Done

It feels really strange sitting here inside today. The house is dark. The place in front of the livingroom window where the Willow bed was, is flat and seeded with new grass (thanks to Carrie). I find that I can sit there now and look out, maybe at the lilacs way down in front, or the evergreens, and not ache over the new bed I'd planted. Out of sight out of mind I guess. As long as the picture isn't there in front of me, I don't hold the look of it in my mind anymore. That's why I deleted it today from my blog. The herb garden is done and redone to leave truck room, with no harm to anything, and it looks fine. The East "scent" garden received the bits and pieces from the willow bed, and my birthday rose bush ,Firefighter.

Larry chose it and it IS beautiful.

So, that garden is done now because I refuse to add more to it while the chance is there that I'll have to move things for access to cut down trees. The bog garden is done and is ok. Not as lush and pretty as I had in mind, but things don't grow as fast as imaginations. The trampled Joe Pye hasn't made new leaves as I thought it might, so I'll get another one. The pump is not working much anymore (we are actually under fire hazard here believe it or not, because of LACK of rain!) so I need to add water every day, but not much.I've lost heart for the borders around the house. They're weeded already and will need watered but I'm not going to change anything like I'd planned. The hosta give me no clue why they are so small anyway, so moving or changing their bed would have been guesswork.The Hemlock garden is done, with the additions of the poor fated willow and of all the Ash trees I found, now tucked in where they'll be safe (edit: Where they had BETTER be safe!)I deleted the responsibility of woods all around us from my to do list and garden notebook, the day of the Willow moving. At first, in anger, and then later with the wisdom to see that *I* had planned it all and yet 1 more time, without considering Larry. I am fully aware that his idea for those areas will be to cut down all the dead or dying or look like they might be, and all the little trees. I also realise, though will still be upset if/when it happens, that he will not remember that I have planted other gardens except the herb garden. And sooner or later he may see a plant that is done blooming and think it's junk and it'll be gone. Today I guess I'll clean the deck a little and water the plants there and in the house.I feel so tired and so discouraged that I will probably put the gardening notebook away in the cabinet for the year.

Setback

The willow bed gets moved tomorrow.
It is so beautiful.
But, the place I chose for it is where the snow gets piled up in winter, and also the tree there tends to make it difficult to get out of the car on that side of the driveway. These things never occured to me when I put it in that spot. I didn't care at the time where it was planted, and dh said it would be fine in that spot. Now, I'm attached to it there and will miss looking out the livingroom window any season of the year to see its graceful line. I will move it down to the area where the Hemlocks are. I won't see it there as easily, especially in Winter, but the slight bogginess of that area will work well for it. It was an expensive tree to be tucked away from view like that and I regret.....well, I regret a lot of things. A lot.

I'll move the gray plants that are around the tree to the herb garden, I think. For some reason it (the Herb Garden) has my invisible stamp on it, and people don't walk through it or mess things up, or cut things down, or destroy.

I walked around the woods with him (DH) today and showed him where I had planted things, showed him the Gingko that surprised this year when I thought it was dead.

He showed me all the area he's planning to cut down, clear away and make places to park and turn around.

I'm going to move the Gingko to one of the spots that are for now sacrosanctly mine; the herb garden, and the Hemlock garden. DH said he was walking around the bog garden area a week ago, and I know that means he may have been making plans. "Someone" has already trampled the new Joe Pye weed there. Could have been one of the kids. He won't remember that I planted things there when the time is ripe for him to start his own improvements.

I may also move the 4 small Ash trees I've found to the Hemlock garden - 1 is already there. They like "bottom land" where it is very moist.

Since the "cut-it-down, break-it-off, clear-it-out" urge has kicked into full gear again I think I will also move a Witch Hazel, a seedling beech and one of the smallest Hemlocks close behind the herb garden.

Today, I missed church because I ground my teeth all night without realising it. The tooth guard keeps me from damaging my teeth against each other in my sleep but it doesn't keep me from grinding and hurting the jaw joint. So now I am waiting for Naproxin to kick in and drinking St John's Wort tea - from my own wild St John's Wort! A simple gift.

ETA: So much for sacrosanct! By early evening he had worked his way around "telling me without telling me" that he didn't have room enough between the herb garden and the house to get a truck back to the woods to remove trees. So tomorrow I will also be moving some herbs back 4 feet or so and cutting off the front of the herb garden.

The Battle of the Brier

I fought the Battle of the Brier, and I WON! There are not even any new scratches on me!

Have you ever run a Google search on Greenbrier? You'll get 3,220,000 hits, and most of them are names of places - like apartments, fancy resorts, businesses, theaters, malls, state parks, whole cities....... even a fall out shelter! In order to get information on the plant you almost have to search specifically for greenbrier plant ( or vine or bramble...)

Why do they want to name lovely places after such a nasty plant? I guess because the "painful" truth is, it grows everywhere, so everywhere you'll find something named after it. Can you imagine having to get into a fallout shelter quickly, and with all the panic of the situation, you also have to fight your way through the thorns to get in the door?

Well, today I tackled the east flower bed, the one I've been optimistically calling the scent garden. It is directly outside the master bedroom windows, about 10 feet away.
Anchored on the north by an old Witch Hazel and on the south by a native White Pine, it already has a lot of plants growing there. They were obscured by the Greenbrier, and I wasn't sure what to do about it. I didn't want to go around putting dabs of Roundup on every greenbrier cut stem - it would never end. So I decided to follow the advice I read from a gardening forum. They said, if you keep mowing it down regularly, it will use up all the energy in the tubers and stop growing. We'll see. At any rate if I keep it cut, it won't get up into the trees again, or destroy tender ferns and flowers. Knowing I have to keep it in check may keep me diligent to maintain the gardens.

3 hours of crawling on hands and knees and reaching carefully over the plants I had forgotten were there, was not as unpleasant as you might expect. Down close to the soil the thorns are not as bad, and I found myself up close and personal with all kinds of things I had forgotten, or never seen in that bed.

Sweet Marjoram
Phlox
Daylily
Monarda
Mexican Mint [Plectranthus amboinicus] which I think smells like Pennyroyal
Bracken Fern
Tulips
Lilies of some kind
Oak Leaved Viburnum
Native Viburnums
Holly
Pink Forsythia (I just planted it)
Peonies
Rosebush
Forsythia
Iris
Queen Anne's Lace
Jerusalem Artichokes
Kinnick Kinnick (this was a surprise!)

I had been visualizing a large empty space under all the thorniness, and wondered how much filling it up would cost. It turns out, I have enough wild flower seeds and cosmos to more than fill in.


So, to do yet in that flower bed......
- Plant something in the planters on either end of the bench. (I've tried before and they've always died.)
- Plant the flower seeds I have here.
- Set up a sprinkler to run everyday it doesn't rain until the seeds sprout and get established.
- Move the peonies from beside the deck to this garden, where they can be seen.
- Look at it again after the seeds grow, to see what's needed, if anything.

I was right, it DID pretty much only take one day!

Today I also -
- Planted Blackeyed Susans in the Garage Border, South side
- Planted an Arborvitae near the bog. They are supposed to grow well in wet areas, and also were used to make tea by Native Americans.
- Planted a Calamint in the herb garden.
- Discovered what my unitendified tree was - an ash Fraxinus.
- Transplanted some of DD's mint to a large pot on the deck, for quick and easy summer tea.
- Transplanted 2 wild St John's Wort to the herb garden.

Now, DD has ordered me to take a hot bath with Epsom Salts, so I guess that'll be the end of a full day for me.

Today I tied up loose ends and it took almost 4 hours! OK, I spent an hour with my neighbor trying to ID a woodland flower

Canada Mayflower [Maianthemum canadense] that is carpeting the south woods, and a little tree that's popping up in several places in my woods.

I haven't found out yet what this tree is. My neighbor hopes it isn't poison Sumac! So do I since I've handled it.

Finally the Hemlock Garden is finished.

The Azaleas (6 of them) will be brighter in a few days, and prettier every year. The tiny splotch of pink/red is a Primrose which is already spreading. Everything else there was planted by the neighbor before we bought the property, and all I have to do is enjoy it!

I moved little piles of wood from that area to the back woods and trimmed a little to make access to the area a little easier.

I made a map of it for my garden journal, and then went back to

the finished Herb Garden

and made a map of it, also.

The map looks nicer than the garden right now. Because of the water pressure problem last year, this garden didn't get watered during the dry part of summer, and I lost a lot of plants.

It was almost dark when I finally quit working on my notebook, and I took a long walk to relax. On the way home, I found a delightful gift. The squirrels must have nipped off the branch tips of an oak, and they were carpeting the driveway.

I brought them in and put them in a small dish with water. The leaves look bigger here, but they are actually no longer than 1 1/2 inches.

Sweet way to end the day.

A Day Late, A Dollar Short

Here it is almost Monday, almost May 11, and almost halfway through the month! I am behind in the blogging race and must catch up. And to catch up I have to back up....let's see........to Friday, May 8. I started working in the Herb Garden/Food garden around 10 in the morning. When Carrie came home around noon, she started doing the really heavy work. I appreciate her!

I had weeded most of the garden and transplanted a few plants to better locations. When she came out to join me, she dug a deep square hole for the frame that would be nearly buried, to keep in the mint. While she buried the frame and filled it with rich soil, I pulled up the mint sprigs that were popping out all over the garden, and planted them in the frame. Together we brought in more soil where needed, and then shoveled/hauled mulch to go on the paths between beds.

I still need to make a more accurate diagram of the garden but it's nearly done. Growing there, not counting the cool weather veggie bed, are -

Mint

Catnip

Bee Balm

Feverfew

Poppies

Apothecary Rose, with new plants beginning

Oregano, with new offshoots

Tarragon, with new plants coming in

Angelica

Lovage

Hyssop, 2 kinds

Sage

Thymes

Chives, with new bunches

Egyptian Onions, a huge patch

Asparagus

Limelight Artemisia, in a horse trough

Hops, growing around and over the cedar swing.

I still need to find more used brick to finish the edging, and figure out if I can fill all the bare space with hot weather veggies - I think I can. LOL!

Done now are -

The Bog Garden

I added the 2 Larch seedlings to the Bog Garden today (Sunday, Mother's Day).

The Hemlock Garden will be finished tomorrow when I plant 6 azaleas. (3 pink, 3 yellow), and the last of the Lily of the Valley. The flood appears to have drowned the ones I planted earlier.

To Do yet:

Scent Garden - weeding, remove Greenbrier, plant seeds and flowers, map

Tail Draggin'

This is a tail draggin' kind of day for me. I'm just really fatigued. I may go out to map the next two beds in the herb garden, but I doubt that I'll do any work.

The two gardening books I ordered came today, and that's as good an excuse as any to get out on the deck with hot tea and read. Except I need to clean the deck first. Ah well.......

It's nice sitting right here too. There are 2 sprigs of Lilac in a vase behind me, with 4 blooms, and they waft over me.

Everyday now I'm outside more than in. I love it! But it's wearing on me. I can't believe I'm actually hoping for rain tomorrow!




Bog Garden is done. It will fill in as summer goes by.


The water still runs from the pipe almost constantly, even though we aren't flooded anymore....though it's going to rain again.






Hemlock Garden is done except the Azaleas which go in next week.

The front borders are raked and weeded.

The front porch is decorated with plants and wicker.
******************************************************
Today I got outside as soon as I could and worked for 4 hours - pretty much nonstop. I clipped greenbrier (which is impossible to remove - you just have to keep it mowed down to the ground.)
Dug up 26 huge (bushel basket width and heavy) lemon balm plants, and bagged them up to rot in the sun. Those roots will never touch soil again! (Never plant it - never, never! It smells ok and is used for tea but tastes a bit bitter, not like lemon at all and it TAKES OVER!)
Weeded 3 garden beds & dug out other invasive pretty things to rot in bags.
Planted one bed with cool weather crops - Chard, Kale, Beets, Turnips & lettuce.
Set up the cement bird bath.
Finally brought in some catnip and got the kitten off on her first drunken bash! LOL! FUN!


Ya know, with all the heavy shoveling, digging with the trowel, loading and moving the soil filled wheel barrow - my biceps really POP! Cool!
Now maybe I should tie the wheelbarrow handles to my waist and pull it that way - work some abs!

Planning Day

I just needed a break. Not a McDonald's break! A library gardening book break. I have a stack here that I want to go through for ideas, and have already this morning ordered 3 of them that will be useful to have around.

Easy Care Shade Flowers - Patricia A. Taylor

Landscape Problem Solver - Jeff and Liz Ball

The Natural Water Garden - Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

I'll spend the afternoon at the kitchen table ( my planning center; it's just a dream to actually HAVE a planning center) Reading/skimming as the case may be. Ordering, or taking notes, or deeming unuseful and putting in the library return bag.

I might even move out to the deck table as it warms up outside. Sweet tea, gardening books, paper and pen - nothing better!

This year I am not making the mistake I've made every spring since I had money to spend. I have always gone to all the greenhouses (and there are many many in our area!) the first week they're open, and bought whatever caught my fancy. Then, back at home, I'd look for good places to put them. Often, I'd wait too long and end up just sticking them in the ground somewhere, anywhere, without thought or plan. Hence the Monarda, Joe Pye and Spice Bush in a dry sunny spot where they've languished until that wonderful Bog Day. Instead, I'm researching and planning - garden bed by garden bed, plant by plant - with an eye to the BEST plan for our place. As ideas pop into my head, instead of running out and doing them, I'm writing them in an idea file and studying them, to complete when I'm SURE they'll work well.

In the middle of the night, I had the idea to run outside, dig up the scattered Lunaria plants, and transplant them to the front (west) wooded area. They WILL do well there. They do well everywhere, LOL! They transplant easily at this stage. I can't imagine any reason why I shouldn't do it. But, I didn't run out and move them this morning. The task/idea is written on that idea page, so I can think about it in the light of day. Probably I'll move them tomorrow. Who knows, maybe tonight.

It's odd (to me) that nothing grows on its own in the wooded area except the trees. AHA! I know why I should WAIT to transplant them! Larry will want those leaves mowed/mulched and he'd mow right over anything in that area. Either I need to rake away the leaves to a spot where he can mow freely, or I need to mow them now, myself. But not today. I'm signing off to read.

Got Shade - Carolyn Harstad

Landscaping With Wildflowers - Jim Wilson

Covering Ground - Barbara Ellis

Michigan Gardening Guide - Boland, Coit and Hair

On a later date (maybe one of the upcoming deluge days this week) I plan to list all the gardening books I own.

I was perplexed to realise, this Spring, that I had donated my older gardening books to Goodwill, and now have mostly herb gardening books. Useful for my herb garden, but that's only one fairly small bit of the property. What was I thinking???

Now I'm building it back up, but in specific categories - a book for each garden I'm going to be cultivating. And I will read each book first (from the library) to make sure it is truly useful. That's probably why I donated the old books last year - found them not useful. Or else, I had the tunnel vision idea that the gardens, landscaping and all, whould be done with herbs.

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone!

It's fun when you can pun a song like that! LOL! No rain at all today, and maybe not tomorrow.




I got the bog planted as much as I can at this point. It now has Joe Pye Weed and Bee Balm filling the west end, with a rhododendron just behind them. In the center I put witch hazel cuttings (almost right in the water of the pond) and they are already sprouting leaves!

In the front (south) are primrose (3) and a painted fern.
My neighbor gave me a Ligularia today.
[Aegopodium podogarium ‘Variegata’ (Bishop’s Weed)]

I planted it center facing south. It will be 15 inches high and should spread.

The Spice Bush is at the east edge of the bog, and a ditch willow grows on the north side of the pond.

There is still about half the bog to fill. I'll be adding cinnamon and Ostrich fern, daylilies (could use what I have but don't want orange there), Blue Flag Iris more cattails if possible and astilbe.

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

A River Runs Through It

Yes, through the basement, today, a river runs. Well, more like a small shallow creek.

It poured all day. I got ready for church this morning and came out to the kitchen to the noise of mopping. Larry was down in the basement. So I changed clothes again and made him breakfast, a big hearty breakfast. He ate it silently and headed back downstairs. I followed him down to see more water than we've ever had down there. He had been filling the big mop bucket, carrying it up the stairs (!) and dumping it outside, but I couldn't even tell he'd done anything. It pours in as fast as it can be mopped up. He said, "Is that sump pump drain pipe buried under water now??!! It's making an awful noise and I think the water is flooding back down the pipe as fast as it pumps it out!" He added that we needed a ditch out there from the pond to the woods, to free the pipe from being under water. Then he went back downstairs. So. I went out and dug the ditch. The more I dug, the more the rain poured, the more the pond filled the more the pipe was buried. I was soaked, the ground was soaked, the pipe was gasping each time it tried to empty because it was buried under water. I dug a 15 foot ditch, and then a branch ditch off of that about 5 feet long. Finally the pond started to empty enough that the pipe was above the water again. I watched it. It never stopped pumping water, there wasn't a second when the water wasn't pouring out. Still is as I type, and it's still raining. I went back into the basemnt and told him the ditch was done and the pipe was free. Then I cried - over the rain, the basement, the pond, the swampy yard, the water in all the low places that was beginning surround the property like a moat, the ditch I had to dig, I went back outside where family wouldn't see me upset, and heard the pipe gurgling at the house where it leaves the basement. I stood and watched the water spewing out BEHIND the pipe and down the basement wall. It had dug a hole there. So, I began trying to uncover the pipe so I could find the "leak". Went back in because I couldn't tear away the Ivy, so I got pruners and a saw. Carrie and I went at it, and then Carrie finished digging up the pipe and duct taped it back together. It still leaks but not as much.

I was trashed. I came in and spent maybe an hour in a hot bath. Larry gave up on the basement and said we'd just have to wait it out. He says it's hydrostatic pressure causing the water to come in, and it will keep coming until the water table drops. So basically the water table is higher than our basement floor.

It will be raining almost nonstop through this coming Sunday. We have roads that are washed out (ours in fact, but a couple miles from us.)I am worn out, physically and emotionally and I really need to go to bed. But I also want to blog about today before I forget what I want to say.

At least the bog is ok. It has standing water on it, and rivulets have left a track of sand through it in the shape of a tiny stream - actually quite attractive. Hm. There' standing water in front of the house, on both sides, and in the the field behind the house, and the wetland grows every time I look at it.

The whole place is boggy!
That could be a problem - I don't have that many bog plants.

Blogging the Building of the Bog

Or, A Bog Building Blog?

Friday I broke all my own records. I've been planning a bog garden, back by the little pond that has formed from sump-pumped ground water. It's never been this full before, but our water table rose this spring, and the pump runs constantly. If that pump ever fails we'll have a happy creek running through the north end of the basement! The perfect day - up to 70 degrees, and sunny. I got up early, ate my oatmeal, and loaded up - with a lawn chair, a small table, radio, tools, gloves, hat, pictures and books to guide me, a huge insulated cup of water, and optimism......which didn't last long. We live on top of the sand home of the mother of all greenbrier. Greenbrier has "nutlets" that support their growth, and they can be as much as 50 feet down, on sandy soils. Ours are surely much deeper, because I believe this greenbrier colony came from hell!

It's evil!

I'd crawl along pulling and cutting, stop to rest a minute, and there it would be, behind me, sneaking up with its evil green arms barbed with thorns! I spent 3 hours crawling, cutting, standing and tugging with my full body weight, cutting again......I destroyed the gloves because of the thorns. I destroyed the pruners on the tough stems, springing them so bad, they had to be thrown away. I'm covered from the elbows down with angry red scratches and a couple of cuts deep enough to bandage. I look tatooed! LOL! I WAS wearing a long sleeved heavy denim shirt, but the thorns got through it.

Even when I was "done" clearing the bog area, I kept finding greenbrier popped up where I know I had cut it all out.

That took 3 hours, solid work.

I started measuring where I wanted the bog to be, just "in front" (south) of the pond. The soil there is loose and rich so it wasn't hard digging, but I had to stop every 10 minutes or so and sit for a couple of minutes. Then I lined the hole with plastic and back filled with the good soil from the diggings. Had to add 2 wheel barrow loads of black soil on top of that, but Carrie dug and wheeled the dirt over to me, so I only had to shovel it in.

Filling the bog with water was easy, since the pond was refilling itself every minute or so. I just made a little ditch from pond to bog and didn't have to work at all for....maybe ...ten minutes.

The last job was moving Witchhazel, Spice bush, Pussy Willow and Honeysuckle from their unhappy homes, to the bog area where they really belong.

There are other plants waiting to be moved. They are also plants that have been growing very poorly in other, drier spots.

- Monarda Didyma [Bee Balm]
- [Joe Pye Weed]
- [Rhododendron]
- [Fern]

I bought several Primrose plants, a Painted Fern and a fun funny Funcus today, [oops! I meant Juncus!]

that will go in the bog. The Juncus will get a special setting I think. ...I just can't resist it! More later on that with pictures.

Total: 6 hours from bog to blog. After it settles and I can cut and cover the plastic edges I'll take pictures.

Bog Day

At the library today, I hit paydirt!

I found "The Natural Water Garden", published by Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

It's so helpful I may buy it from Amazon. It's also available for 1 penny, and that's an important factor.

The list of plants I found in this book that will grow best in bog gardens was amazing!

Among the list -

Pussy Willow [Salix discolor]

Mine is actually a "ditch willow", dug from a ditch along one of the dirt roads.

Cinnamon Fern [Osmunda cinnamomea]

Astilbis

Cattails [Typha latifolia]

Witchhazel [Hamamelis]

Blue Flag Iris [Iris versicolor ]

Spicebush [Lindera benzoin]

Ostrich Fern [Matteuccia struthiopteris]

Joe Pye Weed [Eupatorium]

Daylily [Hemerocallis]

Bee Balm [Monarda]

These plants are all already growing on our property and many of them very poorly. I won't even have to buy anything to start a beautiful bog garden.

I can hardly wait! I'll be out there before sunrise tomorrow the way I feel now!

Joe Pye weed and Bee Balm grew along the damp banks of our creek when we lived in Pennsylvania. It was a little "generic" creek like the hundreds all over those Appalachian ridges, and wasn't named, so the girls named it Sparkle Creek, and the island it split around (which was maybe 8 feet around) they named Sparkle island.

I hadn't been there very long and had hardly even been outside because I was caregiver for my MIL and she..........made it a 24 hour a day job, and a terribly stressful job, because she didn't want me there and did everything she could to get me to leave. Larry wasn't there since he still had his job in Indiana, and had to sell our Indiana home. One day my MIL told me, "I love the girls and I want them to stay here, but you need to leave! I want you to leave!" The girls were ages 8 and 3! One day I just walked out with them, when they went outside to play and went for a short walk along the creek. I was so alone and thought even God wasn't aware of me anymore. Then a breeze came up and I was overwhelmed with the smell of Earl Grey Tea. I followed my nose, until around a sharp corner a HUGE patch of brilliant red fireworks ambushed me, and I knew that the God who protects a wildflower and makes it so flourish was taking care of me. I have, ever since, called Monarda my Promise Flower.

****************************************************

Joe Pye weed, along that Pennsylvania creek bed, grew up 7 feet tall. Here it barely gets 3 feet high, doesn't bloom, and dies off early. Bee Balm does the same thing. Though it sometimes blooms, the blooms are scraggly, and it dies early.

They are both up about 5 inches already and I can't wait for morning so I can dig the 3 feet deep area, line it with plastic, fill with good soil, and saturate with water.....THEN, transplant my poor babies while they are still barely awake.

Witchhazel and ferns will come from the woods, dayliles from just about anywhere on our property, the poor tiny Spice Bush that is barely alive from the herb garden and astibe and iris from various beds around the house. I can do it all at once without even shopping; without even SPENDING!

HOW COOL IS THAT????????????

A Day For Discoveries

I planted the Pussy Willow today, and dug out all the grass in its bed.

I'm very happy with it, but I think I need to get used to seeing it there before I decide on other plantings in that bed.

I also planted a new Sweet Woodruff and a pink Primrose in the Hemlock Garden. As soon a I get the Azaleas and plant them I'll post a picture. It already looks good - simple, but restful. And I still plan to add Hostas and some other shade plants.

Then I was worn out so I wandered the property and sat a while in the Herb Garden. That was where I found my great discovery! The wild garlic is back and twice as big, and after a year of no show, the Angelica has returned! Why?

A Day for Pansies

We went shopping for other things today, but Menards had pansies !

[Viola tricolor hortensis]

So now I need to make a new planter box for the East deck, paint it gray to match, and then plant the Pansies.

I also bought several shades of red Geraniums

[Pelargonium]

These will be inside nights for awhile, but that's no inconvenience when I get to enjoy them shining brighter than the lights in the evenings.

A few of last year's geraniums survived the winter inside, but the plants are very small, and don't really look nice. They'll likely go in the planter box after the pansies get tired.

There was a very pretty Sweet woodruff

[Galium odoratum].

It is all in bloom and thickly grown, so I hope it takes off and spreads. I will research more before planting, because I've tried it in several places in our gardens and never had success for more than one summer.

Nettles and Nicer Things

Nettles
Neil Munro (1864 - 1930)


O sad for me Glen Aora,
Where I have friends no more,
For lowly lie the rafters,
And the lintels of the door.


The friends are all departed,
The hearth-stone's black and cold,
And sturdy grows the nettle
On the place beloved of old.

There's deer upon the mountain,
There's sheep along the glen,
The forests hum with feather,
But where are now the men?

Here's but my mother's garden
Where soft the footsteps fall,
My folk are quite forgotten,
But the nettle's over all.

My first experience with nettles was when I was a young adult, and visited a house my friend wanted to buy and restore. The house was over 100 years old and what had been the yard was weeds nearly head high. At the edge of the weeds, I sniffed mint and maybe catnip, and I was on the hunt! I had no idea that there was a plant like nettle. Oh, in a fairy tale once, as a child, I had read about a girl weaving a nettle shirt for her beloved, who had been bewitched and turned into a swan. But no one ever explained what nettle was.
When we got back to the car my legs were on fire, everywhere. I thought I had walked into a nest of fire ants. The first time I read about nettles and their painful properties, I knew exactly what I’d experienced.

It’s understandable that your first painful experience with the plant would lead you to want only information how to stop the burn, and kill the plant. It helps to know that dock, which often grows with nettle, can be rubbed on the sting to cool the skin and ease the pain. Some say that the juice of the nettle stem will do the same thing. Having picked the nettle today, and getting the inevitable sting, I tried the juice of the nettle stem, and it worked!

But the information and lore about nettles is prolific, and interesting to read. http://www.gaias-garden.co.uk/Herbs/Nettle.html
There are many recipes available as well, but nettles cook up just like spinach and are used in the same way – except of course you never serve nettles raw in a salad, unless perhaps the person you’re dining with talks too much!

Today was my first Nettle hunt of the year.
Every early Spring, I search the moist rich areas of the property, and pull all the nettle. I wear gloves, but still I always get stung. It is a Spring right of passage into gardening weather. Note that I “pull” the stuff, I don’t leave the roots behind. But it doesn’t matter. It comes back every Spring. I generally get a couple of stir frys out of the harvest, and one year I put it all into a bucket of water and made nettle fertilizer tea. WHEW! You may think you’ve smelled rotten nasty things, but you have yet to smell anything worse than fermenting nettle. http://www.gardeningdata.co.uk/soil/nettle_manure.php
I put it in the compost and it got used that year on the garden, but I don’t think I’ll try the tea again. Why not just rot it in the compost heap, if it’s not going into a recipe?

On to nicer things; an afternoon spent with Judy over Dr Peppers and under the clear blue sky and warm sun. After the Nettles, how nice!! She called me over for a surprise gift. She's always doing that - bringing home divisions, or potted plants, just on a whim that I would have a place for them. Of course, she knows I always do! Today she had for me a primrose,

PRIMULA ELATIOR, POLYANTHA PRIMROSE.

It is a surprise for me, so I'm still thinking where to put it. I think I'll put it in the border of the east bed where my favorite witchhazel grows. That's the same sun exposure hers have and they do well. That is also where the "Pink Forsythia"

[Abeliophyllum distichum roseum] will go (also a gift from Judy). I think that area will be focused on pinks and yellows.

I started out at this house in 1996 planning a friendship garden, but I have so many friends who've shared so many plants that every useable plant space is turning out to be a friendship garden! I just realised I need to start a plant list of gift plants, so when I start forgetting, it'll be there for posterity.

Judy also gave me a healthy little relative to my Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum).

It looks like this, though it's not blooming and I don't know the flower color.

Such a productive day! The Southwest "garden", shaded by Hemlocks and surrounding woodland, is done except for removal of the piles of branches to await a safe burn day, and the planting of a couple of azaleas to add color.

Today I planted the Lily of the Valley, transplanted the Yellow Archangel, placed the bench and cleaned up branches. Oh, and that area is where the Nettle was so I removed that. It will be a quiet, not very colorful spot, with the only pop of color being the azaleas.

The front borders are done until the spring bulbs die down and I get a soil test.

April 15, 2009

The weather is just perfect for working in the garden but I have an uncooperative body, so I'm reading and planning instead of weeding and planting. Sigh.

Right now I'm reading 2 books that are garden related.

Odd Lots by Thomas C. Cooper; Seasonal Notes of a City Gardener. This was a gift from Carrie for my 57th birthday.

Color Echoes by Pamela J. Harper, Harmonizing Color In The Garden. This is a library book and I have no clue how I discovered it. Mostly I've been looking at the beautiful pictures!

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I guess it's good that I couldn't rush out and start digging and planting, because thoughtful delay has changed some of my original plans. I wanted my swing moved to the southwest wooded spot, but Carrie (my dd) showed me that a swing would be too busy and active in that dappled shade where the copse of Hemlock cradle the perfect spot for a bench. The only colors there right now are green and brown. So the coming flowering plants can be any color. I'm thinking the green and brown are the neutrals, the base on which to build.

The "Golden Dead Nettle" or "Yellow Archangel"

[Lamium galeobdolon] that grows behind the house dries out and wilts almost every day through the summer, so I want to move it to the southwest wooded spot, if the neighbor isn't worried about it moving through her hemlocks and into her yard. [This plant I bought in a small pot at a church garage sale. It....grew! LOL!]

I think the Lily of the Valley

[Convallaria majalis]I had planned for that area will not get enough shade. I can still put it over closer to Sedona Trail, where the trees are thicker and nothing else grows.

I want to consult with my neighbor [a landscape designer and nursery owner] about the other plant choices in this area; whether they should be all one color bloom, variations of one color or complementary colors. Already there will be white and yellow along with the green and brown - and perhaps the bright blue of her flowers, the Glory of the Snow [Chionodoxa] that are gradually sneaking in.

I will stop with these changes for this year at least, and get to know the new garden area, read a few good books on the bench, maybe find an old picnic table that blends in with the leaves and trunks. *MY* biggest challenge will be following through with watering.

I didn't work outside today [4/9/09] but I played! I spent quite awhile with my neighbor who is also a gardener and owns a nursery. We toured her yard, and saw that her Glory of the Snow [Chionodoxa ] is sneaking across the Hemlock border into my corner of the woods, and my Money Plant

[Lunaria annua] has moved into her front border!

We are both thrilled!

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On my way home, I met a little brown and yellow striped garter snake [Thamnophis sirtalis] side winding across the drive! I thought it was too cool for him to be out but he told me in no uncertain terms that the weather was perfect! I didn't name him, but I followed him til he disappeared in the leaves.