I have not spent time in the garden lately and it’s been a few weeks since I shared what is happening around my home.

The weather has been intolerably cold lately that we have been sitting by the fireplace. After dropping my kids to school this morning, I took a look around my backyard and found a couple of interesting things.

The pipes are fine. What you see on the picture is the result of rain and wind on a very cold night.  Last month, my husband covered all the outdoor faucets and exposed pipes with insulation and we drained the pipes a few days ago. Click here to learn about keeping your pipes from freezing.

Nana Nandina, one of my favorite plants for Winter color, with its red winter foliage.

A couple of weeks ago we cut down the Raywood Ash Tree and last weekend we said goodbye to our Sweet Almond Tree. Around June of last year it began bleeding sap and eventually died. We later found out that it was due to flatheaded borers. According to the website Yardener.com, adult borers are beetles, flat looking and colored metallic brown to dull gray. They emerge in the spring and females lay eggs in crevices in the tree bark. These hatch into yellowish-white worms, which promptly burrow into the trunk at the site where the eggs were laid. If the host tree is vigorous and healthy, these burrowing worms may be drowned by the sap. Weak trees fall victim to the borers’ activity as they tunnel in the trunk, producing sawdust-like material (called frass) and eventually girdling the tree. White, foamy sap leaking from cracks in the bark is a sign that borers are at work. Successive generations of borers widen tree wounds, burrowing more deeply into the heartwood of the tree.

I hope you are all staying warm during this holidays.

By JM Perez

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