Each Little World

Lowering maintenance: Hostas

Last autumn I made an effort to pay attention to my Hostas. I wanted to see which ones still looked good after some chilly weather and which ones faded early. That's something I did not pay much attention to in the past, but this year it hit home.

My garden has a lot of Hostas, as do many midwestern gardens. I've always considered them an attractive, low maintenance plant. But I am beginning to think I've been blind to how much work they really entail. 

When they first emerge, I always put grit around them as a slug preventative. It's quite effective but it also means a trip to a stone yard, filling multiple buckets with grit, getting that back home and storing it somewhere dry and accessible. (Mid-May photo above)

Then I start schlepping as heavy a bucket around the garden as I can carry, spreading the grit around each and every emerging Hosta. So I've done all that work and the plants are only up enough for me to see exactly where and how much grit I need to put down.  (Mid-July photos above and below)

Neither Mark nor I are big fans of most Hosta flowers, so I tend to cut off the flower stems rather than let them bloom. There is no quick and easy way to trim the flower stems. It feels like an endless job given the number of plants I have and the varied bloom times. You might suggest I give up this crazy behavior, but I know I am not going to change.

Here's the Tea House slope on October 26th (directly above and the two below). The brown foliage is dying Hosta leaves. But get a look at H. 'Touch of Class' (center below). That variety still thinks it's summer. Clearly one to remember and worth dividing and spreading. 

But this is where it gets confusing. H. 'Spritzer,' next to the Tea House is mostly brown while the clump at the foot of the slope is still quite green. That means that I am cutting back dying Hosta foliage for much of the autumn as each variety finally dies for the season — another time-consuming Hosta chore.

Here are the Hostas pictured in the top image, showing how they look on Oct. 18th (below).

Some are perfect, some are fading and one has given up the ghost. This group of Hosta are right out at the street and take a beating from snow, sand and salt. Winter doesn't bother them. But the sun and sandy dryness do. I think they should go, but I haven't figured out what other plants could take the winter and provide the dramatic foliage that Hostas do. 

There are a number of Hostas I will probably pass on to gardening friends in the coming season. Among the ones that will definitely stay are 'Guacamole', 'Sagae', 'Inniswood', 'Whirlwind' and 'Touch of Class.' Though I have a lot of Hosta varieties, to say nothing of the total number of plants, I still think Hostas are on their way to becoming one plant that will be less prominent in my garden in the future. 

A perfect holiday

From start . . .

. . . to finish.

First image: Mark's siblings, children, partners and only one little one, posing after dinner on Thanksgiving. Mark is always the photographer, so he is never in the pictures. Sunday afternoon the rain turned to light snow, nicely freshening up the garden. 

Happy Hellebore Day!

My Hellebore that I planted years ago because it was purported to bloom for Thanksgiving in my Zone 5 garden is on schedule. Here it is on November 20th.

We had a nice warming trend so Mark and I spent some time on Tuesday (11/25) of this week attempting a little garden cleanup. I checked on the Hellebore then to see how it was doing: A bit more advanced from the week before. 

But the potential for a big snowstorm sent me out with clippers to cut a few buds for a vase. We got the big blow and now we're in the big chill, but luckily no big snowstorm. The only white I'm seeing are these lovely little flowers. 

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Wordless Wednesday

Hangin' on

The temperature hit 40°F. so I decided to take a stroll through the garden to see how it fared after our multiple snowfalls and unseasonably cold temperatures. Most of the snow is gone but a surprising number of deciduous trees and shrubs still have a lot of leaves hanging on, like this Calycanthus 'Hartlage Wine'.

Most of the foliage has fallen from this Hammamelis virginiana so its lush crop of flowers are visible. 

But its nearby partner, Hammamelis vernalis, has all its leaves. This year they turned a rather sickly color rather than their usual attractive yellow. 

Our little larch did finally color up beautifully but it is still holding its needles. 

A branch of Sambucus 'Black Lace' arcs over the Boxwood and Yew spheres. I don't think I've ever seen it with so many clusters of dark dead foliage hanging down like this before. 

This is the only clump of Hakonechloa that is still looking good; all the others were flattened by the snow.

This area of the garden has two stripe-bark maples and a moosewood (Acer pennsylvanicum), all of which have huge leaves. I always rake them off the beds as they will suffocate the spring ephemerals if I don't remove them.

The Stewartia pseudocamellia still has most of its foliage, though the surrounding ground is covered in sodden leaves from nearby trees. 

The leaves of our Korean maples (Acer pseudosieboldiana) do tend to stay on all winter so that's nothing new. But I am going to have to get outdoors and try to clean some of the fallen leaves off the moss, ferns and Carexes that are planted in this area. The foliage on the Physocarpus 'Amber Jubilee' (foreground) doesn't give a clue to how beautiful it is during the growing season. 

Mark captured me trying to take a photo of this fastigiate Oak tree with all of its leaves still on the tree and looking lovely. We walked by it on our way to lunch after our recent museum trip to West Bend. 

We're supposed to have some dry weather with reasonable temperatures for a few days, so I am going to try to do more garden clean up if I can. 

IVOM: November greens (and browns)

The weather has warmed up a bit but there's still snow on the ground in the garden. Today's arrangements were picked weeks ago and have been slowly drying in long Japanese bamboo vases hung in different rooms. This one, at the top of the stairs by the open bannister area, features a Cimicifuga flower gone to seed, a fern frond and a Hosta leaf making fanciful curls. 

This is our contemporary version of a Japanese container by local artist Richard Jones of Studio Paran. It contains a Bur Oak leaf clump I picked up off of the driveway and dried Annabelle Hydrangea flowers. 

The row of Annabelle Hydrangea shrubs that were growing along the east-side fence eventually got shaded out and I removed the faded remnants. Of course, they had sent stems up on the neighbor's side of the fence and are starting to return to our garden which is where I clipped these flowers. 

Visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this Monday meme to see what other gardeners have put in a vase today.

On again, off again . . .

I mean the wintry weather, of course. We just had our third snowfall Tuesday night and during the day on Wednesday; thankfully only a little over 2 inches (5.08 cm.) this time. Many of our trees still have their leaves and the ground under the snow is littered with the fallen ones. We worked on garden and leaf cleanup Monday and Tuesday when it looked like autumn. This is my Hellebore that blooms in November.

Our 'Tina' crabapple still has berries.

The blooms on this Hammamelis virginiana are visible as it is finally starting to shed some leaves. I can't see any flowers on my other H. virginiana as it still has all its leaves. 

Wordless Wednesday

Weather report

I went out into the garden mid-afternoon on Sunday thinking I would cage a few shrubs or start to clean up the now-dormant plants. It was so slippery with all the wet leaves that I never got beyond taking these photos to document the aftermath of our two late-October snow storms. We broke a record for the snowiest October since 1917. Fluke or part of climate change is what we're all wondering, given the hundred years separating the prior record from the new one.  

Merely stepping onto the deck required caution. 

We hadn't even stacked up our chairs, folded the table and moved them to a more protected spot for winter. We both assumed we had plenty of time to deal with all of the end of season tasks. 

The paperbark maple never even began to turn color before the weather changed and it dropped its leaves. 

Still a fair coating of snow along the north side of garden by the fence; it melts quickest off of the gravel paths. 

The pond has been freezing overnight but partly thawing during the day. Given the cold temperatures for the next ten days, I think it is going to stay frozen. 

Some plants are still looking amazingly good after about nine inches of snow piled on top of them and overnight lows dipped into the 20s. Hellebores and Heuchera villosa 'Lava Lamp'.

Epimedium x youngianum 'Niveum' and Adiantum venustum.

Dryopteris affinis cristata 'The King'

Polystichum makinoi

Arum italicum 'Ghost' is the star of my cold weather garden. It's the last plant standing in November and sends up new growth as soon as the snow melts in the spring. 

A few of the Acer still have leaves clinging to them. 

One wand of Rosa  glauca is still in perfect condition. 

The last hurrah from Stewartia pseudocamellia. 

When the stipe bark maples lose their leaves, I always rake them off the garden beds. They are so large they will smother anything they land on. 

Our neighbor's sugar maple finally let go of its leaves. Impossible to see the dry stream, the stone bridge or most of the rocks in the dry stream which runs through this area. All currently buried. 

This view from inside the house shows some of the same area as the photo above. The rock-filled dry stream runs under the wooden bridge and its companion stone bridge is out of view to the left. 

Boo!

Looks like we are going to get the full 5 inches of snow that was predicted. Still snowing and below freezing temperatures. I would not mind if this were the end of November, but October?!! No thanks.

Took these through the living room window as it is too cold to even step out the back door. At least the trees that still have all their foliage have not lost any branches that I can see. They are definitely bowing lower and lower as the snow continues to fall. Tuesday this paperbark maple was dragging on the bench and the deck so this is an improvement, I guess.

I thought I would go out today and try to clear up the leaves that fell in the first snow and serious cold. This is what things looked like yesterday morning. All buried under snow today.

For the second year in a row, all the Ginkgoes in our garden dropped their leaves before they quite turned yellow.