Each Little World

One last season

Sunday morning Mark remarked that we should start watching for Fred and Ethel, our ducks, since the ice was almost gone on the pond. He barely finished the sentence when he realized they were already here on day one of their annual visit.

The swam around a while and then spent most of the day napping on the back edge of the pond where they were almost invisible among the rocks.

We hadn't the heart to tell them that this is the last year they will be able to visit this pond. In fact, they only have a number of weeks before it will be emptied and torn up to create a new landscape that will need less work and no supplemental water. 

It's come to this

The rabbits have eaten all the special plants in the garden. They're now reduced to sitting on the deck outside the living room windows and munching on fallen locust leaves.

IVOM: Clippings

The Hellebore leaves are full up and covering the fading flowers. But I can never just cut those stems and toss the flowers onto the compost pile; thus this vase. Most of these blossoms are H. 'New York Night'. I always thought the color and the name were the essence of big city sophistication. These days it just sounds doleful.  

The tall greenish flower with red edges is H. "Jade Tiger' and the shorter green blooms are H. niger.

But it is the two-toned grape hyacinths (Muscari latifolium) that bring it all to life. 

We have a rabbit family living under our deck and my attempts to trap them have not yielded anything. So I cut these tulips as soon as I saw them to save them from the bunnies. I don't know when I've brought tulips into the house that they did not suddenly open widely. So this vase this morning is much more restrained than I expected it to be. 

Linking to Rambling in the Garden, who hosts this most enjoyable Monday meme where you can see all sorts of spring garden flowers in vases. 

A note of normalcy

At 5:43 p.m. Friday afternoon, our pair of Mallard ducks flew in. Fred and Ethel, as we call them, typically appear the minute our pond is iced out enough for them to land. This is the 22nd year they have visited our garden.

Given the typical life expectancy of ducks which are not in captivity, this is probably not our original pair. Since we did not "band" them, there is no way of knowing for sure. 

But we prefer to think that they are our first Fred and Ethel, behaving as though the world was its normal, old self.

Gather

I dreamt we could all

stand together

Nothing grand, like a rally,

fireworks, a graduation

 

Just watching something,

a concert,

a politician,

a sunset

 

And then I woke to

the calling of the crows

 

Today, I will wave to

you from my tree and

maybe we can

sing

Everywhere I look friends are emailing poetry or posting it on FB or writing it themselves. "Gather" is another poem by Madison poet, photographer and musician Katrin Talbot. Though I don't know Katrin well, her work always resonates with me.

When I first started gardening, I used to worry that a crow would land on me; on my head to be exact. Now I've leaned to appreciate what smart and social creatures they are. Their presence in the garden at this moment is definitely joyful and much appreciated. 

Poem by Katrin Talbot; drawing by Linda Brazill

The splendid and the vile

The Splendid and the Vile is the title of Erik Larson's new book about Churchill and the London Blitz. It also seemed to be an apt description of what I saw when I took a stroll through my garden yesterday, just before it began to rain. First the splendid:

This is the moss on the ground next to the lichen-covered stepping stone path. 

A rock whose mica chips have disappeared over the years as lichens and mosses have made a home there.

. . .  and now the very vile! Our Picea omorika 'Bruns pendula' with its beautiful weeping branches in an early snowfall last October. Note those broad branches spreading right down to the ground. 

All gone. Something, most likely rabbits, ate the bottom 1/4 to 1/3 of the branches. This tree is 5 and 1/2 years old and has never been touched by critters or disease of any kind. 

I realize it is ridiculous and selfish to complain about my garden not looking perfect when the world is in crisis. But it is easier to think about problems in the garden than what might happen later today or tomorrow; given the fact that the news keeps getting worse. 

It's cold, gray and windy here but snowdrops are coming up as is the first Hepatica.

It was a pleasant change to come indoors and wash my hands — only because I had garden dirt under my nails. 

Stay safe and keep washing those hands!

Garden visits: Houses for birds and gardeners

With a garden building this attractive, you can be sure the birds at Bruce and Linda Christensen's will have equally noteworthy houses and feeders. 

Blue Monday

Freezing rain on Friday evening with a bit of snow on Saturday has done little to provide protection for the garden from the single digit temperatures forecast this week. Nor did it glam the garden up the way a heavier snowfall would do. That means my focus for the foreseeable future will be the gardens I visited last summer.

It is rare to see a bottle tree up north, but this one looks completely natural as it repeats the intense color on the trellis in the image directly above.

Betsy True and Danny Aerts garden on one acre with mushrooms, fruit and flowers, a pond and a prairie, bees and chickens, a pizza oven and more. This is a shot of their fenced veggie garden which also contains pears, quince and espaliered apples. 

It's inspirational — and educational — no matter where you look. That's Betsy between me and another WHPS member. 

Bad bunny!

Last winter's extreme cold damaged a few plants in particular in our region: Japanese maples and Burning Bushes (Euonymous alatas). I had thought a Burning Bush was impossible to kill, but I guess not. We had a few old plants that were about six feet tall that we had pruned to create an elegant row of narrow accents. They died back to the roots so we trimmed out the dead wood and left them to rejuvenate over the summer.

Alas, I discovered the bunny munched all that lovely new growth once the snow had covered up his usual fodder. I will have to wait until Spring to see if anything is left to regrow and then decide if it's worth the wait. 

Whose idea was this?

"Stupid, stupid, stupid" was Mark's suggested title for this post. Lucky for me he was laughing as he said it. All the rain we've had this autumn had me indoors looking at end of season sales on my favorite nursery web sites. Of course I fell prey to temptation when I looked at Song Sparrow Nursery. I've been buying plants from them forever and they never disappoint. This is part of my spring 2019 haul: Helleborus 'New York Night', Epimedium x 'Royal Flush' and Heucherella 'Brass Lantern'.

Song Sparrow may be gone next year as their future is very uncertain. Seemed like the sensible thing to order a bunch of shrubs and easy care perennials to help in lowering maintenance in the garden. Look what showed up at my house less than 48 hours after I placed my order online!

I know many gardeners complain about the cost of shipping when ordering plants online. I think it's just a case of getting what you pay for. Since this was the end of the season, the plants were large and healthy. Epimediums and dwarf conifers were layered in this larger box. 

Individual plants were encased in little "houses" with a cardboard door flap that opened outward. 

There was a wide strip of tape across the bottom for extra stability, but it was super easy to remove the plants from their container without breaking anything.

In addition to the Epimediums, I bought pairs of plants: dwarf conifers (Picea abies 'Tompa' ), small scale Hydrangeas (H. quercifolia 'Pee Wee'), and Orixa japonica. The only "onsie" is a dwarf sand cherry (Prunus pumila).

The Orixa japonica will get cut back somewhat in the spring to promote side shoots as they are almost at their mature height of four feet!

The Orixa grows in shade and has beautiful glossy foliage.

When I wondered whose idea it was to order plants on the last day of September, I was worried about how wet it had been and how much rain kept appearing in our forecast. I was concerned the plants might rot before they could settle in. One Orixa was put in its new home but every thing else went into any empty spots I could find.

We haven't had a killing frost yet and everything seems to be doing fine in their temporary locations. All the plants but the Epimediums have been caged to protect them from marauding rabbits. Now I will have the coming cold season to think about how I want to use these new plants to reduce maintenance — and what else I might need to add to the mix!

I should also note that I used a lot of the cardboard as inserts between pieces of framed art in our new basement storage rack.