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.

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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.