Each Little World

Garden reality

My garden was going to be one of the stops on the 2020 Garden Bloggers Fling in Madison until the pandemic put paid to such group events. Now I am glad it got postponed as it seems like it's been one problem after another in the garden.

First up was a leak in the stream between our pond and the header pool above it. Mark managed to find that leak and fix it. All was well until we realized there was yet another leak which still has not been identified. In the meantime, the pond is turned off so we can monitor the water level while Mark continues to investigate.

Mark promised me that he would give me ten years of his time to create a garden. He's devoted the better part of twenty years to it, but is more than ready to leave things up to me. I have never really managed the pond in all those years, so I just left the lilies that a critter upended out of their pots to float upside down on the pond. It does not seem to have stopped them from blooming. 

The garden is full of vignettes like this: plants in pots where you least expect them and where they don't add to the charm of the landscape. On the upside, all my loose pots are nicely caged to protect them from the bunnies. 

Finishing a project does not mean putting away the things you used — like buckets of rocks from the pond. There are no visitors coming to the garden, so who needs to clean up as they go? 

Our Japanese maple that we thought was killed in the polar vortex of 2018/19. It is coming back but looks pretty ridiculous at the moment. Still undecided if it should stay or go. 

The floral stalwarts of the garden did not make an appearance — or barely so — this year. Lilium landini is totally MIA while the Martagons got hit by the late frost and did not perform well at all. So there would have been no big floral display for the Bloggers if they had come. 

But the really big problems are the big items in the garden like our Arborvitae hedge that has been destroyed by the last few winters. The plants probably need a truck and a chain to put them out which can be done via our neighbor's driveway.  They will be replaced with a fence to obscure the sight of their vehicles. But Mark is much less interested in designing a fence than he once was, so we just walk by this mess and ignore it. 

In addition to this major problem in the front garden, it appears verticillium wilt has killed half of one of the trees that keeps my garden in the back from frying up in the late afternoon. None of this would feel so overwhelming if we were comfortable just called various folks to deal with these problems. But we are really limiting contact with anyone but a few close friends. 

So I am just trying to ignore all the problems and enjoying planting, cutting flowers for the house and even weeding which has been a breeze given our endless rain in June.

Home through the Hasselblad

Mark has spent his time during the past four months photographing with a variety of cameras: Digital, Pinhole and large format. Over the weekend, a friend loaned him a medium format Hasselblad camera. He used it to take these photos of our garden after spending time reading the manual, a big hardcover book! I love the mysterious, almost haunting quality of the images this film camera produced.

My English imitation

Euphorbia wulfenii is a mediterranean plant for Zone 7. No way it will grow in my Z. 4-5 garden. But I have been crazy for it since the first time I ever saw a picture of it in an English garden. 

It's only a couple of years after planting Euphorbia palustris at the edge of the upper pool that I realized how similar the effect is to that of E wulfenii.

An unexpected but very pleasant surprise. 

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.

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. 

Tell the Truth Tuesday

This is the view from the deck to the hill at the rear of the garden a number of years ago. We've always called it the "Buddha Mound" in reference to the stone grouping on it.

This is what it looks like at the current moment. Not too bad from a distance, though the afternoon sunlight is making the evergreen trees look silvery and sick. Twenty years of increasing shade has put paid to all that lovely green sod in the image above; last winter's cold killed the Bloodgood Japanese maple.

The bird is standing on the rock that is in the pond. Look closely behind him and you will see what the hill looks like in reality. This hill and its partner across the path are perfect candidates for Tell the Truth Tuesday, the meme originated on Bonney Lassie's blog. 

I decided to take a black and white photo to help me figure out what was happening on this slope and what interventions were necessary. The four areas circled in pale green are the plants that can stay (from left): green Hakonechloa grass, a European ginger patch and groups of ferns.

When you take a closer look this is what you see. This patch with wild strawberry, violets and Aguga is as good as it gets on this hill at the moment. 

There's Virginia waterleaf (lower right), a plant that would be ok in a woodland setting, more violets and a grassy looking weed. 

The most prolific ground cover on this hill is this unknown weed which has tried all summer to take over my garden. Look closely and you will see it is present in many different sized generations. 

It's easy to pull out but keeps returning. I can't denude a slope without instantly re-planting it — which is what I've started to do on the back side of this mound. 

The back side of the Buddha mound is less steep and easier to work on since it is next to an accessible path. The green circles mark new ground-covering Junipers, the orange notes a patch of moss and the pink arrow indicates a swath of assorted ferns. All of these are keepers. The purple circle is a dwarf Mugo pine that died after two miserable winters. When I dug it out, I realized it was quite root-bound which is this gardener's fault. I am admitting partial responsibility but letting the weather also claim part. 

The ferns, central dark green moss patch and some of the shrubs are all clearly visible here. I replaced the Mugo pine with a boxwood from elsewhere in the garden. 

The whole curving top of this mound is covered in the same weeds growing on the front side. I am slowly pulling them out and replacing them with assorted varieties of Carex. 

I'm planting different Carexes on the adjacent Turtle Mound which is smaller, less steep and accessible on all sides. These are planted on one foot centers and I'm hoping a few of them will fill in enough by next season that we won't be stuck staring at bare dirt for years.

This is the reality that even many visitors don't quite notice let alone you folks who are looking at garden images on your digital devices. Proof that our garden is not as perfect as I sometimes make it look in my photos. 

IVOM: A late summer bloomer

This last week we've had a few more visitors stop by to see the garden, so I wanted to freshen up the Tea House flowers. The orange lily stem that I featured for our recent big tour group had given up the ghost. But I wanted to keep the lichen-covered stem and the glaucous Hosta leaf.

My garden is almost empty of flowers at the moment; lots of things in bud but not much blooming. I added a trailing berry branch that I clipped before it took root in my garden from my neighbor's big patch. 

Arrowhead (Sagitaria latifolia), which grows in our pond, was about the only flower available but it proved up to the task.

To see what other gardeners have found to put in a vase today, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this long-running Monday meme. 

Just before the tour: The Tsukubai and more

As you come around the west side of our house, you are standing on the stepping stone directly in the center bottom of this image. The path splits in two with one direction continuing along the fence around the back of the Tea House to the upper pond. This path turns left at the house taking you first to the Tsukubai. 

Tsukubai is a washbasin typically placed for visitors to purify themselves by ritual cleansing before a tea ceremony. According to Wikipedia, the name  comes from the verb tsukubau meaning "to crouch" or "to bow down." Guests attending a tea ceremony would crouch and wash their hands in a tsukubai set in the tea garden before entering the Tea House. We have a bamboo dipper that you can use if you actually want to perform this ritual.

Looking back the way we just came. 

This view of the house and deck is from the foot of the stairs leading up to the Tea House behind us.

The main color in this garden — no matter the season — is shades of green. 

Looking back to the Tea House from the deck. 

Our Buddha has appeared on the blog hundreds of times in all seasons and all kinds of weather. 

The re-sodded grass square looking pristine and lovely. 

Lichen-covered stepping stones lead past the deck.

Clematis and evergreens are the main plants at this end of the house.

The stepping stones take you to the bridge over the dry stream or the gravel path up the east side of the pond.

At the east end of the curving gravel (above) path is another water feature. 

If you turn right you sweep around the curve of the Turtle Mound; the name is a reference to the placement of the stones on this low hill. 

The more steeply sloping Buddha Mound is to your right while the Turtle Mound is behind you in this image. 

The gravel path continues behind the Buddha Mound to the gate to our neighbors' garden. Though we are on our fifth neighbors in the time we've lived here, we've always had friendly relations and never regretted the gate we created to join our garden with our first neighboring friends. 

The path changes to pine needles as it goes between my two heavily planted perennial beds. This more colorful area is barely visible from the house and deck. 

Looking back the way we came. The pine is doing its annual shedding of needles. This area is almost entirely evergreens which we hope will need less maintenance than flowers. The Japanese painted ferns are all self-seeded in this damp area. I have had great luck with this fern but not because of anything I've done.

Just before the tour: The water gardens

The Tea House sits above the west end of the big pond.

The loss of the big Japanese maple that was at the back edge of the pond has allowed more sun to reach the water — and thus we have more lilies. 

All of our water lilies are hardy and either white or yellow flowered. 

The upper pool nestles next to the Tea House. 

By this point in the summer it is filled with the flowers and foliage of Sagitaria latifolia. 

A stepping stone path crosses between the upper pool and the beginning of the stream and waterfalls. 

The path across the water links the Sacred Grove and the Tea House gardens. 

The stones are wet because birds stand between them and drink, wash and generally splash about. 

Mark and Jon Adams-Kollitz, the young man who helped him build the ponds and stream, worked hard to achieve the perfect sound of rushing, bubbling water. 

This area has always been a planting problem since you need to walk here as you step off the path across the stream. I planted this combo of ground covers last summer and it is the first grouping that has not only survived but thrived. 

This area still has some of its earliest plantings I made in the garden, though many others have come and gone over the years. 

 

The water garden

People usually think of water lilies when they think of water gardens. We do have lilies blooming for much of the season, but my favorite water plants are two that have just started blooming. This one is Arrowhead (Sagitaria latifolia). This can grow in wet soils or submerged in up to 6" of water. Ours has been growing in our upper pool in almost two feet of water since 1998. A dramatic plant even when it's not in flower. 

Star Fruit (Penthorum seloides) has flowers that are described as "looking like bouquets of upside down turkey's feet," which I think is apt. This has been growing in rocks at the edge of the pond where its roots touch water but the plant never is submerged, though it can take being in water up to 4" deep. The flowers eventually turn into small pinkish-orange "fruits".

We got 1.54" of rain early Sunday between 2:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. It made all the stones in the garden green with lichens. Everything is still very moist this morning as you can see; though it hasn't rained again since then. I love the look but wish the lichens did not make everything so slippery; a dangerous beauty.