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.

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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.