Every spring the same quiz...

...What is that?! Should I keep it? Did I plant that?

It's not you, it's all of us -- we don't recognize in spring what we worked with or planted last year. To make matters worse, weeds with an attitude are doing their best to convince us they belong.

We hope you'll post the photos of your mysteries on the Forum so others can help you answer. Meanwhile, here's are two mysteries you can solve with a click.

Below: It's good to have another gardener to ask "What is this, anyway?" We do that at the Forum based on photos and other clues. We also invite you to come outdoors in Garden By Janet and Steven sessions. There we all learn in that best way, by doing. Here Janet identifies a weed for fellow volunteer and newsletter subscriber Mary Topf at a Detroit Zoo gardening session.

  Puzzle time!

 

  #1 What's that
  thing featured
  up there on the
  right?

  Clues: We often see
  it just that close as we stick our head into a shrub while pruning,
  because it's attached to a twig. We let them stay. If we have to prune
  the branch off, we hang it in a nearby shrub.  Answer

 

 

#2 Nose to the windowsill

Clues: You might not pick it up and look closely at it all winter. Inspection time comes when the spring cleaning urge strikes and you want to wipe off windowsills. That also happens to be the time to pot and up-pot plants.  Answer