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As a member of the Quarryville Lions Club, I spent a lot of fair week peeling or slicing potatoes while helping at the French fry stand. When a potato with a hollow center appeared, everyone turned to me for an explanation.

My thought was with all the moisture this summer the potato grew too fast and thus the hollow center. What I found amusing is that those present expected me to know all about potatoes. What I didn't admit was that I had only grown potatoes several times in my life and that was in the 1970ies.

I quickly shared what I knew. Potatoes need lots of fertilizer and attract a lot of potato beetles that make an organic approach difficult.

I had heard an interesting idea recently about growing potatoes. The person had laid the seed potatoes on top of the ground and had covered liberally with mulch hay. To harvest he had only to rake or kick off the mulch and pick up the potatoes. That might be fun to try.My intention was not to talk about potatoes but to fulfill a fair time request. I was told not everyone in the southern end is a farmer anymore, and an occasional update about what is happening in the farm fields would be appreciated.

What follows may rank right up there with my knowledge of potatoes, but why not give it a shot?

Right now the field corn is starting to brown. That signals the time to fill silos. There is a week or two period when corn maturity makes the best silage. Not too wet and not too dry. Silage is cattle feed.

Corn left standing into October or later is generally harvested for the grain. This could be a cash crop or again used for animal feed.

Tobacco harvest should be about complete. The area grows several types of tobacco. If you see it hanging in the barn, it is a cigar or chewing type. When you see lathe in tent formations in the field, that may be a cigarette type.

Soybeans are starting to show a yellowish tinge and most likely will be harvested a bit later than field corn. Generally, this is sold but can be processed for animal feed, if desired.

I see fewer pumpkins this year. Perhaps that one was a good cash crop that after several years was grown in surplus. We also will occasionally see fields of vegetables that generally are sold a local stands or taken to a local auction.

We are seeing an increase in the number of farms that seem to be totally committed to growing grass. That is a recent effort to hit the organic milk market and to reduce costs.

Limited amounts of winter grains will be planted as the corn and soybeans are harvested. Some will be for grain and straw while others will simply be grown to provide erosion control and organic material to incorporate into the soil.

That covers most of the bases, but I forgot one thing about potatoes. A bag of potatoes gets rather heavy when those in the front room claim that they have sold five or six tons of potatoes.

With darkness approaching, I found myself in one of those folding chairs on my deck about three days after I wrote the first of the two promised articles about hummingbirds. I was on the opposite side of the house from my hummingbird feeders.

As usual, I was staring off into nature hoping to see whatever I might see. To my surprise, a hummingbird appeared about 15 feet off the ground in a 25 foot tall native American Red Maple. Working a maple tree in September wasn't a search for nectar but a search for insects. His delayed departure suggests that the tree was providing a good meal.

I'll digress slightly to suggest that native plants are strong candidates for the garden. They support a diversity of life usually without showing many symptoms of damage. The hummingbird told me that my maple tree is loaded with insects, yet there is no visual evidence to suspect their presence.

Hummingbirds like openings in forests and the forest edge. Thus they can easily be attracted to rural or suburban gardens that provide a mix of tall trees, shrubs, good nectar plants and some open lawn or meadow.

If you have observed hummingbirds, you may have noticed that they will feed close to the ground but also can frequently be seen perched or seeking food well off the ground. Our deck is high, and the sides often host climbing vines with tubular flowers. If you think vertically, you can get a lot of action in a small space.

Although they seem to be in constant motion, they occasionally do need to rest. Mine have found a favored twiggy limb outside my living room window about 30 feet above the ground. If you lack the tall trees or shrubs, a post with a few brushy branches attached will provide a wonderful substitute.

Conventional wisdom holds that hummingbirds favor red tubular flowers. True, but I have also seen them working actively at pink, orange, blue or yellow flowers. It is reported that they usually avoid flowers with strong fragrance. Also try to cover the season they are here.

In this area, the northward migration starts in April and the return south lasts until early October. We also get a goodly number of nesting birds.

To assist in nest building, supply some fuzzy plants. Included in the list of favorites are the fuzzy stems of cinnamon fern and the common pussy willow and several that will take either will power or neglect to supply. Thistles and dandelions are favorites, too.

When selecting plants, aim for groupings of the same plant to provide plenty of nectar. Although there are many natives that would do the job, even the purists will make exceptions for salvia, a non-native. Salvias should be the backbone of any effort to bring hummingbirds to your garden.

Of course all the other common bird-bringing ideas apply. Think about water, protecting their insect food source with judicial use of insecticides and strict supervision of your cat(s).

I'll end with the best news of all. Hummingbirds have long memories and once they find you, especially during migration, they will return year after year.

Is there anyone who doesn't enjoy seeing a hummingbird sipping nectar from a tubular flower in his garden or working a feeder outside his window? I would be surprised if that one got any "No"s.

On a recent Saturday I visited a distant nursery. Of course it was espionage to see if there were any plants that caught my eye, but the real reason was that they were hosting one of Pennsylvania's leading authorities on hummingbirds. He was catching and banding birds as well as giving a lecture.

The goal was to acquaint people with this little critter and suggest ways for gardeners to attract them to your garden. I had my GPS homed in on the nursery and got to within a tenth of a mile when I found myself on the wrong side of a missing bridge. That made me a few minutes late.

By the time I arrived they had caught a young (this season hatch) male hummingbird that they were going to band. Many people band many different birds. Few band hummingbirds. Generally a small numbered band is placed on the leg. If the bird is later caught again or found dead, researchers gain a few clues about the age, condition and travels of that bird.

A recent re-capture somewhere of a hummingbird that had been banded about ten years earlier was a surprise about the potential longevity of these little birds. Another re-capture found a Pennsylvania banded bird in Canada just north of Montana.

Later in the morning they caught a mature male. He was fat. The young male weighed 2.8 grams while the mature one tipped the scale at 4.2 grams. The speaker suggested that this one was ready to continue south and had enough fat reserve to fly almost nonstop to the Gulf coast. Once there, he would bulk up again and fly across the water to southern Mexico or Central America.

The males head south first, followed by the females and this year's hatchlings. Actually, the males make no domestic contribution except fertilizing the eggs. The female alone builds the nest, incubates the eggs and rears the young. In a good year she might raise up to three broods of two birds each. Most likely she migrates later because she is tired and needs more time to build the reserves for the flight.

Males really do little but fight over who owns the territory where they live. The speaker suggested that if hummingbirds were the size of the common crow it would be safer to live with grizzly bears in your yard. The young males look almost identical to the females. Scientists speculate that if the older males saw competition, they would kill them.

Earlier I mentioned feeders. The speaker suggested that if you regularly see a bird at your feeder you have five. If you see two you have ten. You can do more arithmetic if needed. These birds have long memories and can swarm a feeder in large numbers, especially during migration.

A hummingbird's diet consists of 40% nectar and 60% insects. A mixture of four parts water and one part of white cane or beet sugar is a near match for flower nectar. That's it. Stop right there. You don't need to think balanced diet. A landscape that encourages lots of insects helps though.

Adding honey or using brown sugar is toxic to hummingbirds. Brown sugar is high in iron and the honey is laced with... I won't use a scary word. It won't bother you but it will kill hummingbirds. It is also imperative that the feeders are cleaned regularly. That's almost daily in the heat of summer.

There are some 320 species of hummingbirds in the world. Although they found a fossil recently in Germany, all are in the Americas. Most are in the tropics. We have one common resident, the ruby-throated hummingbird. We do get some unexpected visitors. Maybe up to six western species have been reported straying into Pennsylvania late in the fall.

The speaker suggested that you leave your feeders up until Thanksgiving. Our ruby-throats are gone by October 15. Anything after that would be a very interesting stray.

My space is full and I haven't said much about plants and gardens. But there is always next week when I will try to offer pointers to bring these feisty little birds into the garden.

To say that gardeners walk arm and arm with the weather would be an understatement. Today I will review a number of unrelated observations or recent conversations that illustrate how true that has been this growing season.

Several days ago I called a high school buddy who left town on the first bus after high school graduation and hasn't returned except for brief visits to family and friends. He commented on how green everything was on a recent visit. I hadn't thought about it, but he is right. Seldom do we not get a few weeks to rest our lawn mowers in our typical summers.

This summer I coaxed a few old peach trees into giving us some not always pretty, but quite tasty, peaches. Despite the frequent rains that encourage rots, I pulled this off with a spray at bloom, one in early June and applications every ten days for the weeks leading up to ripening. I think there were a total of four on the early ripening variety and five on the later one. All included fungicides but only the first two included insecticides.

I digressed. What I wanted to point out is that the two trees normally ripen about a month apart.

Our cool temperatures delayed the first one and the second one responded to the heat wave of mid August. I was picking off the second tree by the time I picked the last stragglers off the first one.

Speaking of not using insecticides on the peaches after early June, I wonder where the Japanese Beetles were? I saw about three all year. Possibly an all time low. The soil should have favored their survival and emergence. Was it the temperature? Maybe you had a bunch. If so, keep them. I was quite happy with their absence.

I also am becoming a rather serious birder, bird watcher to those who have not caught the bug. Most states have a web site that posts bird sightings daily. I regularly watch the ones from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. Occasionally I will try to find unusual birds that pop up on the list. I think I am four for 11 in such adventures over the last several years.

The bird lines were mentioned because about a month ago the chatter was asking the question, Where are all the insects? A few nice evening sits on my deck implied the question was justified. With the arrival of the hot weather, the evening sounds on my deck have multiplied exponentially. If you are algebra challenged that means many times.

Now the bird lines are full of reports of birds nesting or re-nesting at dates later than normal. The reasons cited are the abundance of insects. Birds will frequently time their nesting and regulate the number of eggs in the nest based on the availability of food. Most of our small nesting birds are insect eaters.

Switching gears, I will claim ownership of those non-blooming hydrangeas that my daughter reported a month or so ago. The cold winds of late winter /early spring froze the branch tips destroying this season's bloom. Buds on standard hydrangeas form shortly after bloom for the following season. Winterkill or incorrect pruning should explain why hydrangeas don't bloom.

Finally, and I will quit with a conversation I had with someone who moved into the area from one of those states where you don't want to be in the winter without skies, snowshoes and a plug in block warmer for your vehicle. She said that after a year here she was still trying to figure out how to garden in this area. I gave her a few critical dates and pointers but it drove home the point that gardening, or any other serious endeavor, will provide us with a lifetime of learning opportunities. As gardeners, I guess that the quirks of the weather are just another bonus or challenge.

This summer my family spent a week at the beach with my cousin, and the kids splashed in the ocean. We spent almost three weeks with my husband's family in Iowa. The kids loved seeing their other grandparents and playing with older cousins. We finally got home last week after all of our galavanting and were met with a horrifying sight.

Mom was nice enough to drive the lawnmower around our yard, but her largess did not extend to weeding. My flowerbeds were atrocious. I don't even want to mention the vegetable garden.

Yesterday I delivered the kids to Grandma, and rolled up my sleeves. (Apparently she's more interested in babysitting than weeding).

My trusty wheelbarrow and I got a good workout as we removed an embarrassing heap of weeds from my perennial berm. A fair amount of Canada thistle, wild aster, clover, amaranth and other unwelcome volunteers had invaded. A Russian Olive tree seedling had even snuck in. It must not have heard about glasnost.

After pulling what I could, and getting Jon to weed whack what I couldn't, the next step was chemical attack. Once down to bare dirt, a combination of a pre-emergent herbicide and a contact killer, like Roundup should keep the weeds at bay-at least for a while. A healthy skirting of mulch is the next step. Don't be too stingy with mulch. I've learned the hard way that you need at least 3" or else the more aggressive weeds just laugh at you.

Despite the heat and backbreaking labor, I did enjoy my day weeding. I discovered plants I forgot I had. After my baptisia bloomed in the spring, it got completely surrounded with weeds and I almost missed the attractive black seedpods.

My Resurrection lily is blooming profusely. What an interesting plant. The foliage comes up in the spring, then fades away without flowering. If you patiently wait until the end of July, you are rewarded with a profusion of pink lilies on spare stems.

I was happy to see that my irises were still marked from the spring, patiently waiting to be divided. That can be done anytime now. Maybe I'll get to it next week.

Fall-blooming sedums and asters are budded and beginning to bloom. Summer garden phlox still looks good, though it did not benefit from the shade offered by the weeds. Black-eyed Susans are the star attraction now, though are beginning to bully their way into other spaces and need a bit of restraint. A few holes emerged that will soon be filled with Russian sage, a new red yarrow, and a few others that have recently caught my eye.

This year my peony bushes are looking a little more ratty than usual. The cool weather and moisture has exacerbated the powdery mildew problems often seen on monarda, peonies, phlox, lilacs, and heliopsis. While unattractive, it is usually not fatal. I trimmed my peonies back a bit, but I wouldn't recommend cutting them to the ground yet.

A yearling lilac bush has already set buds for next spring, reminding me it is too late to prune spring bloomers for fear of losing flowers. Jon did cut back the yew bushes that were blocking the entrance to the house. New electric hedge trimmers made that job much more tolerable. I'll never forget my father- in-law doing that job with a pocket knife two years ago.

Perhaps most satisfying, was looking over my shoulder at the now-orderly bed. It's not often we can see real progress made. Our gardens reward us with a continual display if we just give them a little time and effort.

Now I guess I have to clean my house.