Posts Tagged ‘white pines’

Decorating your Home with Holiday Greenery

Saturday, November 20th, 2010

Decorations from Your Landscape

Feeling creative this season? Evergreen decorations have been a part of winter festivals since ancient times. They have been used for centuries to represent everlasting life and hope for the return of spring. Take a walk around your own yard to see if there are some good candidates for decorative holiday greenery: Southern Magnolia, Holly, Junipers, Cedars, Firs, Spruce, Mountain Laurel, Pine, Cryptomeria, Yew, Boxwood, Pyracantha, Leyland Cypress, Arborvitae and Nandina (many more!) may all be pruned to provide Christmas greenery. There are a few points to remember when collecting these decorative materials:

1. Remember that you are pruning and in the wrong season. Remove the branch or stem at its base where it intersects another branch or stem. Prune with an eye toward thinning the entire plant towards your goal shape for better air and light circulation in the growing season.

2. When you bring your collection inside, re-cut the ends of each stem or branch and then split them either with a knife or by smashing with a hammer just before plunging them into warm water. The greenery needs to remain in warm water for 8-24 hours. Allow to dry and then spray all foliage with “Wilt-Pruf.” Do not use antitranspirants on juniper berries, cedar or blue spruce. The product can damage the wax coating that gives these plants. Keep completed wreaths, garlands and arrangements in a cool location until use. Display fresh greenery and fruits out of the sun and away from heat.

3. Poisonous berries are found on holly plants, yews, mistletoe, ivy plants, Jerusalem cherry, bittersweet and crown of thorns. The pearly white berries of mistletoe are particularly toxic. Keep all these plants out of the reach of children and curious pets.

Plan to replace greenery and fruits throughout the holiday season if they become less than fresh. Never keep dried out greens near a lit fireplace.

Decorating with Greens

Many different types of decorations can be made with fresh greenery. Some traditional types are garlands, swags, tabletops, kissing balls, and wreaths. A number of different types of forms can be stuffed with sprigs or branches to create topiaries. Kissing balls are a safer alternative to the usual mistletoe sprig (beware of mistletoe berries).

Projects:

How to Make a Holiday Kissing Ball

Holiday kissing balls are often made of short sprigs of boxwood or other greenery and hung as an alternative to the traditional mistletoe sprig.

The easiest way to construct a kissing ball is to use a round potato for the base. The moisture in the potato will help keep the cut greenery fresh. Soak greenery to be used in water overnight. Insert evenly sized sprigs of the selected green into the potato until it is completely covered. If you have difficulty inserting the sprigs, make a starter hole for each with a metal skewer. Make the evergreen sprays form an even, well-rounded ball. After the ball is completed, decorate it with ribbons, berries, mistletoe or whatever else you wish. You can find a huge selection of mini-decorations at craft stores and garden centers’ Holiday Shops. Fasten a long piece of wire to the ball so it can be hung from a chandelier, doorway, or window.

How to Make Mini Christmas Trees or Topiaries


These are so beautiful you’ll want to make several at once – kids love to decorate them with child-size ornaments. Save 2 for your own display and give the rest away as spectacular hostess gifts.

Foam forms are available at craft stores. Prepare boxwood as described above and take sprigs of it or smaller leaf evergreens and push into the form until covered. Once it looks like a miniature christmas tree or the form you choose is fully covered decorate with ribbons, bows, mini-bulbs and ornaments, even strings of mini-lights you can get at local craft and garden centers. Keep in a shallow dish or festive pot (bonsai pots from garden centers are a good choice) and water once a day to keep the form moist.

…or take the busy Washingtonian route: just go to your local Garden Center for huge selections of already prepared greenery. Regardless of where it comes from, greenery crowns your house with nature’s simple reminder that you are uniquely blessed and there is always hope and renewal in the new year. Have a great holiday season – from WHW.

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White Pines are no match for severe storms

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

White pines are easy prey for storms.

With all these intense storms that are occuring in 2010 in our area, it might be a good time to take a good look at your large trees.

Trees are down all over the area – particularly white pines. The faster the growing tree, the softer the wood. Evergreens are more prone to failure due to excessive snowfall or storms according to Wayne Knoll, City Forester of Rockville, MD.

White pines really aren’t suitable for most residential neighborhoods – they can grow 75 to 100 feet by 25 feet in diameter and there isn’t enough room for the tree structure and your house on the same lot. After 3-4 years they can grow up to 4 feet a year. That once-pretty screen you planted between the yards can turn into a giant, brittle, flyswatter (see image) that can fall on a home, car, take down live wires, or cause bodily harm. The big white pine has a crown structure that lends itself to big, broken branches. The Norway spruce, the amount of surface on those needles collect ice and snow and become extremely heavy and also a very popular one, the Norway maple which have such big, thick crowns they present themselves as a target for winds, ice, rain and snow – and lightning.

The root system of a tree goes out well beyond what we call the drip line, where those last branches are dripping water. It’s sort of a myth that the roots end there. Any damage that occurs to those roots, especially the root fibrils at the end of the roots is going to have an impact in the crown several years later. This can happen with housing construction, addition of sidewalks, driveways – they all can cause damage down the line.Check with a Certified arborist to assess your trees and advise you before construction.Be aware of any dead and dying branches. Look for any branches that have been pruned in the past, some of the pruning may’ve been done improperly. You also want to be looking for any fungus that may be growing and weakening your tree. Make sure you’ve checked trees that have been trimmed because of power lines, trees with leaves that fall early or the leaves turn brown and brittle.

Consumer Awareness Note: If you do have a downed tree do not fall prey to “lumberjacks”.They are tree cutters who swarm into storm areas from out of town and start knocking on doors. They are uncertified, uninsured, and unlicensed in our areas  - it’s against the law. They want to perform the most dangerous of tree care services during times of storm-stress to make a quick buck – with no protection for you. State Departments of Natural Resources have been very busy canvassing neighborhoods and ticketing these characters.

Just in case you need some help, here’s a storm update…

Another powerful storm rolled into the metro area today bringing down trees, power lines, flooding roads and Metro stations.

It became black as night , then the lightning started – “At one point we had over 800 lightning strikes,” says ABC 7 Meteorologist Chris Naille.

ABC 7 Chief Meteorologist Doug Hill says weather trackers reported the rain coming down at a rate of 4 to 5 inches an hour. The storms include half-inch to three-quarter inch hail. The storm is still pounding Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore. ”I think we could do this all over again this afternoon,” Hill says.

At 8:24 a.m. Pepco reported 103,009 customers without electricity.

Again: here’s the numbers to call if you need to contact your power company. Print these out while you can!

If you need to contact your electricity company here are the numbers and may we suggest you print these out for late if your power goes out in the future:

Update:

After so many complaints about outages that lasted days during recent storms, Pepco has come out with a five-year plan to increase its reliability.

No. 1 on Pepco’s reliability plan will be the tree trimming. In addition to regular tree trimming of older trees, which will increase the space between overhead wires and existing trees, Pepco will work with communities to remove trees that are dead, in poor health or that would hurt the distribution system if they fell.

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