Lemon Tree

I now have a dwarf Meyer lemon tree in a pot in the dining room.

It even shipped with quite a few blossoms on it, and they do smell rich and sweet.

I'm off to google Meyer lemon growing tips now, and cruise Pinterest boards for recipes.

Seedlings Fledge

After the rain on Tuesday it got warm, into the mid 60s and humid. It was the first really springlike day of the year.

The trays of seedlings went outside for a few hours in the afternoon for the first time. It was like watching birds fledge -- I hovered as the humid breeze battered their tiny stems and I fussed over keeping them damp enough in the open air.

Despite the warm hint of spring it is still gray and grim outside. The empty pots look forlorn, waiting to be planted up.

The tiny iris reticulata bulbs by the front door are the only color, and they are a welcome sight popping out of the green kinnikinnik. But the kinnikinnik got severely winter burned this year, so I spent some time cutting out all the brown stuff.

By the time I got done, the entire edge was cut back. When summer comes the long woody stems will reach for the walkway again and cover the straight cement edge of the walk with glossy little green leaves.

I noticed something while on my hand and knees snipping stems -- the new little iris bulbs I added last fall are a different cultivar than the original ones (neither the original nor the newer ones were marked anything other than "Iris reticulata")

Not what I was expecting. I love the clear periwinkle blue of the first planting, and wanted them spread throughout the kinnikinnik. I added new ones to this patch and across the walk under the post light too.

But the new ones are deep purple, not at all blue. See the two single irises at the top of this picture? Not the same as the clump in front. At all.

The original clumps can be divided to spread them out and achieve more of the clear color I wanted. In fact, they need to be divided, since they are looking crowded now. The challenge is finding them under the groundcover after they are gone by, when it is time to divide them.

Both types of iris are sweet, but I didn't want two different colors. I think the fix is to intermingle the blue and the deep purple more by digging up some of the original color and spreading them among the newer purple bulbs.

Add that to my To Do list.

The Invention of Velcro

Cool and cloudy, in the low 50s as the week started. Now rain.

On Monday I tackled my annual spring chore of cleaning up the bittersweet, multiflora roses and autumn olives on the back hill and in the meadow. This is the time to do it before everything leafs out and makes the tangle of brush impossible to maneuver in.

Burdock seed capsules

Even so, the bare vines and jungly dead growth from last year is awful.

I hack, I chop, I dig and lop.

It's not gardening.

It's bushwhacking. It's brush hogging, but by hand, with pruners and a bottle of woody herbicide to paint on the cut stems.

Every year I am careful around the tall dead stems of giant burdock that grows among the trees on the hill. I've had the velcro burs stick to my clothes, and one time I got the burs impossibly tangled in my hair.  Eeesh.

So I was particularly careful around the burdock plants on the hill as I chopped back vines.

Of course you know what my caution produced. This time I got burs stuck to the back of the polarfleece collar of my winter parka (it was cold out).

Stuck to the collar! Meaning I got burs down my neck. Burs in the bottom of my hair, some in my ears, a lot down my back.

Burs even got stuck to the velcro tab on the back of my hat. Oh, the irony.

It's not truly like velcro. Velcro rips apart easily. Burdock burs cling and never release.

It's not even like my brush hogging is very effective. I only get about a third of the invasive thugs that grow in the formerly disturbed area that I am trying to reclaim.  I'll need to be out there again and again before summer sets in and finally deters me from setting foot in the jungle.

But I do it every year, and maybe it helps. And every year I relearn, uncomfortably, how velcro was invented.

Off Script

This weekend was nice enough, in the 50s. The ground was still damp but the puddles and icy lakes have disappeared. I had every intention of getting at my loooong list of spring chores, including some major garden expansions and a lot of work needed on the back hill.

Instead, I went completely off script.

I simply wandered out behind the berm and started moving moss to the area edging the dry creek bed.

It's an area nobody sees behind the berm, and it was never on my list of things to fix.

But it is a corner I round multiple times every day on my way to the compost pile, and it was bugging me.  I walk past the bridge, and down into a muddy swale. So, unplanned and without consulting my list, I spontaneously began fixing it.

I added bits of moss from the meadow to the edges of the rocks and around a few of the stone steps.

Then I dug out the muddy grass in the swale, added a couple more stepper stones, and dug up more moss in the meadow and planted it.

You don't really plant moss. It has no roots. You press it in. All it needs to do is make contact with the soil or rocks so it can anchor itself.

It doesn't need acid soil -- in fact it doesn't need soil at all, since it has no roots. Moss grows happily on rocks and on the pavers of my patio. The reason it has a reputation for needing acid soil is because it grows where nothing else will, and that is usually where the ph is not good for other plants or grass.

The only thing moss wants is no competition. It likes sun, at least the types in the meadow do. Once it is established it is fine in drought, it just goes dormant. Moisture brings it back. It has no season, it will grow whenever it is above 20 degrees and moist.

I'll need to keep these moss divisions wet to get them to take. I'll also need to keep grass and weeds out to keep the competition down while they establish.

There is plenty of sun-loving, low-growing moss in the meadow, all along the sunny open paths where Jim mows. Without the competition of weeds, moss grows happily there. I found three different kinds (at least they look slightly different to me, I have no idea what is what) and I mixed them all together around the stepper stones.

I never did figure out how to edge the dry creek bed after I built it several years ago. Lawn growing right up to it looked artificial and the turfgrass really wanted to grow into the stone bed. All summer it required trimming along the edge and it was a lot of work. Here it is in May of last year.

(I never figured out how to end the creek either. It just stops in an area of dirt.)

In September of last year I added stepping stones, but they ended in a funny patch of lawn that was impossible to mow and still needed trimming.

A mossy path all along the edge is a much better look, and if I can get it going it should be much lower maintenance than that awkward patch of lawn.

Looking down the new moss path from the bridge -- the red twig dogwoods look so bright this time of year. At the end of the creek is a twiggy honeysuckle shrub, Lonicera fragrantissima. It's a winter bloomer, shouldn't it have flowers in April now in 50 degree weather? Nothing so far this season. The brown plant on the right is clethra, and it won't green up until very late in spring.

(You can see, looking in this direction, how the creek bed just ends abruptly in a patch of dirt. I need to decide what to do about that.)

Fixing the path by the dry creek bed was not on my list of things to do, but I had fun scooping moss out of the mud in the meadow and pressing it into my little stone path. Muddy work, fun work, but off script. I really need to start over and get back to my spring "to do" list.

Checked Off the List

The first week of April gave us some nice sunny days in the 50s, although today is gloomy and cold again. But while it was nice, I got stuff done!

Here are highlights of what was checked off my to-do list:

Mesh tree trunk protector tubes were removed from all the trees.

My new system using orchid clips to fasten cylinders of plastic mesh fencing works like a charm. Clip on, clip off, easier than any other type of trunk protector I have used. 

It took me just half an hour to remove all the cylinders from all the trees I had wrapped.  

I cleaned up all almost all the remaining perennial stalks.

 

Such an easy job now with the hedge trimmer. Grasses are easily lopped and even woody stems of large perennials are quickly dispatched.

I still like the look of the dried pale seed heads on the caryopteris, and am reluctant to cut this one back, but it must be chopped at some point. 

At this time of year it is the only thing in the garden that is still upright and looking somewhat nice. The spring light highlights its pale structure so nicely.

The patio furniture was brought up from the cellar and put in the gravel garden. I like it in this new location.

The cottonwood tree stump was relocated.

I moved it from the gravel garden, where it was an end table next to the low chairs, to the Blueberry Garden, where it is perfect. A bit of bulk in the empty spot. This just looks right -- it adds some mass in an area of small stuff.

I planted lettuce seeds in the bowls on the deck.  Also moved some of the indoor seedlings from their cell packs and potted them up.


I pruned. The smokebush was coppiced, the climbing hydrangea was shaped, and I cut red twig dogwood branches overhanging the dry creek bed.

There is an excellent post here that Nan Ondra did on coppicing shrubs, and she even details at the end (it's a long, comprehensive post) how she cuts her 'Grace' smokebush. Here is my smokebush (Cotinus 'Grace') before and after.  

It looks like I killed the whole thing, but it should start shooting out lovely red foliage and be big and full by early summer. (The color in these pictures is weird, awfully turquoise for some reason.)

I did the taxes. Check that off the list.

There is still so much to do in the garden -- moving shrubs and dividing perennials and edging / expanding gardens, and I am going to run out of spring very quickly.

So busy. So much to do.
So much to do.

Winterburn

Today was the first nice day of spring. Not very warm, only up into the mid 50s, but the sky was bright, the air was still, and the top of the soil is beginning to melt. The top inch or so is quite soggy but it is still frozen deep down.

This winter was so severely cold for so long, that winterburn on the broadleaf evergreens is a real problem. This is the first year I have seen it so bad.

'Tide Hill' boxwoods have a lot of brown, especially the ones
that are planted out into the gravel

The blue hollies on the berm are completely browned in front

If you look at the back side of each holly there is some
green, but the entire front facing side of each is quite brown

The same thing with "Ghost Hills' heath -- the back side is okay, with a
haze of tiny pink flowers, but the front part is dessicated.

A lot of winterburn on the front edge of the kinnikinnik.

I'll give them all a good trim in a few weeks -- mostly the boxwoods and kinnikinnik, which need the dead stuff cut off. And the heaths will get an overall shearing. I think all will be fine.

I have pictures from other years of the 'Lynwood' forsythia by the road cut in full glorious yellow bloom on April 1. Not this year -- no blooms yet.

The Lonicera fragrantissima is not blooming yet either. This fragrant honeysuckle is finally a large shrub, and there are many buds, but no open flowers. So much for "winter blooming".

Don't ask me about the stunted witch hazels. 'Diane' has a ton of little tiny blooms, but they are so small, not fragrant, are hidden by the brown persistent foliage, and just do not impress.

But we have irises!
Iris reticulata is popping up in the kinnikinnik, along with the snowdrops that have been out all month. This is really nice.

It's a weird season, and the plants have not yet been able to shrug off the months of single-digit cold, even with the strong spring sunshine and promise of an end to winter.

A Contrast

This is what it looked like on Monday this week:

It snowed pretty hard and roads were terrible and it stuck around for a while. But it did melt by the end of the day, and even the lump of impassable icy leftover snow in front of the potting bench and shed is gone now.

This is what it looked like on Tuesday:

No, not my daffodils, although I do see the tiniest green shoots peeking up on the back hill. These are from the supermarket.

I needed them.

How March Ends. Every Year.

Snowing here. Wet, sloppy stuff, sticking to the ground.

I always put out the hummingbird feeder on the last day of March to attract early scouts, although I usually don't see any until the middle of April. This year it has been so unremittingly cold I wonder if the hummingbirds will be delayed.

Every year I use a cheap plastic cylinder feeder that is light enough for the metal stand, easy to fill, and it doesn't drip. There are no feeding holes facing upward for rain to enter.

Nothing fancy. Nothing too big.

Because it holds less than a week or so of sugar water, it makes me get out and fill it each week. That way I am forced to keep it fresh.

I have a prettier glass feeder that I like, but rain gets into the upward facing opening, so it only works in a protected spot under the front porch and the hummers didn't like that location too much.

So March finally ends, the feeder is hung, it's damp and chilly, and that seems to be the way of things in my garden at the end of March.

Cold or wet, usually cold and wet, is apparently the norm.

I know that because I went back to see what I had written in this journal on the last days of March for the past several years.

Here are the titles and the lead sentences from the blog posts I did at the end of each March:

March 30, 2010
Cry Me A River

Pouring rain now for two days, almost 3 inches already and still coming down. . . . 

March 31, 2011
Goodbye March
Overcast, gray, in the 40s.  Rain and snow on the way.  I'm over the shed.  And I'm so over March.

Some tasks accomplished yesterday: One more dead vole. . . . .

March 30, 2012
Sunny Day, End of March
Quite cold this morning, in the 40s.  It felt chilly and windy as I worked on the back hill cutting multiflora rose and painting the cut stems with poison ivy herbicide. . . . .

March 30, 2013
Much Has Been Done
Despite the cold drizzly start to Thursday, much has been accomplished in the past three days!

Thursday afternoon cleared off a little, and Friday and Saturday were cool, partly sunny days, in the 50s, perfect for work outside. . . .

And now March ends in 2014: 
    Snowing here.

Photo Fun

At last, a day in the low 40s, and even overnight was slightly above freezing for the first time in a while.

And . . .  it is raining lightly today, so I am hoping we will get a little melting. The ground is still frozen like a brick, but perhaps the icy mound of old snow in front of the potting bench will disappear.

And perhaps the containers outside will thaw and I can start to clean them up. In this unrelenting frigid March they have remained solid frozen blocks.

Unretouched shot 11/3/13 - the patch of epimedium is too dinky

For now I am indoors on a rainy day, and having some fun photoshopping what I want my garden to look like. (Using Aperture to do the photo effects.)

Take a look:

I have two patches of two different kinds of barrenwort, or epimediums, and they both need some work.

First, the patch of epimedium 'Frohnleiten' under the dogwood is too small and circular as you can see in the first photo (unretouched) from last fall.

I am going to expand it considerably this year, bringing the area to the left to drift town the driveway and further to the right to drift along the walk, forming a large curved arc.

I did some photo manipulations to show what that might look like.

The same photo from 11/3/13, but shopped to expand the patch of epimedium

I thought about building a low curved stacked wall on the left side, set into the lower end of the slope, just the suggestion of a retaining element. I'm feeling a little cocky about my ability to build a wall now.

Like so, as I've photoshopped in. Maybe with a slightly larger wall.

(Pretty cool photo work drawing in that wall and the expansion of the epimediums, huh?)

I'll need another pallet of wallstone to do this, and that will give me some more very large ones for a few more stepping stones set in the grass by the bridge in back.

Major project! I'll need to divide an awful lot of the epimediums and buy more as well.

One concern is that when they bloom in spring, they are sulphur yellow, and the foliage has bronze tints in spring and again in fall. Not the greatest combination with hot pink dogwood flowers. The barrenwort and the dogwood bloom at the same time.

Yellow and bronze barrenwort under a pink dogwood in May -- do they clash?

Making the area of barrenworts under the dogwood so much larger is going to make the clash of colors worse. Bronze and yellow with hot pink. Eeeep.

Epimedium 'Rubrum' under the maple last spring

A second patch of another barrenwort, epimedium 'Rubrum', circles under the maple tree in the back yard and they are also clumped too tightly around the base of that tree.

They need to be divided and moved around a bit to form more of a drift and less of a circle.

I have found dividing barrenworts is really difficult. They don't dig up easily at all, and they sulk for three years when you dig and replant them.

They are slow spreaders under the best conditions, and digging them up seems to slow them down even more.

Epimediums are tough plants for dry shade precisely because they have tenacious roots that are hard to dig up. That's why they survive well in difficult conditions. But that means they don't like to be moved around, and here I am planning to do exactly that in a big way.

You know, it's much easier to photoshop them into big drifts under my trees than it will be to actually dig them up and divide and move them.

Antiques

We are on the back edge of a nor'easter today and the air temperature is 32 degrees, but the twenty mile an hour biting wind makes it feel like 22 degrees. Not a fit day to be outside.

This is not my picture, it's from AlpineZone.com,
but Sundown totally looked like this yesterday. 

At least the snow went off to the south and east and spared us.

Ski Sundown is still 100% open and it's not even spring conditions. We drove out there yesterday, before it got so windy today.

Jim and I had gone to New Hartford to check out Collinsville Antiques (restless, looking for garden tchotchkes), and we went by the ski area.

What we saw were winter conditions, with people schussing down Gunbarrel and dressed for the chill.

We did not find any garden antiques junk yesterday, but we had a great time wandering around the 20,000 square feet of vendor booths crammed with collectibles, and marveling that items from our youth (the 1950s and 1960s) are now considered antiques. As are we.

Here's a photo of Collinsville Antiques from their website,
showing just a fraction of the vendor stalls in the building.