Each Little World

Latest garden attack

The last part of our road project that involves damage to our plantings was done last week. The fire hydrant is being moved across the street but that won't be a big messy job like all the new water and sewer pipes being laid and then hooked up to the houses. 

The workman who was using this excavator scooped out a clump of my Geranium macrorrhizum and attempted to relocate them before they started the big dig. I was thrilled with his thoughtfulness.

Our neighbors' pipes were being done at the same time as ours. The crew tends to do the same jobs in a row starting at one or the other end of the street. 

Mark was standing in our garden to take this shot. 

There is a fair amount of hand work that's done around new and old pipes in the dig location. 

These guys are so skilled at operating these big machines. 

The orange fencing goes around holes in the street where the work was not finished in one day.

Our hole is all marked as the other excavator uses his machine to make the road passable for residents. 

The yellow ribbon marks the oak tree at the end of our driveway. All this equipment is parked along our property for the night.

I went out to see what it looked like once the crew stopped work for the day at 7 p.m.

This is the view through the front garden towards the street. 

Looking toward our garden as the guys work to move our water service from the old water main to the new one. Note the yellow gas line which was the first utility to be replaced.

The new copper water piping . . .

is hooked up to our house. 

Clearing the new section of copper pipe before connecting it to the existing line to our house. The pipe had to be extended because the new main was installed on the far side of the right of way from us. We were only without water for a very short time.

Yay! It worked.

I guess all I needed to do to get some rain was to complain in print! The radar pix all seemed to suggest yesterday's projected storm was going to slide by us again. Until it unexpectedly burst on the scene around 3 p.m. 

I went down to open the door for Mark who was out running errands and saw this workman who'd been operating a laser transit on our front lawn. He was one of the few who brought his rain jacket to work.

Amazingly the crew worked right through this cloudburst and continued until the second one arrived a while later. They got the road and our neighbor's driveway passable and then called it quits earlier than usual.

I'm thrilled as we got 1.35" of rain which has the garden looking lovely this morning. It's green and cool and calling me out to weed. 

Garden attack

Our hilly street doesn't have sidewalks or "hellstrips" and the land slopes up on our side and down across the street. The city, however, owns the first 16 feet of our property in case they ever wanted to add sidewalks. That's why we planted it with Geranium macrorrhizum and Hostas. If you enlarge the photo you can see that there is a gravel path behind the Geraniums that curves toward the street. You can also just see the edge of the water hydrant. You'll see more images of those locations. 

After living here 29 years, they're replacing the storm and sanitary sewer systems that were put in when the houses were built in the 1950s as well as new water and gas mains. They're also getting rid of the on-street parking lanes and using that space to create a shared bike/pedestrian lane as the city bases transportation on the safety of those two groups rather than cars.

This project began in April and runs until early November. Our lack of rain has been a boon to this project as weather has not affected their schedule. 

Every morning just before 7 a.m. the water truck comes down the street shooting water out of spigots on the front and back of the truck to help keep down the dust. 

The street is a mess and barely deserves the name "dirt road," though there is plenty of dirt. The view from our house east with the green pipe on our neighbor's lawn. The orange fence is a safety measure as it marks a deep hole where the crew is working. The orange signs in the far distance mark the end of the block where the cross street is located. 

Looking west. The Oak tree with the yellow ribbon around it is at the end of our driveway. The ribbon indicates this is an important tree and the crews need to preserve it. We actually had one of the city foresters here the day they were digging near it to keep an eye on things. 

The roadway and lawns are a constantly changing landscape of colorful spray paint marks indicating underground pipes.

We'd been watching the crew putting in the sanitary sewer pipes in the roadway. Now they were getting to our house to put in the new connecting pipes. They cleared their work area of greenery before we even realized it had happened. 

Next morning before the workmen got to our house Mark and I dug out all the Hostas and a bunch of the Hakonechloa grass to save. I realized all my special white daffs were now half gone and so I grabbed as many of those as I could as well. 

We cleared this area out and luckily the workmen were not going to have to remove our rocks that line this area of the path which will make it easier to know what goes where when we replant in the fall. 

We filled our largest wheelbarrow full of plants . . .

along with 9 buckets of shrub size. It seemed easier to take everything and make decisions later about what will actually get replanted.

Then the big guys came to our house. 

Getting ready to dig. The water hydrant is on the west lot line. 

I'm not sure how many scoops of dirt they removed to make the hole the depth they needed. When the installed the manhole in front of our hose near the Oak tree, they went down 22 feet!

This worker is removing a section of the old stainless steel gas line that was abandoned when the new plastic one was installed earlier this spring.

These pairs of linked street plates make a box that gets set into the hole to keep the dirt walls from collapsing on the workmen down there. For deep excavations like the one in front of out house they are stacked two high.

It is amazing to watch this work and realize that despite the big machines a lot of it is done by hand as the guys maneuvering the box show.

I've learned that despite guys standing around they are not just shooting the breeze. They are always waiting for the next machine or pile of gravel or whatever to arrive. 

The hole is dug and ready for the pipe to be inserted.

It's all marked off with safety fencing. 

Job done until the next stage of the project. I did notice that years of letting the Geraniums die back in place and putting down leaf mulch had created some pretty nice soil in this area of the garden which has been replaced with some pretty sorry looking 'fill.'  Trying not to think about that . . .

Mark has taken around 5000 of photos so far. He knows the members of the crew, the dump truck and equipment drivers, engineers and more. Putting that personal face on this project has made it facinating to watch and much easier to deal with than probably would be the case otherwise. I have been so impressed with the skill and agility of these workers, that it has completely changed my ideas about what happens on big city projects like this. 

I should point out that though I used the term "workmen," I've seen female dump truck drivers, flag-persons, concrete installers, and more than one city engineer supervising the work.

A few words on Wednesday

This dandelion was on the sidewalk as Mark and I walked into our favorite restaurant for breakfast last week. I couldn't resist taking a picture. 

I have my first cataract surgery today and am not sure how easy (or impossible) it may be to blog and take pictures. For two weeks I will have a pair of unmatched eyes. I love unmatched pairs when it comes to design and decor; less so with my vision. I will need to get reading glasses to make it through the process.

The second eye will get done in two weeks and them it takes a month or so before I can get updated glasses.  I'm looking forward to improved vision but it is a rather long slow process to make it happen. So don't worry if I don't post or comment as much as usual.

Wisconsin's critical election

I've been reading Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters From an American" every day since sometime early in the Trump administration. Today's letter (dated April 2) is about gerrymandering and Wisconsin's Supreme Court election tomorrow. Or how former GOP Governor Scot Walker instigated the process of killing participatory democracy in our state. 

Richardson is a history professor at Boston College and one of her areas of expertise is the history of the Republican Party. Her daily letter looks at the big stories of the day as well as those that are coming into play. She puts them into historical context and provides links to all the sources of her information. 

The GOP in Wisconsin provided the playbook for the Republicans across the nation. Well-worth your reading.

NOTE: Me protesting Gov. Walker in 2011. Double click the photo so you can read my sign. 

Remembering Rose Schneiderman

"What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist — the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with."

Rose Schneiderman (April 6, 1882 – August 11, 1972), a social justice activist, suffragist and labor union leader in the early 20th Century, popularized the phrase "bread and roses" in her many speeches. 

Her words inspired James Oppenheim to write the poem “Bread and Roses”, which was later set to music. It remains a labor anthem to this day. Here is a short PBS documentary on Schneiderman; a woman whose work made a positive impact on our lives before many of us were even born. 

Change is inevitable

“You wonder after many years if any of it was worth the bother. The answer is, I think, more or less yes .... Entire sections of the garden have to be rethought and old friends given up. All seems to be nothing but change and irregular advances and collapse, as if paying little attention to the gardener, who is seen to be far less consequential than we supposed.”

 "The Essential Earthman"

Henry Mitchell 1923-1993

. . .

Our street is scheduled for a major rehab this summer. The original 1950s sanitary and storm sewers will be replaced, a shared pedestrian/bike lane will be added, most on street parking eliminated and the street resurfaced. This means the traffic islands will be removed, some curbs will be replaced and my front garden will be dug up to put in the water lines and update the fire hydrant on our property.

Over the years, I've spent a lot of time and money gardening on this little island. It's the sunniest spot I have and has rocky soil perfect for bulbs. 

Currently it has Tulips, Allium 'Summer Beauty', the famed Geranium 'Rozanne' and four big Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta. As soon as the plants come up this spring I will dig them out and move them to new homes elsewhere in the garden. Construction is slated to start in June and go all summer, seven days a week. 

The city owns the first 14' of our property as we have no sidewalks or "hell strips." So I intentionally filled this area with plants I could afford to lose or that could be easily moved.  Geranium macrorrhizum is a forgiving plant and should cover the construction quickly once I can replant. 

The most important point is the city will not have to remove the Oak tree that abuts the street at the end of our driveway. If they have to replace the gutter, they will hand-form it to protect the tree. This tree was here when the house was built in 1954 and for many years before that. (Don Smith, the original owner, with one of his daugthers and the oak tree.)

When we moved here in 1994, arborist and local tree historian Bruce Allison estimated the tree's age as at least 125 years old. It's our treasure and we are thrilled that we finally have a group of seedlings that will eventually create an oak grove that will be long after the road project is history.

A message ignored

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the county where I live in southern Wisconsin has seen relatively low infection numbers and high vaccine numbers.

But somehow folks seemed to have missed the message with this second round. 

Someone wrote this in the snow on the slope of the highway overpass where I was stopped for a traffic light.

Good news for gardeners from Great Dixter

Readers of this blog likely know that many of the elements of our garden design were influenced by Japanese gardens. Thus, for the last twenty years, I've planted many treasures from Asia. But climate change and habitat loss have all gardeners looking at their garden with new eyes.

I'm happy to be able to say that I've composted kitchen and garden debris, mulched with chopped leaves and haven't sprayed or used many chemicals over the years. I have an old Bur Oak tree and a crop of seedlings that I'm nurturing (below), along with every fern native to Wisconsin happily romping around my garden.

But I am not a native plant aficionado nor do I want to give up all the lovely non-natives I've planted over the years. That's why I was thrilled with the information that Fergus Garrett, head gardener at the famed Great Dixter estate in the UK, shared with those of us who signed up for his webinar as part of Olbrich Botanical Gardens spring lecture series, "A Gardener's Call."

The "call" refers to the idea that gardeners need to "recognize and respect all beings’ contributions to healthy garden ecosystems." If we do that, then we will be able to support all life in the garden. I totally agree with that concept which is why I sat up and took notice when Garrett showed us that ornamental horticulture does that very well. 

Photo by Andrew Montgomery/Gardens Illustrated magazine

Garrett decided that Great Dixter needed a comprehensive biodiversity audit that would then provide the knowledge that he felt was critical to managing Dixter in the best way. It wasn't really news, he noted, when the survey showed the meadows, ponds, pastures and woodlands on this old estate were extremely rich. 

Photo by Andrew Montgomery/Gardens Illustrated magazine

The big surprise — and what excited me — was the fact that the survey found the richest part of all was the ornamental garden (above). The survey clearly showed the garden, even with its fancy floral displays, supported an extraordinary amount of wildlife. Though Garrett hadn't specifically gardened with biodiversity at the forefront, it was there as a by-product.

That means I don't have to tear up my garden and start over. I can leave my non-natives in place and add more if I want. The big lesson is having as much diversity as possible. The things I've ordered online, or plan to buy locally, range from grasses to shrubs to bulbs and perennial plants; all of which means I am moving in the right direction for diversity. Add in the fact that almost half of them are native and I no longer have to feel guilty for wanting a garden that showcases non-native plants.

Pandemic plants

I have a number of plants, shrubs and trees that were all planted to memorialize a friend or family member or mark a special event. It's a common response among gardeners; which made me wonder if I should plant something to note COVID-19, the 2020 Presidential election, the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th this year.

Certainly not to memorialize any of those items, but they are definitely worthy of remembrance. While I pondered the idea, I discovered the perfect pair of plants to do the job. 

This lovely daylily is Hemerocallis 'Catastrophic Events.'

Her friend is Hemerocallis 'Welding the Titanic.' 

Both are from Solaris Farms which offers an incredible selection of daylilies, Peonies and Martagon lilies.