Winter Cardinal. Window panes look on window panes, and the warmth of rooms he knows goes out across the ash gray limbs of freezing winter maples, teaching lessons he has yet to learn. Reading glasses rest on books not read. The authors whisper amongst themselves, short paragraphs in the time they have left to reflect. Darkness comes a last time, forever, and yet the work remains, ...Tomorrow. My heart pounds at the coming of night as I await the reward I seek as I reflect on the words I've given as I retrace the steps I took as I reconcile my legacy as I thank you as I praise you as I speak your name. Beyond the window panes an open doorway, hearthfire lends the aroma of love and home, work, pleasure, sleep. Endless life. Reading glasses lie atop the books not read. Authors rest a moment at the entrance of a friend.

The Birds.

There are many, many bird nests in our Greenhouses this year. Even more than last year. They build the nests in the Fall, maintain them over the Winter and, come Spring, produce babies to replace themselves. The chirping in the Spring after the eggs hatch is tenderly musical. I help feed them — seed, peanut asser, suet and whatever is appropriate and available — to help them survive. Birds are one of the most fragile of all creatures, yet one of the most rewarding to have on anyone's property and gardens. I do all I can to help out.
Last Winter, I used to buy worms (nightcrawler fishing bait in little plastic containers) at a local store, pick out the worms from the dirt and leave them on plates by each nest for the birds to dine on. Yum. I'll be doing that this year if they carry fishing bait again. Otherwise, it'll just be seed, peanut asser and suet as dining fare for the birds.
You should have heard the shit they gave me at the Rutter's convenience store in Stewartstown, where I bought the worms. Just to f*ck their heads up, I'd buy some bread and catsup or mayonnaise too. I told them I could get three good sandwiches from one tin of live worms. Everyone was stunned and shut up quickly. Hey, it's a small Pennsylvania town. Heh, heh, heh...
I often — usually a minimum of twice per day — have to wade through 3-4ft of snow to get to the Greenhouses to replenish their food supplies and back to the Main Complex. That journey through the snow sucks, but it's a nice feeling to help those creatures. Under so much snow, birds can't find enough to eat and readily starve to death. They must eat twice their weight in food each day to survive. I leave the Greenhouse doors open during the day so the birds may come and go, but the doors are secured at night and the birds are in for the duration. In really bad weather, I also have to take the food to them several times each day. We go through 100+lbs of seed and many jars of peanut asser each season. It'll soon be time for a feeding before I lock up and leave tonight.
This Winter, help out the birds living near or at your property: feed them. Use a good quality seed blend, a seed and peanut asser mixture for super protein, and some occasional suet (fat) — there are many ways to keep them alive over the Winter. And keep their water supply free of ice; I use a small floating heater that any farm supply store carries. (We carry the same item for fish ponds and water gardens.) Then you have their company for the rest of the year at your residence and in your gardens. They are a very fragile animal. They depend upon you to help them out in the Winter. Don't fail them. Then, they're your friends for the rest of the year; keeping insect populations under control, adding beauty and song to your gardens.
For some very good birding care links, visit Dr. Deb, (at Florida State University) at The Armchair Gardener, and get the information you need to care for the birds this Winter.

Expansion Plans Underway.

After meeting with my landscape foreman and the sales rep from a Maryland pole-building company, I've signed the contract for another 30' x 60' Storage Building to be installed during January 1997, if Winter doesn't set-in too early. We're doing the excavation and grading ourselves; they'll come in a erect the structure in 2 days so that it'll be ready for Spring use.
Meanwhile, we're re-ordering the entire site's layout so that the increased amounts of nursery stock can more easily be accessed by us and by customers. We've outgrown the physical layout that's served us so well for the past seven years. Tempus fugit. Over the Winter, my primary crew will continue — weather permitting — to work on this massive undertaking, so that Spring's arrival won't catch us unaware of the shortcomings that have developed in the last year or two of operation. A large CAT bulldozer and front-end loader will be arriving in two weeks to start the process. My foreman has already laid out most of the grades with the transit.
The original 20' x 30' Storage Building that we installed seven years ago will soon be fully-converted into the Landscape Design Office and Foreman's Offices. It's gotten kind of cramped recently with way too much stuff being 'stored' there, while it is primarily needed for other activities.

Wrong Tradition.

Every year, The City of New York gets a 90ft-plus evergreen donated to the cause: the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.
It's quite a spectacle. When I worked right next door at a very famous ad agency in Mid-Town Manhattan years ago, a group of us from the agency would spend the evening — along with 100,000 or so other people — waiting for the once-stately tree-lighting ceremony to begin. Workmen for the city would have spent 2-3 days preparing the tree: securing it upright, installing 26,000 or more lights, handling miles of wire, cables and switches, and finally, making sure the lights worked for the ceremony, as the world watched.
I guess they haven't read my ad about Dead Trees v Live Trees, or they'd cancel the cut-dead tree and plant a magnificent live tree just once and let the world enjoy it for the next hundred years. Maybe one day they'll wise-up and stop Killing a 60-year old specimen tree like that for a paltry two or three weeks useage. Rockefeller should have thought of that before NYC made it a repugnant tradition. But it is beautiful and awesome; if only it were still alive.
Buy only live trees and plant them on your property. If a live tree is too much to handle, buy an artifical tree and save the money you would have foolishly spent on a worthless, cut-dead tree. Then buy one in the Spring, plant it and enjoy the living tree for many years to come. Cut, dead Christmas Trees are a terrible tradition. Maybe the scummy, mercenary street vendors will cut down and bring fewer dead trees to sell if fewer people stop to buy. Start a trend: buy only living Christmas Trees. That's all we've ever sold.

J o h nS h e l l e y

Photography by Janice