Each Little World

Looking back at the garden year

I usually do a January post about the highs and lows of the prior year in my garden. I started to write one weeks ago, but could not really bear to think that much about the last year. But Kris Peterson, who gardens in southern California and blogs at Late to the Garden Party, inspired me with her recent post highlighting lovely moments in her garden each month. As she pointed out, our gardens were our refuge this past year. I don't think I've spent more time or enjoyed myself more in my garden than in 2020. Here are some of my favorite moments.

JANUARY: This month is almost always cold and snowy in Wisconsin, so my gardening is virtual. Most mornings I've started the day with dreamy stories and photos of houses and gardens via emails from the UK version of House and Garden magazine. Below: The Jinny Blom designed garden at Chalkland Farm in winter via HG magazine.

FEBRURARY: I began gardening in order to have flowers and herbs to put in a vase. I am especially drawn to containers, like this one, that look equally good with or without flowers. This was one of the last purchases I made before lockdown. 

MARCH: Our delightful pair of ducks flew in right on schedule; a moment of normalcy in this very unusual year. 

APRIL: I was delirious as each new plant pushed up in the spring and spent a good chunk of the month on my stomach attempting to capture all of it with a camera. Erythronium 'White Splendor'

MAY: I spent much of this last gardening year pulling out weeds that had become "groundcvoers" and replacing them with an assortment of native Carex species. Flowers of Halesia tetraptera (Carolina Silverbell) have fallen on the Carex in this photo. That tree came out late in the summer but I'll always remember this moment. 

JUNE: It was a glorious year for Peonies of every type. 

JULY: One of my favorite views is this foliage grouping on the slope below the Tea House. Clockwise from left front: Hosta 'Spritzer,' Cornus 'Golden Shadows,' Adiantum pedatum,  Tiarella 'Running Tapestry,' Carex Divulsa, Brunnera macrophylla 'Alexander's Great,' Deinanthe caerula and Heuchera 'Autumn Haze'  

AUGUST: My last haul from the late, and very great local nursery, Flower Factory. I can barely imagine where i will find such big beautiful plants, both the every day and the unusual, in the future. We have many good local nurseries but nothing quite like David and Nancy Nedvek's Flower Factory.

SEPTEMBER: At last my hardy Begonia is finally big enough to make a stunning statement. 

OCTOBER: Our gorgeous new deck, made of Ipe wood, was finished in time for us to sit outdoors and enjoy it until the snow arrived. 

NOVEMBER: An autumn filled with intense fall color on perennials, shrubs, trees and grasses. 

DECEMBER: This was the scene in the garden in early December and it looked the same after a late December storm. Very likely it will continue to look this way until March or April. But I am not going to think about that. 

Snow again

A number of months ago, I saw a headline saying the Old Farmer's Almanac was predicting a long, snowy winter. That was an article and a subject I did not want to pursue. But another big storm this month has me worried that perhaps that weather report was correct. 

I took these two photos out the library window this morning. Luckily this snow was not as heavy and wet as the last storm. I am just guessing at the amount of snow that came down, but it appears that it could easily be five inches if you look at the depth of it on the bridge in the image below. 

Waiting for rain

Our last significant rain was July 26. We keep having rainy days in the forecast but they never materialize. Or if they do, it is not enough moisture to even dampen the soil. So I am spending more time than I prefer schlepping hoses around the garden.

On the other hand, I can't really complain since the folks all around us who got rain this week, received it as part of the devastating derecho storm system that swept though the Upper Midwest. Tornadoes are our typical scary storm system; we don't need any hurricanes to liven things up.

More than a little wet

We got .96" of rain overnight Tuesday. The garden needed it and looked better for it in the morning, despite some downed branches landing on plants in bloom. After it stopped raining again yesterday afternoon, I checked the rain gauge to discover 1.18" had come down in about half an hour. Our gutters were overflowing as they were stuffed with Maple tree seedlings and debris. Then it started to rain again. This morning we had another inch in the gauge. So we got a little over 3 inches of rain in not much more than 24 hours. This seems to be one of the aspects of climate change that we've been experiencing for the last few years. Not a change for the better. 

 

 

May in the Midwest

A week ago our overnight low temperatures were bordering on freezing. As a result I was hauling my new plants in and out of the garage every night. Then the weather turned beautiful and I spent two glorious days planting.

Now we are back to days where the high temp is barely making it to the mid-50s. Two inches in the last two days and four inches total rainfall since Thursday. The garden is on steroids with all that moisture, but it is too wet to do anything — even weed. 

I would not really care except that I have a lot of plants that need to get put into the ground. Even in their pots, they are putting on a lot of new growth. Last Friday morning two flats (64 plants) of Carex pennsylvanica from the UW-Madison Arboretum were delivered to my front door. 

I am one of the lucky ones, as the Arboretum sale was cancelled due to COVID-19. Those of us who preordered received our plants directly from the grower. The Carexes that I planted last autumn are looking gorgeous. Can't wait to add these to the mix.

IVOM: Rescued from the weather

Our dangerously low overnight temperatures mean that all my special plants are being protected with bins and boxes. Tonight looks like our last day with a freezing overnight low temp, 32°F.

I have been holding all the plants that have arrived by mail or curbside pickup at local nurseries in a wheelbarrow and boxes so they can be quickly brought indoors at night and returned outside during the day time hours. But yesterday, I gave up and brought everyone inside mid-afternoon when it started to snow. It came down heavily enough that it began to stick to the deck and covered the roof of the fence across the back garden.

The living room is the holding spot for herbs and a few perennials.

The wheelbarrow in the garage has Epimediums, Tricyrtis and Veronicastrums.

The front hall is packed with everything else . . .

including this Rhodie atlanticum that has started to bloom.

Luckily I took advantage of more pleasant weather Saturday afternoon and clipped enough flowers to put together an assortment of vases. 

This Tulip and the Muscari grow in full sun in gravelly soil in the traffic island bed in the street. I plant and maintain this little bed which is directly in front of my house.

I have a trio of white pitchers that Ipurchased because I loved their shapes and thought they would be perfect as vases. But photographing them as a group is always difficult, between finding the room to pose all three together and enough light to show their contents in their true colors.

They are filled with Daffodils, Tulip sylvestnis, Epimedium, Fritillaria, Lamium and a Peony.

I opened the window shutters to increase the light! 

A pair of Tulip 'Schoonoord' circle Paeonia japonica with Hyacinth 'City of Haarlem' in the rear. 

To see what other gardeners have put in a vase today, visit Cathy at Rambling in the Garden who hosts this lively and lovely Monday meme. 

Spring ephemerals

I'm using the word "ephemeral" rather loosely here since the foliage on a number of these plants remains after the flowers disappear. But it always seems to me that it is the blooms that draw our attention. No flowers, no second glance. 

Pachysandra procumbens, the native version with attractive tortoiseshell foliage.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)

Hepatica acutiloba 'Silver Leaf'

Dutchman's breeches (Dicentra cucullaria)

False rue anemone (Isopyrum biternatum) comes back in the autumn when the weather cools down. 

With a frost predicted Friday night and overnight lows in the 30s for the next six days, it is hard to know what the garden will look like next week. I can haul my new plants into the garage each night, but the rest of the garden will have to survive on its own. 

Snow stripes

You don't have to check the weather forecast when snow is on the way. The fact a storm was coming was obvious to me the minute I pulled out of my driveway yesterday. I took this shot of our street through my car window.

Those white stripes you see are a salt brine — a saltwater solution of 23.3 percent salt, according to Madison Streets Division spokesman Bryan Johnson in a local news story. It is put on major streets before a snowstorm if temperatures are high enough to make it effective.

When it is sprayed on before the snow hits, it keeps the snow from bonding with the pavement, so it's easier to scrape off when the plows come through. Our street looks rather rural with the tree canopy, but it is an emergency vehicle route which I assume is one reason why they spray it.

It started snowing some time during the early morning hours and has been pretty steady all morning. I love the pair of snow stripes the weather has created on the bridge that crosses our dry stream. 

The gardening year in review: Highs and lows of 2019

Plants and people, of course, provided all the high points of our 2019 gardening year. The weather was the source of the low points, which seems to be the new normal judging by the last few years. 

GARDEN PEOPLE

The year began with the workshop that I hosted at my house on "recording" one's garden. It was a snowy Saturday but everyone showed up for the morning and afternoon sessions. This event was one of many free workshops offered by members of the Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society for other members. I've hosted a few and attended a number of others. They are a great benefit to members and a big "thank-you" goes to whoever thought of doing this. Brilliant. 

We had a number of small groups stop by the garden as well as hosting members of the friends group of the Scott Arboretum at Swarthmore who were visiting Midwestern gardens. We ended the summer with a party celebrating 25 years at this house. 

We also had a garden consult at the end of the summer on how aging gardeners should deal with their aging garden. I bought some shrubs at late season sales that I plunked into temporary locations as part of our plans to reduce maintenance. This winter I will need to spend some serous time looking at the garden, reading and planning about how Mark and I and the garden can all happily age in place. 

The first part of that process was to hire Tree Health Management to look at all our trees to determine their health and who should go and who gets to stay. That process is just getting underway with lots of decisions still to be made.

Looking ahead: The 2020 Garden Bloggers Fling will be held in Madison, so I hope to see you in my garden next June!

PLANTS: HIGH AND LOW POINTS

The low point was the plants that succumbed to another bad winter. Everywhere in the upper Midwest, including our garden, saw Burning Bushes (Euonymus) and Japanese Maples felled by the weather. One of our maples started to send out a bit of growth so we didn't cut it down. We'll see how it looks this spring to decide if it stays or goes.

The high point of the garden — literally and visually — had to be Thalictrum 'Splendide' which grew skyward into the branches of a Korean Maple where it put on a show for weeks. 

When this pale Martagon lily bloomed amidst a row of dark red ones for the second year in a row, I moved it to a bed across the garden where it can star instead of sticking out like a sore thumb. I'm looking forward to the result.

PROJECTS: Any project that gets completed is always a high point. Last year we had the electrical work that had been done for the Tsukubai water pot and the pond pump extended to the Tea House. An electrician took care of all that, but Mark was the one who re-soddded the grass feature that surrounds our deck. It looked great for all our garden visitors, though we are not sure if it is going to remain as a long term solution. One more thing to think about this winter. 

WEATHER AND CLIMATE: HIGH AND LOW POINTS

An increase in the amount of rain we typically get in southern Wisconsin as well as more intense storms is the ongoing weather news here. My garden managed to soak it all up and we had no serious problems with water in our basement. But farmers in this state barely managed to get crops planted or harvested because of standing water in their fields; very serious issues for our economy and for our food supply.

We had record snowfalls in October along with extreme cold — all happening when most trees still had their leaves. As a result we have a few trees that never turned color and did not drop their leaves in the usual fashion. A lot of leaves and honey locust pods all came down on top of the snow and wound up covering the garden once it melted. Not the most attractive view at the moment, though our dusting of snow on New Year's Eve did brighten things up.

Now it's on to the next gardening season — at least in my head for the next few months. 

Solstice weekend

As a Wisconsinite I wouldn't dream of complaining about the official start to winter arriving on a sunny weekend with temperatures hitting the 50s. As a gardener, I am a little less thrilled as it is one more sign that we may be about to have our third unusual winter in a row. But when the temp is 56°F. there's nothing to do but grab the camera and document the garden.

There are leaves and honey locust pods everywhere you look. They're half frozen to the ground and are going to stay there until spring. 

If you are looking for "evergreen" plants, I am always amazed at the number of things in my garden that bounce back after being buried under snow and brutalized by cold temperatures. When we got up one morning last week, the temps were in the single digits and barely rose beyond them during the day. This is Dryopteris 'Brilliance'.

Polystichum makinoi

Arum italicum 'Ghost'

Epimedium

Helleborus

Definitely looks like it's going to be a green Christmas!