This is the place where I stare into space.

Summer finally arrived at my patio on Sunday. Because the weather was too cool in May and too stormy in June, I hadn’t been able to take up my usual comfy spot to enjoy the view. I love to garden, but I love to sit and admire the results even more.

While I sat there on Sunday I was able to watch a young robin try to get the ripe red berries off a new shrub. Because the branches aren’t strong enough to hold it yet, the bird had to hop from the ground and quickly try to grab a berry in its beak. That bird didn’t give up until the last berry was gone.

I was sitting so still a squirrel didn’t see me as he poked his little head through the lattice trellis and dropped down to the feeder for sunflower seeds. He’d pick up a plump seed, hold it between his paws and ferociously saw through it, then drop the shell and pick up another.

If you spot damage like this on your rose leaves, congratulate yourself. It means beneficial leafcutter bees find your landscape a good nesting site.

What’s bugging you in the garden? For me, it’s mosquitoes.

With such a rainy June, these pests are out in full force now and I really don’t like it. Fortunately, a few squirts of insect repellent takes care of the problem quickly.

This shouldn’t be the case with insect pests in the garden. Some gardeners I know reach for the insecticide the moment a pest appears, but others are like me and take a wait and see approach.

No matter what’s bugging you in the garden, there are many choices for waging war on insect pests. Even though I rarely resort to chemical warfare, I’m glad to have that in my arsenal. I just don’t automatically use it first.

The best use for coffee grounds is as an addition to the compost pile.

The “Grounds for your Garden” program started by Starbucks in 1999 is a terrific example of win-win-win-win in business.

By giving away tons of used coffee grounds, the company has been able to recycle a product it would normally throw away, frugal gardeners get a free soil amendment, compost piles get a good source of nitrogen and birds, bees, butterflies and other insects are the ultimate beneficiaries.

Used coffee grounds are a good soil amendment but, contrary to popular belief grounds don’t make a good fertilizer when used alone. The best use of used coffee grounds is to add them to the compost bin as another source of “green.”

The researchers at the Oregon State University Extension Service say when coffee grounds are used as a soil amendment “keep them damp and add some nitrogen fertilizer when you do this.” Apparently the grounds feed microbes in the soil, which depletes nitrogen and needs to be replaced.

Something as simple as planting flowers can be a powerful tool in crime prevention.

I recently read an article on how a group of concerned citizens got growing to reduce the number of burglaries in their Tokyo neighborhood.

When the number of break-ins in one area reached nearly 2000, it was time to put “Operation Flower” into action.

Operation Flower grew from one neighborhood watch group that discovered there were fewer problems in buildings with flowers planted outside. It seems with more people planting and maintaining flowers, there were more people keeping an eye on the neighborhood.

Volunteers are asked to plant seeds along the side streets and in front of their homes and then to tend them. As gardeners looked after their flowers, they were also able to lookout for any potential trouble.

These crime prevention efforts paid off for the neighborhood and its residents. The number of burglaries dropped 80 percent.

The number of home gardeners grew this year, so there’s bound to be more people looking for ways to preserve the harvest.

Last week my local grocer was running a special on canning supplies, but there wasn’t anything special about those prices.

If you’re growing your garden to save money on groceries, it might not make sense to invest in canning supplies when there are some other, more frugal alternatives for taking the harvest from yard to table. I’ve never owned a water bath canner, but I’ve been growing and preserving my herbs and vegetables for years.

Most fruits and vegetables can be prepared for freezing which eliminates the need for canning supplies. I think roasting and freezing tomatoes is an easier and more delicious way to preserve them.

Fall wouldn’t be the same without the fun of roasting chile peppers, peeling them, filling baggies full and stacking them in the freezer. Green beans are blanched then frozen.

The circlehoe is a gardening tool for weeding and cultivating close to plants without harming delicate roots.

Many years ago when I first started gardening, I had only a few tools: a round shovel, a heavy-duty rake and a traditional wide-blade hoe.

When I hoed my garden to get rid of weeds, I dug in hard and ended up chopping up some of the very plants I was trying to protect.

I wish I would’ve had a circlehoe back then.

The circlehoe is another one of my favorite gardening tools because it doesn’t let me make deadly mistakes in the garden. Unlike my old hoe, the circular design of its head lets me do close-in weeding without worrying about accidentally chopping down a plant or hurting its foliage.

In fact, chopping is a thing of the past. The circlehoe requires only a smooth pulling and slicing move to make fast work of the dreaded weeding chore. Very slick.

Agave, yucca and other durable succulents grow well in the High Plains and Intermountain Region.

One of the speakers at the Plant Select annual meeting was Dan Goodspeed, the Mountain States Wholesale Nursery sales rep for Colorado, Idaho, Texas and New Mexico. Dan’s presentation was designed to help plant people think about yucca and other desert plants in a new way.

“These are the quintessential western plants,” he said. “The one thing we can grow here better than anyone else is grasses and these are big grasses. Just think of them as Big Blue Gramma.”

Mountain States Wholesale Nursery, a grower based in Arizona, has had a 15-year partnership with the Denver Botanic Gardens. Many of the yucca and other succulents at the gardens came from Mountain States and demonstrate how well these plants grow in our area.

Today’s guest is Michelle Cobb, owner of Blue Iris Landscapes in Colorado’s Littleton/Highlands Ranch area. She offers some helpful tips for attracting butterflies to your garden.

As a landscape artist and designer, Michelle Cobb has 15 years’ experience creating landscapes that creatively enhance the lives of others. She’s a member of the Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado (ALCC) and is also a Feng Shui practitioner.

Michelle is very passionate about what she does and she told me her work is much more than just choosing the right plants for a space.

“I create feelings, experiences, memorable moments for people,” she says. “It’s my passion and mission to transform an outdoor space into something that’s infused with someone’s personality, style and energy.”

Michelle enjoys design projects that allow her to create the ideal space for a client. One of her favorite projects is a 9-acre bird sanctuary that includes a community vegetable garden, orchard, cutting garden, picnic area and butterfly garden.

The Red Yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) will be a Plant Select recommendation for 2010.

Plant Select’s annual meeting yesterday at Denver Botanic Gardens was a chance to learn about what’s new with the program, tour the gorgeous gardens, see old friends, make a few new ones and talk about plants, plants and more plants. What a great way to spend a day.

Over 160 plant people packed the room to hear about Plant Select’s accomplishments and learn what’s in store for the future. In 2008 2 million Plant Select plants were sold, the most since the program’s beginnings. Another exciting development is that the program is going nationwide and worldwide with some testing beginning in Europe.

“Plant Select is one of the premier plant introduction and recommendation programs in the country,” said Dr. Jim Klett, president of the board of directors and CSU professor.

Warm-season veggies, like tomatoes and peppers, can benefit from an early season fertilizing to improve fruit production later.

The cool spring weather has been great for extending the life of my peas, but my tomato and pepper plants look downright puny. Warm-season vegetables need night-time temperatures around 55 degrees to really get growing and gardeners just haven’t seen those temperatures yet.

CSU Extension recommends that gardeners give their tomato and pepper plants a boost right now by fertilizing plants with nitrate-type fertilizers, like Miracle-Gro Tomato Plant food, some of the Peters line of products or other fertilizers that are available on the market.

However, if you prefer to grow an organic garden, you can make compost tea,  manure tea or purchase a manufactured organic fertilizer specially designed to give plants a quick boost.

Fertilizing now lets plants know it’s time to start growing, despite what the weather says.