data base; good links
Plant Invaders of Mid-Atlantic Natural Areas --The National Park Service and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service guide -- great piece of work on invasives; you can order a print copy from the site.
The US Forest Service -- FEIS data base (love these guys!)
Purdue University, Cooperative Extension Service a great reference tool on plants poisonous to livestock and pets
Botany.com -- a commercial site with good general botany information
Connecticut Botanical Society -- the wildflowers
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden --a favorite place; great web site, too
Wikipedia --the free encyclopedia- great general resource.
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Pictures: Charlie's car actually works; Pamela's urban-savvy raccoon; check Ginny's site to learn about stinkhorn fungi. (First two photos are contributed)
Dave's Garden is an interactive website where some 160,000+ members share all kinds of gardening information, including information on plant sources and sellers; the site also facilitates plant swapping, and much more.
Tree Biology -- The author, Tom Kimmerer, calls it “news and trends in the biology of woody plants”; links alone are incredible. For the non-professional, this is an eye full; and I think the professionals like it too.
Marietta Natural History Society -- in Washington County, Ohio -- a naturalist’s treasure trove. The local flora and fauna section is must see (the butterflies are awesome, then there are the turtles….). The quarterly newsletter archives are full of interesting things that we’d all be better for knowing. Also, they have their tree census on-line (I am soo envious!).
John Shelley's Garden Center & Nursery -- in Felton, PA doesn’t sell on-line, it just offers a wealth of common sense gardening advice that puts the health of the planet, the plant, and your wallet before making a short-term profit. If every plant nursery gave advice this sound, the planet would be a whole lot better for it. (Caution: if I'm a raving pinko, he makes the NRA look like bleeding hearts -- good to know that we all agree on saving the planet!) Check his links, too. They're great.
Moosey's Country Garden -- an incredible site reflecting an incredible garden in West Melton, New Zealand, the garden is full of roses, cats, and all kinds of delights. The site has loads of wonderful pictures and great information plus web graphics to-die-for. Take your lunch and stay for a while.
Susan Amoy's Bonsai -- A great bonsai artist living and working in my adopted hometown, Brooklyn.
Leaves of Grass -- a wonderful nature blog from Brazil started in 2005 by Sonia de Amorim Mascaro.
Connecticut Gardner -- horticultural magazine by a fellow Connecticut Master Gardener who knows perennial gardening - good articles are deer and ticks but skip the part about using pesticides.
Florist Directory the world of cut flowers— a very different view of the plant kingdom
Robin Corell's love of tree is what makes his wood sculpture and furniture so exquisite. Go to his site for the pictures of his work but stay to learn about responsible choices when buying wood produces; and see how beautiful the finished lumber can be. Clearly, he's one of us tree worshipers.
The Transplanted Gardener As child, Ginny Stibolt, now a naturalist with a master's degree in plant taxonomy, dug fish bait where I now photograph along the Mill River in southern Connecticut. She moved on from Connecticut, to Maryland, and then to northern Florida, where she now gardens and writes about eco-safe gardening. If you don't know about stinkhorn fungi and rain barrels; it's time that you found out.
ElectroniCar -- Charlie Mac Arthur is in Maine trying to grapple with the future while many of us are just letting it happen: Some of my favorite quotes: "We Americans consume our own weight in petroleum products, each of us every week!" "The best time to conserve something is while there is still something to conserve."
Campbell's Marsh Katie Mosher-Smith's blog about natives and invasives focusing on a 75-acre wetland on Lake Ontario in upstate New York.
Control of Chinch Bug Without Pesticides David G Patriquin's excellent work on defeating unwanted lawn pests without killer-chemicals
Thomasburg (Ontario) Walks Pamela Martin's wonderful blog where there's always something new and unexpected; and you can follow the trials of escaped Caramel Bunny, now making a living in the woods.
The Dandelion Terminator I don’t approve of terminating dandelions in general but this tool make short work of many of whatever lawns weeds you don't want. See Issue 202
[email me at ssweeney44@yahoo.com if you want to add your link]