Some Alternatives

Snow on Saturday, about 3 inches.  The yard looks nice now.  Temps have stayed in the low twenties.

I found a possible alternative to building the mesh cones for protecting seedlings.

Purchase pre-made twig wreaths, then fasten them with long willow branches for triangular supports.  Found this on Pinterest, natch.

This could work?

The originals are British and cost about $30, too much, and they don't ship or deliver anyway (you have to pick them up in England!).  But I could make them with wreaths and willow branches, you think?

Making Seedling Cones

Snow last night, and it is cold and sunny and windy today.  We got just an inch or two. The plug for the heated birdbath stopped working last fall.

I spent yesterday trying to build the protective sleeves for the sunflower seedlings that I want to plant out in the meadow.

The idea is to direct sow the seeds, then cover each emerging seedling with a tomato cage wrapped in mesh.  I used bird netting and planned to clip it on with little plastic orchid clips.

Well, it was a bear to work with the netting.  It caught on everything, was hard to see, tangled . . . . aaaagh.  The clips worked great, except I only bought 3 dozen, and each tomato cage needed about 15 to hold the netting on.  So I ended up tying the netting on with twist ties, then clipping only where the fabric was bunchy or loose.

The whole thing was awful to construct, and I have 4 more to do (10 total).  Would chicken wire work better?  Why do the cages have to be awkwardly cone shaped, why not straight cylinders?  Why isn't there a pre-made product out there like this?

It's nice to see the snow coating everything now.  It's been so bare and brown all January so far.  The blueberry bushes are so easy to see now, with their branches against the snow.  In summer they are overtaken by the amsonias.

Really need to move them!

Pinterest

I joined Pinterest so I could easily snip ideas from web sites and blogs when I see a picture that inspires or gives me an idea.  I just wanted an easy way to grab ideas, quicker and more organized than the ideas tab at the top of this journal.

I discovered it is as addicting as everyone says.  I am constantly cruising pictures, getting a little reward every time I see a pretty photo, and every time someone re-pins what I put up.  It's like getting blog comments, only random and instantaneous and fleeting.

I can see what photos from my blogs are being pinned and who is grabbing them by going to pinterest.com/source/laurries.blogspot.com.  It's interesting to see what people have pulled off my blogs.

On another blog tech note, I tried to search this journal the other day for info on what allium bulbs I planted, but because my settings are private, it is not searchable.  The whole idea of keeping this journal online was so I could search for whatever I needed without having to remember what I called it or when I made note of it.

So. . . .

I can go back to using labels and make sure I am comprehensive about that so I can find what I tagged.  Not that efficient.

or, in order to search everything I've posted, I'll have to publish as a publicly viewed blog.

I can't simply turn that setting on and off just when I want to find something --- it takes days for google to re-cache and re-index my entries (even though the "search" gadget is looking for results only from this blog, it is actually accessing them through the whole dang world wide web).  So to use the search gadget, the blog has to be publicly out there for a good while.  Who knew?

I'm a little concerned about making this public because I have pulled photos without attributing them, thinking they were only for my personal journal use, and just for ideas.  Now Pinterest fills that need, and automatically attributes photos that are pinned, but there are still some here on my "private" blog that don't have a source.

And finally, another blog tech update --- I added pages to the top of my Plant Inventory blog  to show the evolution of each garden over time, and added all the new gardens we created last year.

Sunflowers

I want to plant sunflowers in a row in the meadow, behind the buckeyes.  Last year I direct sowed the seeds and each little seedling was eaten as soon as it came up.

This year I want to try again.

I will get tomato cages, wrap them around in bird netting or fine chicken wire, and set those over the seeds.  The netting or wire should keep the eaters out, and the tomato cage can offer support as the stalks grow.

The picture above shows a tomato cage with blue yarn wrapped around it, but I would use netting.

This seems like the easiest and cheapest way. 

I've looked at cloches and all kinds of re-purposed items such as wire mesh baskets, but a tomato cage and bird netting appears to be the least complicated, and the netting is probably easier to work with than wire mesh or chicken wire.  (Hardware cloth was unbearable to cut and wrap.)  So today I ordered 10 three foot high cages, some netting and clips from Amazon.

I could tie the netting on with twist ties.  But these cheap little spring clips, which are called orchid clips, will do the trick easily.

Hinoki False Cypress

Cold, windy in the 30s today.

Now that the voles are gone from the front strip, I really want to re-plant the soft little buns of Hinoki false cypresses that I liked there before.  But I have no idea what dwarf cultivar they were!

in 2010 a neat clean look

Here are some possibilities:

Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Nana' --- this is the bun shaped low form.  It grows 1 foot to two feet tall and 1 to 2 feet wide.  Diminutive, dark green.  It's possible that this is what I had before, it was pretty widely available.

'Jean Iseli' is similar to 'Nana', but turns a little amber in winter.

Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Just Dandy' --- this is a bun shaped low form.  It grows 1 foot to 18 inches tall and one foot to two feet wide.  Mid green.  A rounded mound that grows a little wider than tall.  The mid green color looks more like what I had, and it is faster growing.

Wayside Gardens has this in their catalog.  Should I get them?  Plant three next to right of the Gold Cone juniper?

I Had a Plan . . .

40s today, part sun.  Still no snow at all.

In early May of 2010 I spent hours and hours trucking buckets of soil up to the "saddle" at the top of the back hill where there is a depression by the road.  I planted three rosebay rhododendrons there with the idea that they would eventually form an evergreen screen in the woods at the edge of the road.

some evergreen rhododendrons along the swale at the top would hide the house and traffic

In 2010 I had to water and water them during the drought, no small feat to get water up to the very top of the hill.

After the 2011 October snowstorm the utility road crews left piles of branches all over the little struggling rosebays, and I finally went up today to check on them.

Gone.  Not just buried under branch debris, but one was actually decapitated (may regrow from the roots?), one was uprooted with the fine roots sticking up in the air, and one was completely under a heavy log that fell smack on top of it.

Oh well, I had a plan, and it didn't work out so well.

That area at the top of the hill is not really a woodland, it's a roadside danger zone.  With snowplows, salt, road crew work, etc., none of it is really an environment to grow woodland plants in!

Warm and Unusual

After some bitter cold a few days ago it is back to being warm, unseasonably so.  60 degrees today!  And in the 50s the past couple days.  No snow, and it's all so unusual.

The tulips in pots on the porch are coming up.  Snowdrops are up.  Daffodils are sending up shoots.  It's early January!

It was so warm out that we could do garden chores easily.  We finally got the clamp off the Japanese maple in front, and drilled a hole through the broken stem, glued the center and added a 4 inch bolt.  Awkward work, but we got it done.  The clamp is back on to hold the glue in place, but I'll need to remove it soon.  I could see where it had damaged the outer bark quite a bit from being held in place all year.

I also tied up the side branch on the Diane witch hazel.  It completely lost its center in the October storm, and I'm trying to get the horizontal side branch that remains into a more upright position.

Also staked and tied the leaning sweetbay magnolia outside the bedroom window.  It did not lose any branches in the October storm, but it had quite a lean afterwards.  The ground was soft enough to pound in a metal stake!

And I re-tied the sourwood, it still leans.

snowdrops are so hard to photograph!

It felt wonderful to be out in the yard in springtime temperatures, puttering and fixing things.  But really.  It's January.

Winter Thoughts

8 degrees this morning when I got up.  Yikes.  Sunny today, clear but very very cold!

This is the time of year to pore over catalogs, make plans and lists and think about what I want to change or add.

One thing has bothered me: the golden hops vine did nothing for the corner of the front garden last year.  

It was too rampant and unshapely, it outgrew the support, and it was not as interesting as I thought it would be.  Not golden at all.  The foliage is rough and coarse.

One option is to create a larger support --- either long strings up to the gutter for it to climb straight up, or simply a much larger trellis (where to get that?)

But my winter thoughts tend toward getting rid of it.  I don't like it, and my experience with the knockout roses is that I should eliminate what isn't working for me.  

This isn't working.

I can always try the Jackmanii clematis there instead.  It's in a pot now and can be moved.  Whaddya think?

Maybe, move the hops vine to the side of the garage and let it climb to the pergola on the right side?  I've been waiting for six years for the climbing hydrangea to get to the pergola, and it's close, but the hops vine would cover the right side in a season.  The pergola is the only structure big enough for this climber, but I'm not crazy about putting it in that small corner.

In any event, it comes out of the front garden this spring.

Happy New Year

Christmas in Denver

A great time with Greg and Tom, for an early Christmas. 

We celebrated Greg's birthday together on the 17th too.  It is such a special time together, and it will change with girlfriends / wives / grandkids.

For now, it was just the three of us, and it was wonderful.

Merry Christmas!!