Hello, dear friends and gardeners, it has been a few weeks since we have talked here.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving with family and friends.

We have had several overcast moist, quiet and serene days as this is written. Moody AFB has been silent, no flying, no bombing or strafing, no choppers buzzing above, an unusual occurrence.

I spent one night outside with a gun hoping to reduce the hog pack by one but no luck. They were so close I could hear them eating pecans and moving around in the bushes but only saw a shadow once and not good enough for a shot.

The damage to everything is driving me crazy! They have destroyed most daylilies, rooted up a blooming camellia, literally turned the soil of the orchard and are rooting the yard into a mass of holes and loose dirt.

They have eaten almost all of the pecans, rooted and overturned pots, rooted up Amaryllis and other bulbs. I constantly have visions of killing them.

This is the season of red hot pokers, kniphofia uvaria. They are magnificent, a messy mound of strap-like foliage with the three- to four-foot-tall pokers rising to five feet or taller. The bright red and yellow torches outshine everything in the garden now.

They are perennial with the clumps growing larger around every year. Hardy plants that are drought resistant and bloom when not much is flowering.

Pokers always bloom in the late fall and are prone to damage from heavy frost. Only the blooms are harmed, the foliage may be killed down by a severe freeze but they come back in late spring. If a damaging frost is expected, the pokers can be covered by a brown grocery sack for some protection.

You may have noticed cassia trees, Cassia fistula, flowering around town. They are small trees, usually under 20-25 feet tall and totally covered with bright yellow flowers. The trees have a round shape with multi-branching trunks. Cassias grow unnoticed all year until they bloom then they jump out of the landscape with their brilliant blooms. Commonly called golden shower tree.

There are several species of cassia but C. fistula is the one that will thrive in our area. The flowers are small but produced in great abundance, the flower form is pea or legume shaped. Seed pods form after the flowers fade. The seed pods look like green beans, growing six to seven inches long. Most trees are propagated from seeds.

My trees in town volunteered seedlings, references say the seeds are hard to get to sprout. Mine fell into mulch and by spring little ones would come up.

Some species of cassia grow larger, so tall they are eaten by giraffes, others have long clusters of flowers up to a foot long in the form of wisteria blooms and seed pods two feet long. Many flower red or orange but mostly yellow.

If you want to have lovely, great smelling sweet peas, Lathyrus odoratus, in spring, now is the time to prepare the soil and plant seed. Choose the site in nearly full sun and with something for the vines to climb. A trellis, wire fence or small shrub they can grow through to support vines and still get sunlight.

Dig a trench 18 inches deep, loosen the soil on the bottom and plant the seeds, cover the seeds with two to three inches of soil and leave the rest of the trench uncovered or open.

Water well, when the seed sprout and grow a few inches tall, gently pull dirt into the trench, covering the lower inches of the vines. Leave uncovered most of the vine’s growth, continue letting the vines grow and covering the lowest inches with soil. This will continue until the vines grow out of the trench and the dirt is even with the rest of the area.

After this point, the vines will begin to grow on their support.

Seed are planted deep to prevent spells of heat from stunting the vines. If their roots are kept cool, they will grow long enough to mature and bloom.

Sweet peas do not need much fertilizer and never a high nitrogen formula. Too much will cause the vines to grow lots of foliage and few flowers.

California poppies need to be planted at this time for late winter and early spring flowering. Sow the tiny seed over weeded and raked soil. They do not have to be covered as rain and gentle watering will work the seed under the soil. The up and down temperatures we experience in late fall aid the seeds to sprout.

Again, too much feeding will produce too much foliage, a high middle number formula, phosphorus, will provide all they need. Any bloom buster fertilizer is sufficient to form the best flowering.

These poppies like cool temperatures, combined with full sun, that is the way to have a bumper crop of pretty flowers. In recent years, breeding has produced many colors other than the traditional yellow and golds.

They are now available in luscious shades of pink, coral, salmon and pale red, scatter some of the newer colors into the reseeding yellows. When up a few inches and growing, frosty nights are not a problem for poppies.

Other species such as “Shirley” and “Iceland” poppies require the same treatment and will grow a little slower, but can take more warm temperatures in spring and continue blooming.

Hot dry spells in early spring will often cause poppies to start to fade back but watering will carry them through until cooler days return.

Christmas cactus bloom buds are forming now. Do not fertilize your cactus now, it is too late and may cause the buds to drop, losing flowers.

This is a critical time for the cactus. Too much water or too little can cause buds to drop. The soil should be moist at one inch below the surface, if dry at one inch down, water until it drips out the drainage hole, then wait until the soil is dry again before watering.

Short-light days trigger them to flower, keep out of bright sunlight until through flowering. In spring they can go back outside to wait until fall to start their cycle again. Feed through the summer, once monthly with half strength liquid fertilizer or slow release granuals.

If beauty berry bushes, Callicarpa americana, have lost their bright purple berries or been eaten by birds, they can be pruned now. They flower on new wood so a hard pruning will not affect next year’s flowers or berries.

Mine have branches sticking out all around them and are due to be cut back as soon as I can get to them. I don’t know if they can be rooted as seedlings are always coming up near the bushes.

While the soil is moist pull up as many perennial weeds as possible to reduce dealing with them next spring and summer.

That’s all my space if photos are to be shared. Use these warm days to get ahead of winter chores and maybe have a chance to sit back and enjoy the natural beauty of our world.

Susan Grooms lives and gardens in Lowndes County.