I'm Impressed

Today the realtor's photographer came back to re-take pictures of our yard for the MLS listing. That impressed me.

I had been uneasy about the gloom and drizzle on Monday when he first shot the outside, and today was sunnier, much better for garden photographs. So the pictures were re-done with a bit of mixed clouds and sunshine and brighter light.

The pink dogwood in front had opened its blooms a bit more since Monday, although it's still not in full brilliant flower yet.

And although the day wasn't quite as bluebird sunny as when I took this picture earlier in the spring, solar panels do look much more efficient against a blue sky, don't they?

I was impressed that the photographer came back and took pictures on a better day.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Do you see the problem with this early spring shot? I mean beside the lousy exposure.

The creeping phlox 'Fort Hill' is making a pink carpet over the top of the wall. That's nice. The stand of cheery daffodils is just going by. The yard is greening up, that's good. There is a big, lush green sedum spilling out of the wall stones near the pot. That's cool.

But do you see what's not right here?

The heart stone fell out. Plop. The heart should be upright in the wall, but it keeps tipping out and falling on the ground.

Over the years I have tried outdoor adhesive, I tried a bit of mortar, I have propped it and stuffed it and tilted it backward and it still falls out at random and sometimes oddly significant times.

The bigger issue is the poor light for my photos on an overcast spring day. The realtor's photographer came yesterday to take photos of our home for the real estate listing. He was impressed with the yard (everyone is) and took a lot of outdoor pictures in addition to photos of the rooms and features inside, but it was drizzling and dark out.

It's still early spring, so beyond some passing daffodils and some pink phlox, there isn't much to recommend the gardens right now. A full shot of the front of the house will be set against gray skies (oh, those solar panels right on the front roof -- basking in the drizzly gloom. . .  ugh).

He reassured me it will look enticing and beautiful and people will want to pay a lot of money to buy this house, just from the online photos. He's a professional. He does this all the time. His equipment was impressive. He took a ton of shots.

But between the gloomy background and the stone heart plopped out on the pavers -- my heart, really, teetering a bit at the thought of leaving -- I am so unsure.

First of the Season

It got warm yesterday, up in the 80s and humid and the sun came out finally.

I saw the first hummingbird of the season yesterday. I was cleaning the birdbath near the sugar feeder, and a ruby throated male came right up to me and hovered a few feet away and looked at me.

Not my picture of course, but my visitor looked
exactly like this as he hovered and greeted me.

He stayed a few moments, then dipped his wings and flew off without visiting the feeder. I swear he was saying hello, good to see you again, how was your winter, I'll come back when you finish with the birdbath . . . .

Hummingbirds are very communicative and they acknowledge humans. They look at us. They direct their attention to us in intentional ways.

It's not a stretch to imagine the greeting my ruby throated friend just gave me.

Wizard of Oz

It's been cool and dampish and it's been raining a lot. I am tiring of gray gloom.

The blue beech saplings (Carpinus caroliniana) out in the meadow are budding out. That's a pleasant surprise. They dropped all their leaves last summer in the drought, and were simply dead looking sticks all summer and fall. I thought I might have lost them, but I see new leaves coming out now on all of them. They live.

I noticed that when I sit on the glider in the gravel garden on a cool day I smell a sweet perfume. It's one of the daffodils behind me, I don't know which one, but one type of narcissus is really fragrant.

There are tiny white blooms on the low Mukdenia plants along the edge of the gravel garden. They are not much to look at, but kind of cute sticking up over the barely visible emerging foliage. Like a lot of early spring small plants, they won't photograph. All my camera can see is brown mulch. They are almost invisible, last only briefly, and you really have to look to notice them.

But the stand of flowering bishops' hat (epimediums) under the dogwood is quite noticeable. They make a nodding, delicate carpet of creamy yellow flowers, very small but pretty.

The pink flowered epimediums under the maple in the back garden are also blooming. That variety of epimedium (E. rubrum) died out last summer in the drought, and all but a few clumps disappeared. Most are coming back now in this wet spring, and they will be fine, but they are patchier looking than this lovely swath under the dogwood.

I noticed, however, that the stretch of dwarf goatsbeard (Aruncus aethusifolius) that died out last summer under the Japanese maple in the Birch Garden is not making a recovery. It's gone. No happy surprise there. One lonely tuft of ferny green foliage has emerged, but the large area that it had spread to has become a bare patch.

Purpleleaf sandcherry is putting on a delicate pink and red show in the gloom.

And there is the oddest sight in the meadow -- just over the bridge a river of gold leads to a cauldron at the base of the hill.

It's a patch of dandelions blooming where Jim mows a path in the meadow's weeds. And the cauldron is a big pot that I painted black sort of by mistake, and put out at the end of the mown path years ago after deciding it was too evil looking for the garden.

Doesn't it look like something out of the Wizard of Oz? Come this way my pretty. Cross the bridge and follow the golden path. There's something for you there in the big black cauldron . . . .

Spring Skies

Since I have been back from Denver spring has popped out here, all emerald green grass and yellow daffodils.

But skies have been gloomy and gray, or it's been raining ever since my return. I can't get decent photos of the delicate epimedium flowers or the hot explosion of forsythias.

Spring is a hard season to appreciate. The cold and damp go on too long and the flowers and emerging foliage go by too fast. They are never in balance. Spring feels rushed and at the same time interminable.

I put the hummingbird feeder up before I left, in early April. This map of the migration status of ruby throated hummingbirds is probably too small to read well -- the green dots spread over the northeast mean hummers were first spotted in those locations between April 1 and 15.

So they are here, at least the early male scouts should be. I haven't seen any at the feeder yet, but they'll come. I've already changed the sugar water a couple times to keep it fresh.

Spring rushes by as flowers emerge and fade quickly while I wait forever for weather to clear and for hummingbirds to appear in the spring skies.

House on a Slab

Every home I have lived in has had a basement. When we move to the west, we will be in a house built on a slab. That's how homes are constructed there. They don't have basements.

I was surprised at how a house on a slab lives so differently from one with a foundation. I just spent several days at my son's new place in Denver, and I was struck by how the house and the yard flow seamlessly, all at one level.

Here I have steps and landings and interim points to get to the outside.

From the kitchen I go through a door to the porch. Then another door and a step down to the outside deck landing. Then four steps down to the patio. Then the yard and gardens are beyond the walled patio.

It's lovely, but it makes my house feel disconnected from the outside. At my son's house you walk out the door to a stone step and you're in the yard.

Even the feeling from inside is different. At his house you look out the glass back door and the garden is right there. It feels like one space, in and out.

Here there is a fortress feeling. I'm up high, perched above the outdoor living areas.

Hiding the foundation is always something you have to think about with a basement, since the house sits above the ground level by quite a bit. It took me a lot of planting, some decorative brickwork, and even a low stone wall to effectively hide the concrete foundation and black waterproofing strip around our house.

As lovely as this planting is along the side of our house, it gives a feeling of walling off the home from the outside.

My other son's new house in California, built on a slab, has the same in-and-out flow to his back patio as the Denver house, all at one level. And when I spent several days at my nephew's in California last summer it was the same way, you just walk outside. No steps, no landings, no porch areas to go through to get outside.

It seems like a minor design difference, but when you live with the garden right at your door and when it is so easy to walk right out into it, it feels remarkably unified.

I'll like living in a home on a slab, level with the outdoors, where the garden is a cohesive part of the house itself, and not an element constructed below and away from it.

But wait, without a basement where am I going to store all my stuff?

What I'd Grow in the West

The area we are thinking of moving to is in northern New Mexico and it is not the cactus-sagebrush-desert scene everyone pictures. It is high altitude piñon pine mountain scrub, with snowy winters. It's zone 5, very dry, with a rainy season in late summer.

Gardeners there irrigate. You don't have a garden without drip irrigation, although gardeners do carefully select plants that like the dry, and gardens are smaller, enclosed in courtyards. The bigger issue for plant selection is the intensity of the sun at 7,000 feet, and the thin alkaline soils.

I'll have fun learning about all the plants that gardeners grow there. But meanwhile, I am thinking of all the plants in my own garden here that I would miss. Would some of them do well out there? Which ones?

I have some favorites that I'd like to grow again if I have any room in a new place. These are the ones I'd want:

Sweetfern - Comptonia peregrina

Does well in harsh, dry conditions. Scented foliage.

Oklahoma redbud - Cercis reniformis

This is actually a western version of redbud that I grew successfully
until a freak storm toppled it. Loved it!

Orangebark - Stewartia monadelpha

I don't know how it would do in a mountain climate, but it does not like
wet conditions. I just love this tree and want to try it again.

St. Johnswort 'Blue Velvet'  - Hypericum 

A workhorse that I've come to appreciate.
Deep blue green leaves are cooling; yellow flowers are sunny.

'Gro-Low' Fragrant Sumac - Rhus aromatica

This groundcover sumac has gorgeous foliage, grows easily
in dry conditions, and would do well in the west.

Witch Hazel - Hamamelis hybrids

I was surprised to learn witch hazel does well in all ph ranges.
I'd love to try one for winter interest and fragrance there.

Persian Ironwood - Parrotia persica

Tough, ph adaptable, grows at elevation, might not be quite so dry tolerant.
Mine is "Vanessa', an upright form good for a small courtyard.

Bluebeard - Caryopteris

A shrub that likes dry conditions and lean soil.
It rivals Russian sage for late summer purple flowers.

New Jersey Tea - Ceanothus americanus

The native eastern version of ceanothus. It likes dry, infertile, sandy soils
and grows natively in pine barrens.

Katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonica) is one I'd hate to live without. It is surprisingly tolerant of alkaline soil, but it isn't really a dry-lover. It wants water. With irrigation, though . . .  ?

Other plants I grow and love here that are high ph-tolerant are Hophornbeam (Ostrya virginiana) and Corneliancherry dogwood (Cornus mas) and Inkberry holly (Ilex glabra).

Dense green inkberry holly shrubs, yellow flowered Cornus mas, and the hop-like flowers
on the Hophornbeam tree. Some of my favorites that do well in high ph.

Plants I've grown here that I'd like out west also include Russian sage, of course, and any of the true sages -- salvias of different varieties. Clematis likes alkaline soils and there are several I'd like to grow there.

Agastache too, and the western honeysuckle Lonicera reticulata 'Kintzley's Ghost' would be nice to replicate on a trellis in a western courtyard. Maybe the pretty dwarf groundcover deutzias 'Nikko' would do okay there?

There are plants I have grown here that I wouldn't attempt or even want to in a new climate. They've been pretty but troublesome here. I'm sort of over these plants:

Viburnums
Hydrangeas
Roses
Japanese maples

And there are plants I love here, and would miss so much, but would not attempt out west. These really are better as eastern woodland plants, both aesthetically and in terms of climate suitability:

Stewartia pseudocamellia

Sourwood - Oxydendrum arboreum

Eastern Redbud - Cercis canadensis 

Beech, willow, birch, sweetgum, black gum 

Red maples, Sugar maples 

         But most of all, my sassafras grove.

These lists have made me really look critically at my garden and figure out what I like.

Even if we never make a move to a high mountain dry climate, this has been a fun exercise in plant evaluation.

Chopping in my Chaps

Sunday and Monday were lovely days, good for getting things done. I put on my shiny blue rain boots and my garden chaps and set about chopping things.

1,000 denier textured nylon chaps: best item of clothing I own

First I chopped back the smokebush at the top of the driveway. But once I did that, I could see it needs more. If I want branching low and full, with lots of vertical upright shoots, I need to get the saw out and cut it where I've marked on the picture.

The way it is now, all the fullness will start up where the cluster of branch stubs are. I can fix this.

Then I got out the stepladder and starting chopping at the climbing hydrangea over the garage door. I trimmed it to follow a line across the pergola, and tried to get rid of the shoots going upward and back toward the window.

It really was a hatchet job, but I got it chopped back and I tied up what I could to encourage rightward growth. The vine is very brittle, so manipulating the long stems is tricky. It has beautiful peeling bark that I like seeing exposed close up as we come and go from the garage.

I guess I need to do some scraping and painting this spring. The pergola needs work.

Climbing hydrangea roots easily -- I should stick some of these newly budded cuttings in some soil and start new vines.

I also spent time cutting back things that were still standing in the garden, like the panicum grasses and perennial stalks and I even chopped at some of the multiflora rose in the meadow. My chaps kept my knees dry and my pants clean while I knelt in the mud getting things done.

I actually saw the head gardener at Chanticleer wearing these exact same garden chaps once, so I feel pretty professional wearing mine now.

Dead Man Walking

My beautiful American holly, Ilex opaca, decorated with red berries, shiny with glossy green leaves and standing so elegantly . . . .

  . . . . .  is a dead man walking.

Do you see the problem? Can you determine why this tree's fate has been sealed?

The bark has separated from the trunk and fallen off, nearly all the way around. This is fatal. This tree still lives, but its death warrant has already been signed.

I've had this happen too many times before to hold out any hope that an injury this severe will heal itself. The tree will continue to carry on for a while and it will start to form a callus to seal the wound, but there is simply too little bark left. It will go into slow decline and in the end, it will die. 

It happened to my linden in the front yard, it happened to the first katsura I planted, it happened to other trees I have nurtured and lost. I'll lose this one too.

The holly's bark is thin, and this probably started with sunscald when February got so warm this winter, since it appears to be worse on the south side, and only the north side has even a tiny strip of bark left. Mild winters are the worst -- the sun is so warm on the trunk in the daytime, and woody plants break dormancy where the sun hits, but then night temperatures freeze the newly active tissues and kill them.

Normally the tree forms a scar around the dead area and recovers. This holly's damage is far too extensive for that.

I'm having trouble staying engaged with my garden and plants this year. We'll be moving at some point in the future, and I'm starting to divest emotionally. Losing this Ilex opaca, after all the other trees I have lost and just as it was finally becoming a beautiful form is one more catalyst in my uneasy parting. 

I simply can't any more.

A Blog About Moving

Someday, perhaps this year, maybe much later, we will move.

It's a process.

I'm documenting it here:

Enchanted

A blog about finding a new home, leaving this one and moving.