Completely Perfect

Just one lone velvety black Queen of Night
tulip remains from all that I planted in 2008

Mother's Day could not have been more perfect this year.

After days and days of chill wet gloom, which only produced a quarter inch of rain despite endless drizzle and cold dampness, Mother's Day was a sunny, dry, breezy perfection of a spring day.

It's Wyoming air -- dry, sweet, cool in the shadows and warm in the sunshine. There's a whiff of smoke from somebody's wood fire somewhere.

Mid 70s, abundant sunshine, two wonderful phone calls and cards from my sons, fancy English muffins and jams from my stepdaughter.

And coffee in bed, waffles and bacon for breakfast. Steaks on the grill in the waning spring sunlight, the air a perfect pitch of dry breezy comfort.

God blesses.

The lawn is incredibly thick and green, but the garden is still restrained, much is opening and blooming and becoming lush, but quietly and reservedly, for now. A few more days and it will start to overwhelm, but right now it is all tentative.

Forget Me Nots are suddenly in bloom

The two Blue Shadow fothergillas I moved last fall are blooming.
Still a little sparsely branched, but they will fill in. I love the line of Tide Hill boxwoods.

The older fothergillas along the west walk are in full bloom.

The little red buckeye, Aesculus pavia, has leafed out boldly

The wood hyacinths, scillas, are all foliage, no blooms.
It's mid May already, and everything is late this year.

Orange Dream Japanese maple is a coppery color. Still kind of oddly shaped, though.

The chevron garden has robust ditch lilies coming up.

The Cornus mas at the other end of the chevron garden has stopped blooming and is putting on its leaves.

In just a couple days the Bloodgood Japanese maple has put on its
wine red clothes. It sparkles in the sun, very red right now.

The Ogon spirea was in wild arching bloom just a few days ago, one of the few things blooming just last week.

Now blueberries are blossoming (how I hope for a good crop again this year -- last year was awesome). Bright orange geums are blooming, but I can't get their happy color to show up in a photo.

The containers on the deck are filled with vegetables and herbs and they hold much promise.

But as always, there are plants in the garden that take forever to wake up. The black gums and persimmons and sweetgums are slow, and the itea is still just branches, as is the Rhus aromatica. But nothing beats the clethra, or summersweet. Really, they look so terrible right now:

Other than some slow to emerge things in the garden, the rest of the scene on Mother's Day was wonderful, the air was delightful, the temperatures just right, and my entire day was completely perfect.

Late

We've had a couple nice days, in the low 60s, with some sun and some clouds. On Monday Jim and I moved the remaining yard and a half of soil and compost from the driveway to the compost pile behind the berm. Shoveled it all, by hand, and then trucked it back with the John Deere trailer, and then shoveled it out. Hard work. Ow.

Leaves are starting to create a haze on the maples and viburnums and in the woods. But for some reason, I have populated my garden with a lot of trees and shrubs that are very late to leaf out.

This black gum (Nyssa sylvatica) looks like winter did it in, but it is just very slow to wake up each year. I have put two black gums in the front yard, paired to showcase the house, but they look just as dead at this time of year.

The black gums make up for it with green glossy leaves in summer and fabulous fall color, but spring is not their season.

Smokebush (Cotinus coggygria 'Grace') gets cut back each winter, and then looks like dead stumps well into spring. It will leaf out and regrow rapidly, but it is late to get started on that, and isn't doing a thing to screen the gravel garden from the street right now.

I also have Rose of Sharon by the back porch -- another very slow waker upper. And clethra on the berm will look dead for weeks yet.

The birches are always late to leaf out and I have so many in my yard. The winterberry hollies come in late, and their blackish colored stems make them look particularly ominously dead right now.

The fragrant sumac groundcover, Rhus aromatica, which blankets the driveway garden, is just bare twigs. It's another one that makes up for a slow start with glossy green leaves and great fall color, but it will be late May before that part of the garden looks like anything other than a brush pile.

This first week in May there are signs of wakening everywhere. Just not so much in my garden.

More Gravel in the Garden

I see a possibility here.

This is from Defining Your Home Garden & Travel

And this is the path between two of my gardens, leading to the dry creek bed and bridge.

I have always wanted to define the grass path between these two gardens, either with large irregular stepper stones placed in the grass, or now, seeing the inspiration photo above, with pea gravel and stepper stones offset along one edge of it.

I already have a large pea gravel sitting area surrounded by gardens. It's for sitting, not really a walking path.

Would it be too much gravel to add another, separate pea gravel area here? The flat stones define it more as a path than the sitting area is, and the shape is longer and narrower.

But so much gravel in the garden? Too much?

My original idea was to place large flat stones in the grass to make a walkway between the gardens. Here's an example I found at Fresh Home. I still like this idea too.

found on FreshHome.com

Pea gravel is relatively cheap compared to other hardscape, but it would still involve expense to install. Maintenance would be very easy once it was put in, though.

Stones laid in the grass would be much less expensive to install, but mowing and edging would always be a maintenance issue.

How to decide?

How Wet Did it Get?

It got plenty wet. It rained all day yesterday and all last night.

And it was a cold rain, in the 40s. The grass is brilliant green, but the trees and landscape in general still looks brown and dismal, with nothing leafed out yet.

There are isolated pops of color from forsythias and magnolias, and just a few days ago the cherry and pear trees around town started blooming. Daffodils are bright and cheery. Buds are swelling on everything else. But when you look out at the whole scene on the first of May, it is all brown.

The yellowroot is blooming. It is so subtle, and the mauve color from afar reads a little brownish, but up close on a sunny day the frothy blooms sparkle. This was just before we took out the hollies on the berm, and just before the rain came.

The seedlings I started indoors 6 weeks ago need to be planted out. It's only May 1, still too early for tender annuals in the garden, but there is no frost forecast for the next 10 days, so I think they need to get out of their pots. Here they are, protected from cold downpours on the porch, patiently waiting.

The zinnias are not really so patient. They took off in their pots and one is already blooming!

The morning glory seedlings got way too big for the little seedling pots. They were vining to three feet, looking for lamps or furniture legs or passing cats to wrap their tendrils around, and I couldn't find stakes tall enough that would stand in a shallow pot. So a day ago, before the rain, I planted them by the metal arbor entrance to the gravel garden.

Then three inches of rain came. Their skinny stems and big thin leaves are either going to drink all this up and they'll climb and bloom, or I killed them.

Hacked Hollies

Cold, in the 40s, overcast. I worked outside in a parka and was never warm despite a lot of physical activity.

I have found ticks in the bathroom each of the past several days when I come in from outside and undress. I'm now spraying myself with DEET when I go out, and checking every body part when I come in (at my age that takes a certain brand of courage.)

Last night, despite my precautions, a little bugger of a tick was crawling across my computer screen! This was after I had showered and checked, and made sure I was tick free. There it was, definitely a tick making its way across the lighted screen. Eerrrrgh.

The spruce berm has always been tick-laden, with the dense foliage of both the spruces and the blue hollies (Ilex meserveae China Girl).

That's where I had spent the day, hacking away at the hollies and, distressingly, picking up ticks.

At first I tried to prune the burned leaves off the poor hollies. Then I decided to take them out, and Jim helped me saw them to the ground -- all of them, gone now, and the berm is much improved.

I have never seen winterburn as bad as it was on the blue hollies this spring.

Usually they come through winter just fine. This year the leftmost, which is the largest and gets the most sun, was dried crispy brown all over, head to toe.

I tried to prune off the dead leaves, but in the end it was the whole shrub that was desiccated, right into the interior, and my pruning turned into a total hatchet job. I just whacked away, and not much was left.

From the backside you can see how much was trimmed out. It looks kind of architectural, but not what a holly should be.

The kicker is that last summer and fall was the first year these hollies looked so good. Full of berries. Dark and glossy and dense. I had shaped them into stiff pyramids, which I liked.

Was my shaping to blame? Did shearing them last summer encourage new growth that wasn't hardy?

My hatcheted hollies were alive and would fill back in -- they are pretty forgiving and the bare stems are alive. But I decided it was time for them to go.

In 2005 they were so little and it was impossible to imagine them ever crowding the spruces.

But in 9 years those cute little holly pyramids grew, and the spruces did too and the hollies ended up impinging on the bottom of each spruce. I don't need them to fill the gaps any more, and the gaps between the spruces are quickly closing.

Between crowding from the hollies and too much shade from the river birch, I am losing lower branches on several of the spruces.

Those dead spruce branches need to be trimmed off. They will not regrow even if I clear out the hollies or remove the shade from the river birch. So the spruces, as they get even larger, will be skimpy and bare at the bottom. Ugh.

Really, the river birch in front should go too. It wants to be much branchier and much bigger and it is shading the rightmost spruce way too much. The river birch should be removed, but I'm not quite ready for that. Yet.

But the hollies I was ready to sacrifice.

Here are two shots of the berm, one in fall and one in winter of last year, which help me see how the hollies were affecting the bottoms of the spruces, and how visually their dense little forms kept the berm from looking more naturalistic. It was time to hack them down completely.

I liked the layers of tall trees, dense spruces, and punctuations of holly bushes for a while. For 9 years, actually. But now, with them gone, I like the more natural open look.

When the weather improves and the sun is out, I will get a picture of the berm without the holly shrubs, and prove that hacking them down was the right move.

Unprecedented

After the harsh wind earlier this week we got some rain in the past two days; over an inch in total. It was still cold over the weekend, in the mid 50s, and the trees and shrubs aren't ready to leaf out yet, but things just look fresher.

Here's something that has never happened before. I got all the hoses up from the basement and hooked them up on Sunday.

And . . . . .  not a one leaked.

Not one is dribbling anywhere, and I tested them all. Including my hacked system to get water from the spigot at the front of the house to the back by the deck, using extra hose lengths and Lee Valley extender units.

This has never ever happened before. Hooking up hoses each spring is a frustrating, leaky, water-spouting job and I've written about it bitterly in past years. I've paid fortunes for hoses and reels and nozzles and connectors and systems and washers by the dozens each year, and they all fail to varying degrees at some juncture point.

They are never tight enough and always leak. But this year, without tools, without drama or fanfare, they were simply attached, turned on, and tested. Presto!

This is completely unheard of.  

The star magnolia (M. stellata 'Royal Star') has been blooming its little heart out for over a week now. It just keeps going, despite being frost burned last week. It's not the prettiest look with the browned blooms hanging on, but I admire its spirit blooming away like a champ!

I bought some 'Fort Hill' creeping phlox (P. subulata) and put them along the top of the wall by the driveway. They will spread out and drape over the wall.

At least I hope so. I never had any luck with two little plants of 'Drummond Pink' creeping phlox, which never spread and then didn't come back one spring. (I think they got too shaded by other plants in the summer.) These new 'Fort Hill' phlox are in an ideal open sunny spot, with a wall to drape over, so I'm hoping they do well.

I made some progress on my to-do list this chilly March-like weekend:

I divided and spread the blue iris reticulatas all through the kinnikinnik, mixing them, hopefully, with the other deeper purple ones. You're supposed to wait until early fall to divide and replant these little bulbs, but I can't find them after the foliage is gone. So it got done in spring. I hope they'll forgive me.

I also spent some time trying to trim some of the dead stuff in the kinnikinnik and fill holes, which was tedious and kind of hard to do. And messy.

I moved the Husker's Red penstemons to the patio wall. They are so shallow rooted and easy to move, it took all of a few minutes. Penstemons are like furniture, you just put them where you want. If I don't like them there, I'll move them somewhere else.

Here's why they were moved: their frilly pinky white blooms were too much with the frothy white baptisa alba and creamy white spikes of itea virginica. Too many small flowered plants blooming together in early June in slightly different shades of white.

Instead, I'll use more of the deep purple contrast of 'May Night' salvia and a rounded St. Johnswort under the arching baptisia. The pretty pink stands of penstemon on their dark stems will look good close up at the patio wall. At least I think so.

I did more clean up, broke up the matted mulch sheets in the Drive By garden, and now I see I need to start weeding everywhere as well. And, in an unprecedented development, I got all the hoses hooked up with no problems.

Inch By Inch

The project to remove the sod under the three dappled willows on the east side was slow going.

This was not an exciting new garden in the making. It was simply clearing out the sod and planting a groundcover so Jim doesn't have to mow right under the willows.

It was getting impossible for him to get the mower or even the weed whacker under there.

This was in 2011.  Already, keeping the grass cut below the willows was not happening.
By 2013 the willows were bigger -- impossible to mow under.

The answer .... remove the sod and plant a groundcover. Simple.

Yikes! It was a long project, and was accomplished digging up sod inch by inch.

The extensive roots of the willows made cutting with the edger and scooping up flat squares of sod impossible. A rented sod cutter would not have been able to cut through those roots at all.

So the entire project was done by clawing out grass, wiggling the Cobrahead tool just so, and then teasing up each clump, one tiny inch at a time, separating it from every willow root, and sometimes following a grass runner to its source. Tedious.

Day one of the project
April 9 - cold and windy but sunny. This is what a little over 2 hours before lunch produced -- a circle of sod removed under one willow. Hard work, 10 buckets of mud clumps taken away. A few hours of zen.

Day two of the project
April 10 - cold (mid 50s) and windy again and cloudless. This is what 2 hours by myself before lunch and 2 hours in the afternoon with Jim accomplished. 14 buckets of mud clumps taken out in the morning, and then when Jim came out to help we used the John Deere trailer to haul away clods.

My right forearm hurts from using the Cobrahead claw. The roots of the willows are so impossible to maneuver through.

The two willows on the left are now connected by the future bed, but I need to shape the area to not be so curvy. I don't want wiggly squiggly. In fact crescent shaped would be good, but I'm not sure I can get to that.

Day three of the project
April 12 - warm and pleasant and mostly still. A little warm to work outside, even.  Still hard going, ripping up small clods at a time.

Jim and I both worked for a couple hours in the morning and after lunch, and we got the basic area cut out.

Day four of the project
April 13 - warm and breezy, 70 degrees. I finished up shaping the curves and evening them out, and expanding some edges just a bit. Small work, but still inch by inch work, and it took all afternoon. The bed is probably still too small and will need the edges expanded in future years. I am sore and tired, but the hard job is done. Those roots!

Day five of the project
April 18 - cold, not even 50 degrees. We got 4 yards of soil + compost delivered, and spent the day spreading 2 cubic yards of it under the willows. It didn't really raise the level of the soil, just covered up the exposed roots and what had been dug out.

Despite my efforts at creating rounded curves, I have a squiggly wiggly shape to this whole area. Oh well. It's neat, it will keep Jim from having to get in under the willows in summer to mow, and it is what it is.

Day six -- done.
April 22 - This project took 6 full days. It's not a new garden, just an area that needed fixing so it didn't have to be mowed in summer. Six days of hard work.

I planted 50 bareroot vinca bundles, which will eventually spread out and cover the area under the willows with glossy evergreen leaves.

I got the vinca at the Northwest Conservation District sale, and for $25 I got 50 really big bundles -- there were 5 or 10 individual stems in each bundle. That's 250 to 500 separate plants!

But here's what I did wrong: I should have simply unpacked them and put them in water until ready for planting, but I tried to separate the tangled stems and then pot each one up in holding trays of potting soil.

That turned out to be a huge project (250 to 500 stems!) and although I kept the potting soil very wet, there was a lot of desiccation.

I should have planted the entire bundles and let them spread out from the 50 plugs. Instead, I spent a whole day potting up individual stems and half of them look like they won't make it.

But vinca minor is very tough. Even if only half the stems survive planting, I'll have a patch of periwinkle soon. They'll spread out.

So. It's done and now we just need to wait for the groundcover to spread out.

June 1, 2013.  Love these dappled willows (Salix integra Hakuro-Nishiki)
Picture them this year with glossy dark green periwinkle under them.

Sunny but Windy

Windy day. Empty containers waiting to be planted were blown about, and patio furniture overturned.

And it was a chilly wind, with harsh gusts. Whew.

But I got some items done on the checklist (moved the white pine in the meadow, divided astilbes, moved the My Monet weigela, etc.)  Fairly easy things to do, but there are a lot of them on the list!

Bright and Colorful

Humid and warm today, up to 70, and then a gentle rain started this evening.

For Earth Day today, the 'Lynwood' forsythias out by the road finally burst into full bloom.

And here is the result of planting 200 daffodils last fall -- a bright circle on the hillside around the Norway spruce!

In a few years the hillside will be covered much more, but it is clear I need another 200 daffodils, probably more, and I need to spread them out to the left and right sides of the hill.

Although it looks skimpy when viewed full on, the little pops of yellow daffodils are wonderful when seen from the house, through the plantings in the yard, just hinting at a little color beyond.

I continue to struggle with the dwarf 'Golden Peep' forsythias on the east side of the house. I took them all out, except for this one. They all had dieback in the centers. This one looked better for a few years, but now it too has a dead zone in the middle.

It doesn't look so bad photographed lengthwise along the house, which hides the barren patch. And the awkward "Dawn' viburnum looks okay from this angle too, although looked at from the front its shape is ridiculous and the blooms got a little freeze-zapped.

The Dawn viburnum needs to mature, and I hope as it does, there will be fragrance. So far, nada. Like the scentless sweetbay magnolia, it has no smell. Yet.

I do like the way this strip along the side of the house is so bright and colorful --- the pretty pink viburnum blooming, a dark green boxwood to break it up, then the hot yellow dwarf forsythia beyond, and finally the deep red stems of redtwig dogwood.

I'd like you to think I planned all that.

Corneliancherries

Easter Sunday was brightly sunny and still, with temperatures in the low 60s. Very nice.

The corneliancherry (Cornus mas) trees are blooming, but like everything else this cold spring, the sub-freezing nights have taken a toll and the yellow flowers are a little browned and reluctant to open fully.

Seen from afar they look okay, but the bright haze of yellow is a little sparse. Cornus mas does not flower as vibrantly as forsythia, but their delicate flowering should not be quite so skimpy.

Nevertheless, I am happy to see the two corneliancherries in my garden in bloom.

Both are young. The one in back by the pines was planted in spring 2011 -- a 15 gallon container plant.

I debated about removing the angled stem but I think I'll leave it for another year to see if it starts to form a graceful multi-stemmed shape. If it just looks awkward I can still cut it off. It's harder, though, to put lopped branches back on.

The other corneliancherry was planted in 2010. It was a foot high bundle of just a few twigs when planted, then promptly got decapitated in the winter of 2011. Snow broke the leader, leaving the pencil thin twig just dangling.

I taped it back together, clipped it with a bag holder clip and hoped it would recover.

Look at it now. Despite its drastic setback, it is the same size now as the 15 gallon one that I planted a year later, and blooming nicely.

It has an odd v shaped crotch. I'm not sure if that is from the bandaged leader failing, or if it would have grown this way in any event. It was sold as a variegated dogwood, 'Aurea Variegata', with gold edged leaves, but all its leaves are regular green.

It got very tippy last year and is now staked to hold it firm. Perhaps the rapid upper growth was too much for the roots. Cornus mas is supposed to be a slow grower, but after its decapitation at a young age, this one has really taken off in the three years since.

Both are still awkward, young trees, but this is the first spring I've seen what the haze of yellow blooms can do in the chilly spring landscape. With maturity and warmer springs, they should be awesome.