Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Garden of the mind
As the years have gone by, our garden has gone from a few patches of flowers to a fairly cohesive garden, but still there is both this real garden, and a second, ghostly garden of the imagination... a garden of dreams and schemes, of future plans, and half-baked ideas that never come to fruition. The picture above is exhibit A for this second garden, for this is my woodland brook, or would be if I'd ever actually started it. As it is, it is a ravine clogged with brush. It was to be the centerpiece of the garden; the ravine goes downhill to the four acre pond at the bottom of the hill, and I planned to pump water uphill, and let it cascade back down to the pond, passing under the two bridges that cross the ravine. Whenever we'd take people on a garden tour, I'd always pause dramatically, and describe in loving detail, this stream of the future, alluding to the lovely splashing that would echo through the shady glen. Unfortunately, as years went by, with no sign of water, some of our friends started getting a little pithy about my stream. Our friend Hampy, always inquires in a loud voice where the babbling brook is. From now on, I'll keep my garden plans to myself.
Nature's Bounty
The trees and bushes in the woods are laden with fruit and berries, branches groaning halfway to the ground with an ocean of wildlife delights. As a result, the garden is just alive, with hundreds and hundreds of birds of all sorts, drawn here from all over, to gorge on this feast. I've told recently, how, with our ongoing drought, that when I go out to water with the hose, that birds start flying down for a shower... it's kind of like Hitchcock's "The Birds"; first one bird shows up, then another, and the next thing you know, there are birds everywhere. Today a whole flock of young red-eyed vireos flew down, and just bathed and fluttered to their heart's content in the cool spray. This got me to thinking about setting up a source of running water for the birds. We have cats, though, so it can't be on the ground, but I started thinking about setting up a tall, upright pipe, with running water at the top. I could run it out of the goldfish pond. Of course, I'd need a pretty good pump, and a filter... Ah, another addition to my imaginary garden.
Friday, August 26, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
The late summer-fall cyclamens are starting to put on their show... here is Cyclamen purpurascens.
We've just flat out had a TERRIBLE growing season here... our record-setting late freeze, causing unprecedented damage to the garden, then a summer long drought. All of this has put terrible stress on shrubs and trees, and I'm seeing spotty appearence of fall coloration and leaf drop... in this case a native dogwood. I have a feeling it's going to be a grim winter here.
A pathway not shown before, which curves off into the woods, and includes our life-size gargoyle, sitting back in a wooded spot by himself.
Another side pathway I hadn't shown on the grand garden tour; this one meandering through hostas and azaleas.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
The Wee Garden
There are those who probably describe me as being short; I prefer to think of myself as being powerfully compact... we have season tickets to the Iowa Hawkeye football games, and I can tell you that, while tailgating, more than once a young chickie has come up to me and asked me to open up her twist off top beer bottle, and if I'm able to get it open, they make quite a fuss over me! Still, being my height does make for some hazards in our garden, because I constantly have to trim shrubs and trees back from the meandering woodland pathways, and while I try to trim up as high as I can, there are limits to my reach. I always say that touring our garden is probably like walking through a house built for dwarves. It's not unheard of therefore, for one of our lankier guests to get interested in looking down at some little plant blooming, and to get dusted off by a low-hanging limb. I guess that's just one of the hazards of being real tall. Heh heh!
Monday, August 22, 2005
Sugar Buzz
More about yellowjackets: I don't have to dig up their nests to get whacked. This time of year, the black cherries and mulberries are dropping to the ground in droves, and the yellow jackets are feeding on the ground, and get really buzzed up on all this sugar... step close to one and you may get zapped!
A Walk In The Garden Today
Stretching Our garden Tour
Just to expand a teensy bit more on our garden tour... back up just outside the Sun gates to the front of the garden, and look down the front path to the angel Hernia.
I mentioned that at the end of the trail that goes by a rhododendron-azalea bed, steps lead down to a bridge across a ravine... this view is looking back across the bridge to the steps. There is a Celtic cross at the top of the steps. My wife, Liz, also built this bridge (she's a handy little babe).
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Buzzing around
Well, my summer is complete... it seems to be an annual thing that I stick my nose into at least one yellow jacket nest, usually digging it up. This time I was moving a woodpile. Fortunately, I've learned to run like hell at the first sting, so damage is limited anymore. The first time it happened in this garden, they were all over me, and under my clothes, by the time I took off.
Stingy Thingies and I usually get along just ducky together... this is a large colony of paper wasps under one of our eaves, that we live peacefully with, though I grill right near this spot, and have to check under the grill for new nests before I start it up.
Let's Walk a little further down the trail
I thought I'd expand our last garden tour a little: I mentioned a trail going straight away from the angel in the direction she's facing, going downhill, and this is it, with cardinal shrubs blooming. If you stand at the bottom of this hill, and look up, the angel is peacefully gazing at you, flanked by these long flower beds, with the cedar tree drooping over her.
At the end of my last garden tour, after you pass under the arch at the back of the garden, if you look to your left, this wooden gate leads to a trail that winds downhill to the large pond.
If you pass through the gate, and follow the trail to the bottom of the hill, this is what you see.
If, instead of going down to the pond, you turned to the right, this is the long pathway uphill ... lots of roses, lilies, rhodys, daylilies, and hydrangeas on the left, a very large, deep ravine on the right, with a creek at the bottom. This trail eventually curves off to the left, into a relatively new area of the garden, that I've not shown, with a bunch of garden beds just being filled in.
A Walk In The Garden Today
This is a katsura tree, usually a delicate little thing, but can get quite large... hopefully we'll have good fall foliage this year, and I'll show it then.
Delicate thug: Japanese anemone... a creeping, smothering, tidal wave of delicate pink blossoms... love it or hate it.
Daylily 'Prediction'... it starts out in the morning a deep red, then as the day progresses, turns deep orangy-red, with a deep, black eye.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Ahhh!
As mentioned, we've been in an epic drought all summer. Last evening, yet another storm missed us by a few miles, but during the night we finally got a nice, steady rain, collecting an inch and a quarter of rain, the most we've had in almost three months. The garden is smilin' this morning.
Put on Your Boots, and Come For A Walk
If the following garden tour is a little disjointed, blame my helpers...
Not for the first time, I've had a request from one of my gentle readers, to post some pictures showing more the layout of the garden, than just individual plants. I've always begged off, as it is difficult to show, in small pictures, a garden that meanders through the woods, up hill and down... it just looks like a woods. I did take some pictures this spring of the main path, though, and thought I'd see if I can piece together a short tour.Here we've just entered the main gates (the Sun gates for those veteran readers). We're looking at the angel Hernia in the distance.
If we look to our right, there are rhododendrons, hostas, and a limestone block wall that has a fountain on it ( shown in an earlier post).
We're walking on down the path now, and then we'll again look to the right.
And, here we are,looking to the right, downhill, and we see more beds and paths.
We're now at the angel, who sits on a hill under an old cedar tree. It's as if she is at the hub of a wheel, with five pathways radiating away from her, and we can choose. We can go under the metal arch, covered with honeysuckle, into an open, sunny, garden room, filled with lilies and daylilies, with a view through the trees of the four acre pond which borders our garden (you can just see the pond in the distance here). There is a hidden path that exits this garden, taking you down into a shady ravine, filled with hostas and shrubs. Our second choice is a long, straight path, the direction where the angel is looking, between long perennial borders. We can also take a meandering path at her back, that goes gently up over a rise, leading to more azalea and hosta beds, and a whole new section of gardens and paths, and gates. Finally, we can continue on the same path we are on, down a hill, to the goldfish pond.
First, we're going to pause, and look through the metal archway, and we can again see the large pond in the distance. We can now look around and choose our pathway from here.
If we were to look completely over our shoulder, we'd see another spoke on the wheel, leading on up a hill to other gardens... we'll not explore this path today.
If we now turn back and look to our left, we see that the path we were on leads on downhill.
As we get to the bottom of the hill, looking to our left we see a bench, opposite the goldfish pond. Liz, the carpenter in the family, built this bench for me, and it's a nice spot to sit and watch the fish.
We're now just passing by the goldfish pond, again looking to our right.
Just past the pond, to our right, we see a long azalea bed, with a lovely pinkish azalea in full bloom.
If we look past this azalea, a path goes downhill, which we'll now take.
If we walk halfway down this side trail, we come to a "Y", with the left branch going on by more rhodys and azaleas. At the end of this trail, there are steps leading down into a ravine, crossing a bridge, with the ravine filling up with more azaleas, and shady perennial treasures.
If we look now up the right branch of the "Y", there is a winding path that goes up over another hill, leading to a massed bank of old fashioned roses that later in the year are weighted to the ground with blooms.
Now we return to the main path and look beyond the pink azalea, uphill to an archway at the back of the garden, flanked by cherubs.
We are climbing uphill past the azalea and look back towards the goldfish pond.
If we continue uphill, we are entering a shady area under a beautiful maple tree...and turn to look back again.
Finally, we walk through the archway at the back of the garden and turn to look back over our shoulder one more time... if we now looked to our left, past the arch, there would be a shady path leading to a mysterious wooden gate that leads downhill to the large pond. If we looked right we'd see a long, grassy, winding path that leads along the edge of a ravine, and takes us on to more of the garden... that will have to wait for future meanderings.
Friday, August 19, 2005
Hisss!
I've mentioned that our eighteen month old cat, Sadie, has been really mad at us for getting two new kitties (which we only got because we thought she'd like some new buddies). Sadie always used to hop up and sit on my lap while I banged away on the computer. Tonight she's running up, jumping hard on my lap, then keeps right on going, and runs off. I think she's trying to tell me something. Uh oh, here she comes again!
Permanent Mistakes
I've been trying out different materials to cover some of my winding garden paths, as the shadier paths can get quite muddy when it rains (not a problem in this drought year, but I'm planning ahead). I found some bags of asphalt, and thought that would be interesting, so laid it down and tamped it firm, and now I HATE IT! It looks like a mini-parking lot in the middle of my wooded garden. Oh well, it will break down in ten or fifteen years, probably.
Doing My Part for the Economy
Consumer spending has been a driving force behind our economy... I want you to know I'm doing my part... almost every day I'm off to Menards in my truck, to buy bricks, or bark chips, or fencing, or something (today it was six bags of pea gravel, fifty brick edgers, and a bag of sulfur for the blue hydrangeas. I love to wander about the yard at Menards early in the morning, in the cool air.
Yikes!
I was out by the large back ravine today, working on putting bark chips on one of the garden paths, when I started hearing this cracking noise, and then a fifty foot tall, dead elm tree in the ravine just fell over, with a loud crash; kind of makes you think.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Clear Eyes
We recently adopted two kittens from the humane society, two little sisters that were closely bonded, but one of them, shown above (now named P.J., because she has dark fur on the back of white rear legs, so it looks like her pajamas are falling off when she runs) had badly infected eyes, and I thought at the least this pair would be broken up, and more likely, this little kitten wouldn't get adopted at all, so we took them both, and after two weeks of oral antibiotics and topical eye ointment, P.J.'s eyes are fine, and she and her sister are inseparable little pals.
All Is Forgiven
I've lamented about how gardening in a woodland filled with large black cherry trees can be frustrating, due to the thousands of seedlings popping up every year in my flower beds. Since we lost all of our huge, old elm trees due to Dutch elm, we are left with some oaks, and the black cherries (Prunus serotina) as our canopy trees. There are perhaps 25 cherries 50-75 foot tall in just the one acre I have fenced off as a garden, which makes for a LOT of small cherries raining down on my garden... on quiet fall days, one can hear the constant drum of these small fruits striking the ground. However, they are beautiful, majestic trees, and this time of year, when they are weighed down with fruit, their high canopies are alive with birds, including many less commonly seen: red eyed and yellow breasted vireos, cedar waxwings, and several types of warblers, including the beautiful prairie warbler. The mulberries this year have been tiny and sparse, due to our drought, so we even spied a pair of raccoons high in the top of a black cherry the other evening. I guess I can put up with the seedlings.
Monday, August 15, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Saturday, August 13, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Sometimes things work out just right: rose of Sharon "Lavender Chiffon', and rose.
Friday, August 12, 2005
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
It's Quiet... Too Quiet
I've mentioned before, that a sharp-shinned hawk, whose main prey is songbirds, is a frequent visitor here. This afternoon I walked out in the garden, and she swooped in and landed about three feet above my head in an old cedar tree. It was quite interesting seeing the songbirds' reactions: the larger, stronger flyers, like doves and bluejays, flew away in all directions through the trees. The smaller birds, like cardinals and catbirds all instantly came down into the lower levels, and buried themselves in the brush and shrubs. It got real quiet.
Nature Is A Cruel Mistress
After an unprecedented late freeze here, that damaged many things in the garden, we entered a summer-long drought (the freeze and the drought both have the same cause: a persistent dome of very dry air over the central upper midwest). Storm after storm heads towards us, then dissipates 10 miles to our west, as the front runs up against our capped bubble of heat and dryness, so that we are now officially in extreme drought, with almost unprecented heat (36 days of 90 or above, compared to two days last year). Our drought level currently is comparable to the dust bowl years of 1934-5. I was driving in the country yesterday, and swear I saw a couple of camels in a field!
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
August Lily
Lycoris squamigera has thrust its tall, pale stalks topped with baby-pink flowers up through the dry, August soil in a matter of days, a delightfully incongruous color, in this season of yellows, and oranges. My Mom always called these rain lilies (which they're not... rain lilies are Zephyranthes, a whole different kettle o' fish, and not hardy here). She wasn't alone in her naming, though, as everybody called them rain lilies, and I can remember Mom saying they sprang up after the first rain after a hot, dry spell in August. They were also called August lilies, and more recently I've heard them mostly called surprise lilies. They are members of the Amarylllis family, native to eastern Asia, with squamigera being the hardiest, and probably being a hybrid.The foliage comes up in spring, then dies back, and the flower stalks come up naked in August (thus, another common name: naked ladies). They are seldom planted to advantage around here, tending to be stuck by themselves in the middle of a brown, dry front lawn, so when they pop up, with their long stalks and slighly harsh, pink flowers, they have somewhat the effect of a plastic pink flamingo in the front yard. I've seen them planted in truck tires, which is an especially nice touch. In a mixed bed, though, they are interesting, and I must admit, every year, I am indeed surprised when they appear. My clump is an offset from my Mom's original plant, which bloomed every hot August in her front yard, fifty years ago.
Monday, August 08, 2005
The Chameleon Flower
It is quite fascinating to see the difference in coloration of successive daylilies that bloom in a clump. This is a later bloom of Coquina Key shown before as coral red, and now almost orange... you'd never know it was the same plant.
How Could Anyone Not Love This Kitty?
Well, regular readers will recall our recent loss of Snickers; in my humble opinion, the best cat that there ever was. This left us with our old cat, Toaster, who's pretty blind, deaf, and arthritic, who mostly hobbles about muttering to herself, but still is our beloved old pet, fond of the occasional bit of rotisserie chicken, and likes to lay in the middle of the driveway in the early morning, warming her ancient bones in the sun. Sadie our other cat, is Snickers' sister, and seemed pretty lost by herself, and kept trying to hang with old Toaster, which was not a match made in heaven, so we decided a couple of little pals for Sadie would be the ticket, and I paid a visit to the animal shelter to look at kitties. The visit was depressing and bizarre; the shelter was overcrowded, under-staffed, probably under-funded. In the short time I was there, three animals were brought in as "strays", that obviously belonged to the people bringing them in, who were dumping them. Most of the people walking in there looked like they were probably brewing meth. in their bathtubs, and most seemed to favor full body tattoos, and a variety of piercing hardware. I knew on the spot that I could never work at an animal shelter, because my first day on the job, I would undoubtedly at some point, leap over the counter and try to strangle somebody. I really realized how bad things were there, when I had my sister drop off a check for a $150 donation a couple of days later, and she told me the director started crying. Anyway, after waffling back and forth, I decided to take two little sisters, who were obviously bonded, and should stay together. One of them had infected eyes, so I knew she'd never get taken otherwise (what's two more trips to the vet). We named them P.J. (she has dark tabby fur on the back of white legs, so when she runs, it looks like her pajamas are falling off), and Punkin' (shown above). We eagerly anticipated Sadie's joy at finding these two new playmates in the living room. She walked in, took one look at them, hissed, stalked outside, and disappeared for 24 hours. Things have not improved much since then. Sigh... you know, we could have just gotten a dog.
16 1/2 year old Toaster Woaster, trying to decide if she can scratch herself behind the ear without falling down and looking foolish.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
August
The eighth was August, being richly arrayed,
In garments all of gold, down to the ground...
Edmund Spenser
In garments all of gold, down to the ground...
Edmund Spenser
Spidey
This cuddly critter has been lurking about our garage at night, being, I think, a fishing spider, one of the hunkier (3-4") forms of wolf spiders. Now, I've always rather liked snakes (though I came within a few inches of stepping on a small rattler while hiking in the Trinity Alps in California once, when I stepped over a log it was laying by). Spiders I don't mind either, but my relationship with them over the years has been a little spottier. When we were kids we lived in an old house, and at night, large wolf spiders would come up into our bedroom through the cold air register, run across the ceiling, and occasionally drop off and land ker-splat on your bare chest, and scramble up over your face. Quite a feeling when you're sound asleep in the middle of the night in the pitch black! Then, we had an old chicken coop that was rife with black widow spiders; we called them red violin spiders, and had no idea they were poisionous. I clearly recall as if it was yesterday, at about age 5, sitting on the ground outside the chicken coop, trying to use a little stick to flip over an angry black widow spider to see the red violin. We also used to always ask the Daddy long-legs "where the cows were"... you sort of poke at them with your finger while asking the question, so that they'll raise up a front leg and point. Once when I did this to a big old guy, he bit my finger like it was a tasty salami... man, that hurt! I also got chomped poking one of those huge yellow and black garden spiders with my finger. When I was a little older, I and my best buddy Mike, used to go into a spooky, deserted barn in the neighborhood, and use long sticks to knock large, hairy barn spiders out of their webs, which we'd collect and keep for a few days in jars. They looked like something out of your worst nightmare... I always wonder how critters like that ever mate and reproduce, they are so downright ugly and creepy. I had another close encounter with a black widow when I lived in San Francisco. The two guys who lived next door to some friends, loaned them their cabin on the Russian River, and when we walked in, I went over and opened up the sliding glass door looking out over the river, and a big black widow dropped about three inches in front of my face, and fell between the deck planks. I survived all of this, and spiders and I are now basically o.k. with each other, but I don't give them cutesy names.
A Walk In The Garden Today
Saturday, August 06, 2005
High On Hibiscus
Hibiscus 'Fireball'; my garden, being for the most part a shady woodland garden, gets pretty devoid of colorful flowers late in the summer. Hardy hibiscus is a shining exception, though they get a little floppy without full sun, and I sometimes have to stake them, when they get half a dozen or more flowers the size of dinner plates. They DO make a statement. Fireball is probably my favorite, with heavy flowers and deep red color with a hint of purple.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Daylily 'Blaze Away'; nice flower, if you like doubles, but it has very short stems. It blooms quite late, which is kind of nice.
Monday, August 01, 2005
A Walk In The Garden Today
Daylily 'Enticing Elegance' ; this is a better bloom than the one I showed before.
