Roots All The Way To China

Love the blue plumbago in a pot by the deck

Wait a few days and the weather changes. We went from hot and sticky to cool yesterday, and chilly today, barely in the 60s and partly cloudy.

The cool weather got me back on track doing chores in the garden. I moved two blueberries in the meadow over to where the other four were planted, so now all of them are in a small stand in one place.

Digging, moving, filling with dirt -- feels good again!

Then I decided to dig up a few of the salix yezoalpina on the east side. Maybe put them in pots until I could figure out what to do with them. They get so browned and crisp and look so bad all season, that I knew I needed to move them somewhere else and start over with another groundcover along the east side.

So I stood over the patch, shovel in hand, and thought "I hope they're easy enough to pop out of the soil. Probably have shallow roots, that's why they don't get enough moisture here. I'll just wiggle one up out of the dirt."

Ha. Not. The roots go down to China. They spread enormously, running out four or five feet. The main plants developed fat, iron hard roots that all bound together into an impenetrable trunk. It was a difficult, shoulder wrenching, body damaging job to wrestle those plants out.

Obviously there was no way to save any to put in a pot or move elsewhere. They were ripped, torn, hacked out and manhandled.

(Honestly, that Dawn viburnum looks ridiculous, all splayed out and waving about. Sheeesh.)

The soil all along here was surprisingly dry and fine, despite 3/4 of an inch of rain the other day. Everywhere else the garden is wet, but as I tore the alpine willows out, I found very dry, loose dirt.

Do the willows drink it all up and still suffer? They look so bad all summer, once spring goes by.

Initially I had high hopes for this plant. The leaves were glossy green and interesting, and the plants spread out easily.

They had funny fuzzy blooms, and the first fall they turned a buttery yellow color. Perfect groundcover for this spot.

In spring they covered all the bare ground under the goofy looking Dawn viburnum with rich green foliage. Exactly what I wanted.

But when the weather got hot they browned badly, and never recovered when it cooled down. Last year the same thing, I kept hoping it was just a one-off from too much heat or sun. I watered them. I watched.

Ick. They stayed crisp and ugly all year, despite cooler weather and what was certainly plenty of moisture all this year.

Time to change up the area.

So I thought I could take them out and try them somewhere else, but in the process they all were sacrificed. No way to save them with those roots that reach all the way down to China.

My plan now is to put in Deutzia gracilis 'Nikko', the pretty ground covering dwarf deutzia that works so well for me in other areas. It is a dense grower so it will smother the area, it stays crisp and green and a little more elegant looking than the willows were. Really pretty white flowers in spring, and decent fall color.

Although they don't spread as quickly as the willows, they do fill out an area after several years and they seem fine in different soils, and in varying amounts of sun or shade.

In summer the deutzia is plain and green and not very noticeable, but that's fine for this area, where I just want coverage. Here it is spreading nicely under the Rose of Sharon, just to the right of the strip I want to cover, so eventually the deutzia will be all along this side of the house.

I ordered 3 from Lazy S to plant later this month and I have two rooted cuttings from my own plants. It's easy to make more too. I want to make the whole strip a little wider and let these woody ground shrubs cover it all up.

The mystery is why the soil is so dry there. Will it be ok for a big stand of dwarf deutzia? Was it the willows that were parching the area dry?

Off Topic

Humid and sticky again today, hard to do anything outside. So different than the long stretch of cool weather we had in August and early September.

Ok, this is off topic. I'm feeling unsettled, and part of it is that I spent 8 months growing my hair almost to a chin length bob, went for a trim along the back and bottom, and now I'm right back to the beginning, with a pixie cut, layered, chopped straight across the nape of the neck and with reverse gradation up the back of the head like a men's cut.

I guess it's called a "blocked nape". I hate it and it is not at all what I thought she meant by shaping the back a little.

The front and top make a mushroom cap shape, bunchy over the ears. I hate that too.

To compensate for the full part out over the ears, she insists I have to style way more volume at the crown. I really need to work it, mousse it, frequently re-fluff it with my fingers, and avoid any breezes. No volume flattening hats in winter, and stay out of the humidity in summer or it will go flat.

Really? I need to work my life around my hair?

After all the time to grow it out, I strongly told her that I don't want to fight my hair any more. It wants to drape, it has no volume, so let it fall from the crown in a bob with a long side swept bang. Tuck the length behind the ears. I'm almost there. No more short sassy styles to make me look younger that need so much work to fluff and maintain.

As soon as she heard "my hair falls flat" she started in on me, not hearing any of the part about working with my hair's natural condition:

Volume?? Here's the problem, you aren't doing it right! We need PRODUCT. More product, I have a new greasy mousse to try. Use more, use just this amount, don't use so much, use it exactly this way in the precise amount. You don't use it right, that's the problem. If you did it right your hair would look better.

OK, it's Helen Mirren -- but how hard is this,
just some feathering at the bottom, and
let the hair fall as it will from the crown.

Volume?? You aren't blowing it out correctly. Your brush is the wrong size, even though you bought the one I told you to. Still wrong. . . you always do it wrong. It has to be 20 minutes with your arms over your head, not the 10 minutes you do til your arms get too tired. Use the brush this way, you do not have the right technique. Don't use a brush at all, just fingers, that's the problem. You always do it wrong and that's the issue. If you blew your hair dry the right way it would look better.

Volume?? We need to razor cut it. Thin it out till it is skimpy, then use product and the brush and the dryer to fluff it back up. Shave the back and cut the nape straight across.

If you did your hair more skillfully it wouldn't look so bad.

What's so offputting is that I get this same harangue every time I go. I am told every single time that I don't have any idea how to blow dry my hair the right way, and then I get full bore instructions. For 14 years now.

Really? It's never the cut?

After 14 years of faithfully following her advice and dutifully working the style she gives me for half an hour every day with brushes and mousse and sprays and rollers and after the years of being harangued about technique, my hair simply looks unstyled when I do it. Twenty minutes of blow drying, brush rolling, fussing for lift at the crown and volume at the roots produces a look like I'm on a camping trip without amenities.

Clean but flat.

For all the work I put in, I don't want to look like I have a boy's haircut. I don't want a pixie. I don't want what bulk there is squatting over my ears and a straight blocked nape in back.

I want to be able to wear a hat in winter without worrying about my hair going flat (or even wear a hat to cover a bad haircut).

I want a simple feminine chin length bob with some feathering at the very bottom so it comes down around my neck. Appropriate for my older age, my gray hair, and the limp nature of the hair I have, not the hair she wants me to have.

I now have to start all over again growing it out for the next 8 months ---

-- and get a new hair stylist after more than a decade with one who tells me how utterly inept I am. I think I am finally done feeling bad that I don't know how to style my hair.

I do, however, feel bad that I didn't find a new hairdresser 13 years ago.

Not Today

HIgh 80s today, and humidity is 81%. After all the weeks of cool damp conditions and all the days of cool dry sunshine, this is a blast of hot sticky weather.

After our stone wall building, and laying big rock steppers, I felt so ready to tackle new garden expansions, moving some plants, and other big projects. I have so many plans.

Not today.

Weirdness

This morning was dank and dreary, spitting a very light rain, in the low 60s. As I sat on our new porch drinking my coffee around 8 a.m., I got thinking "gee, the new katsura got buffeted around a little in the breezy conditions yesterday. I think it needs staking."

Just as that thought crossed my mind, three men from Bartlett appeared at the side of the porch, with guy wires and stakes, and proceeded to stake the tree!

Weird.

They did it with very thin wire, and stakes that are underground, no menace to lawnmowers or clumsy feet. There are three wires, although you only see two from any angle. The wires are very loose, and cushioned around the trunk with black rubber collars.

Later in the morning I started putting the green mesh plastic trunk protectors around all the young trees that are vulnerable to antler rub in fall. I always hate doing this, it makes me feel under siege or something.

I got most of the yard trees done, and several in the meadow, but still need to do a few more. I wrapped the linden in the cul de sac -- the linden is a magnet for male deer and they have rubbed raw patches every year, so far without killing it.

I hate seeing the wrap around my nicest trees in fall. Here is the blackhaw viburnum that I limbed up so prettily. The mesh wrap is not terribly obvious, but it is there, and I really would like a clean look when the tree colors in fall. But I need to exercise all caution.  Bleeah.

One thing that concerns me is the weeping black wetness at the base of my beautiful Bloodgood Japanese maple. It is likely a bacterial infection from some damage to the bark, but what caused the injury? And what to do about it? And will it kill the tree, which so far is leafy and gorgeous and looks fine?

I  mean, really, it looks healthy and glorious -- could this injury to the trunk be fatal? OMG.

I e-mailed Bartlett with a picture, asking if I should be concerned. More on this to come.

The problem with the Japanese maple just added to a heavy, lingering sense of anxiety. Foreboding, sadness, I dunno.  The tree, the gloomy weather. . . .

. . . the fact that we invited friends for dinner, set last Friday for the date, got an affirmative but underwhelming response. Then we had to cancel because another friend's mother died and calling hours were last Friday evening.  I e-mailed to change the dinner date, but got no response. Called and left a message, gave alternate dates and finally got an e-mail back that they understood and would let us know what alternate dates worked.

Nothing for six days now. Did they forget they were invited? Do they not want to come -- there were very terse and uncharacteristic responses from them, when I got any at all.  Urp.

. . .  and the fact that I sent Greg money for his new truck, then got a text message that he had buyer's remorse and decided not to go ahead, and made some fixes on the old one instead. Okay. I e-mailed with a question about his uncle's funeral and about his decision on the truck, but no response after five days. Another urp.

I feel adrift.

Weird stuff -- the inn where we are staying next week on our road trip to Virginia and North Carolina sent an e-mail thanking us for visiting recently and hoped we had a good time. We don't arrive until next Monday.

Tamarack Lodge at Mammoth, where we are booked for Christmas, showed our arrival date on my Master Card bill as August 13.

Weird stuff, unsettling.

Changeable end of season weather.

I feel strange and unmoored.

(plus the ultimate kicker -- after growing my hair out since January -- over 8 months now -- I went in for a haircut today and instead of trimming it as requested, she simply cut it all back to a short boy's cut like before. Kind of a bowl cut this time. Cute on an 8 year old. I have to start over, another 6 - 8 months to go to grow it out again. . . how's that for feeling unsettled and sorry for myself!)

Feels Great

I'm tired and it feels great. A beautiful breezy, cool day with sunshine in the afternoon. Temperatures in the mid 70s.

A great day to do another project with rocks!

The biggest fieldstones that would not fit in the wall were hauled out to the dry creekbed to use as steppers.

They were heavy to lift and wiggle into place, and all the extra gravel dust had to be hauled out there too, bucket by bucket. Jim and I dug out the depressions for the rocks to sit in, scooped stone dust and worked it for the shape, then manhandled six big flat stones into place.

Really manhandled. They don't look that big but they were.

It was hands and knees work, and very tiring.

But there is nothing better than coming in at 3 in the afternoon to shower and clean up, so achy and tired after a day of real physical work outdoors. I was sweaty and dirty, but the air is dry and comfortable.

It feels so good at the end of the day.

I like how the steppers look leading to the bridge and around the corner.

The big one set in the grass looks a little high, but the lawn is cut away and tamped down around it. When the grass perks up and grows a couple inches it will come in over the sides of that rock.

I still want to add more in the grass, leading out into the yard and between Meadow's Edge and the Blueberry Garden. The big ones are used now, but there are smaller ones that I could work into a random pattern laid in the grass.

At the far end where the path drifts into the dry creek bed, I need to set the last two small steppers more firmly, and I need to shore up the bank of the creek bed right at that spot -- I have plenty of small rocks. Maybe add a small cascading plant there?

Other projects for another day. Right now I am tired, it is the end of the day, the breeze is nice and it all feels great.

New Katsura

Yesterday was a chilly day, in the low 60s. Overnight was in the low 40s! Very fall-like.

Bartlett planted the new katsura tree. It is a huge specimen, single trunk, full and tall. Mike knocked $300 from the price, so it was at least close to my budgeted range, but still an incredibly expensive investment.

But after two tries and five years invested in the katsuras I had planted myself, I was ready to spring for this major cost and get a tree that looks like it had been there five years already.

It took three men and heavy equipment to plant it. It might require staking, as the canopy is so full and so high on the trunk. It's a good 16 feet tall.

The passengers flying overhead from Boston to NY looked down and approved. Nice tree.

It Came Out Great

Although yesterday started out misty and damp, it ended in dry, cool sunshine. Exactly 72 degrees.

And although the day started out with much to do on the stone wall, it ended with a finished wall. It came out great.

Three bags of mulch were spread about over the dirt behind the wall, and it looks good.

I transplanted some of the struggling lambsear from its shadier, wet spot along the west walk, and put it at the left corner. I hope in this drier, sunnier corner it will spread and do well.

I moved the little cast iron nymph sitting astride a turtle and put her at the top of the wall. I think she is more visible here.

I'm still not happy with the way the right side ends. It only needs a little adjusting -- either I should stair-step the end or try to make a straight vertical end, but this isn't quite right. Minor adjustment.

And I'm not happy with the steep drop off on the left side either, but don't have any ideas to fix that.

The heart needs to be glued with the stone adhesive that Jim got me. We never did mix up any mortar, just backfilled with dirt and topped with mulch. It's not wobbly, but I don't know how it will all hold up to freezes and thaws and ice. I may have to rebuild next spring.

Meanwhile, it looks great.

Cap Stones

Yesterday the relentless gray damp ended and we had a dry, sunny, beautiful late summer day, in the 70s. A perfect day, especially in the midst of so much gloomy weather lately.

Now this morning it is back to spitting mist and leaden skies.

While it was so nice yesterday Jim and I backfilled the wall (haul dirt, shovel dirt, schlep dirt), and then I started to add the capstones.

They are just sitting loosely, to get the idea, but it doesn't look right. I made this photo black & white to highlight form, and I can clearly see the left side rises, with stones on top that are too lumpy and add too  much height.

The guy at the stone store had said to save the big stones to cap the wall, but the big stones we have remaining are too thick. Gotta fix that. Maybe just take off all the top layer from the heart leftward.

I do love how the heart shows up so well.

I'll fuss with those capstones on the left today in the misty wet and see what can be done. We are so near finishing! I wish there were suitable flatter, thinner stones to put on top, but only large lumpy stones or smaller chunky rocks remain.

I'll transplant some of the lambsear to the top of the wall on the left side to echo the blue gray of the spruce. That will look nice.

And Now I Rest

Another damp, cloudy day, humid and in the high 70s. Unpleasantly buggy today after all the rain.

I am anxious in this cool(ish) weather to finish the stone wall, but we need to wait for things to dry out before doing any mortar work or back filling with soil. Everything is still pretty wet.

So, a day off.

I've been at it for at least a few hours each day for a full week now. Time to stop and smell the roses.

Or the clematis.

I really like the sweet autumn clematis on the deck railing. In fact, I love it. It may not stay so neat in future years. I may have to do a lot of pruning to control it, but for this first season it's stunning, and smells divine.

There are other beautiful sights to behold in the late summer garden. The caryopteris and the pink fall anemone are both alive with buzzing bees, and they look jewel-like even in overcast gray light.

The Rose of Sharon is really in bloom now. I was so excited to see it finally through the new taller windows of the porch -- and it just keeps getting better as summer wanes.

The Birch Garden has color. The little Drift red rose has rebloomed, and zinnias and flowering tobacco are pretty, with purple Blue Chip dwarf butterfly bush plants below them.

I have not been impressed with the Blushing Susie thunbergia vines this year. They just don't have much in the way of flowers. A few here and there, and they are pale. Only in the last week have there been more than a half dozen tiny flowers scattered about.

But the individual flowers, isolated in a close up, are sweet.

It's good to have the rest today from the demanding stone work. I am not as frustrated any more, I can see how the finished wall will look and I know we can get there. The quiet time sitting on the porch in the cool damp weather is a relief.

Mmmm, the spicy scent of sweet autumn clematis!

Getting There . . .

Another stormy humid day, with drizzle in the morning but thunderstorms at noon that sent me inside. We got three quarters of an inch of rain from the passing storm. That's an inch between yesterday and today!

Before the storm rolled in I got more stone work done. It's going better. I'm getting there. I'm starting to like what I see.

I moved the heart, but the stone right next to it looks funny. The edge is broken and it distracts from the whole look. Am I being too persnickety about a rough stacked wall? Am I?

Because I am constantly reworking what I build, I can't get the hang of mortaring stones in the back for support. That would mean I'd have to commit to the placement of at least two stones. I can't commit to any two, I need to move everything around.

But I'm getting there.

The heart will definitely have to be held in with mortar. Jim has backfilled the whole wall with a lot of crushed gravel, and we may be ready to start committing to gluing some of the wobbly tippy construction together at points where it won't be seen. Then fill with dirt.

Then cap the top somehow. Commit and cap.

What I am not certain about yet is the section to the left of the heart. It seems too uneven compared to the right side and I don't think finding the perfect level capstones will change that. But is it worth reworking that side?

The whole span looks ok from a distance and that is how it will be seen.

The right side will angle down into the corner under the spruce. I can't get a clean vertical edge there so maybe I can stair-step a few small stones to angle it, then cover the edge with mulch.

Some lessons learned so far:

1. Yoga pants are softer material at the knee than jeans, so the skin doesn't rub so raw inside the kneepads. And they are cooler and lighter in wet conditions. Wear yoga pants, not jeans.
2. You don't have to stagger every stone. It looks better if you do, and the wall is stronger, but there is no way. Some will have to stack on top of each other and form vertical seams.
3. You have to use the mortar. You have to commit to at least a few stones and stick them together to avoid the constant wobblies that I am dealing with.
4. You can break stones if some are too large or you can't find the right size. Use the sledgehammer.

I'm getting there.

What a learning experience.