Road Rescue, and Coveted Cuttings

My diningroom and kitchen are perfumed tonight in the best way possible, by 2 hyacinths someone broke off and left to wilt in the middle of the road. I brought them home and added the last blossom from my Easter Lily, placed in a drinking glass.
Along with them now are cuttings that arrived in a package today, from a gardening friend (from Dave's Garden, you can Google it by that name).
After searching for several years, I found the name of this mysterious memory from my years growing up in Buchanan, Michigan, and found a person who owned it and was willing to share!
It was a plant that seemed to take over the whole livingroom. It had long snaking limbs that wrapped round and round the aquariums and their stand. It grew so fast we could almost measure the new length from day to day. I think mom may have gotten a cutting from her mom, Grandmother Lynch, because I saw the same plant growing in Grandmother's front window when I was a young adult. (I called her "Grandmother Lynch" with capital letters all my life.
The day Ruby was born,



I realised I didn't want to be called "Grandmother Adams". I wanted to be gramma - no caps, or grammie, or whatever Ruby decided to call me. So now "gramma" is what pops out of my mouth and I have to make a conscious decision to think "Grandmother". I end up thinking it in a deep sepulcher voice even though my gramma (big grin) didn't care what we called her. The cousins all called her granny. I think mom insisted on the respectful title.
Oops. Back to the topic - the plant that swallowed our livingroom.
Callisia Fragrans or Basket Plant.
The cuttings I received are beautiful and in perfect, fresh cut condition!
It was like opening the door to my mom, when I opened the box! I haven't seen that plant since she got alzheimers and all her plants died. I could almost smell the freshness of her airy country house and hear her chatty voice again.

I've wanted it for years and can't wait to see it taking over my diningroom!


Oh, by the way, if you Google search for "Large Callisia Fragrans", about page 9 of your results you'll find a picture of me.

I was....uh...surprised by that! Then I realised it's probably my profile pic from Dave's Garden, stored in eternal Google memory, because I searched for the plant there for such a long time. A bit scary, that!

Lessons Learned (the hard way)

Spring's Sprung!!!

First day in my garden! So many plants are up and healthy and vigorous.
Oregano! Tarragon! Mint!

Funny thing about the mint. I "confined" it last year, after a lesson learned the hard way. Mint doesn't just spread. It runs merry marathons underground until it is as far away as the other end of the garden. There, underneath the flowers, it stealthily pushes up stems and green leaves and then runs some more. Soon there is mint everywhere you look. Everywhere. A delight to have if all you want is patchy bits of mint throughout your garden. Not what I wanted.

So last spring, I crawled on hands and knees over the whole garden, pulled every bit I could see and put it all in a boxed bed - a repurposed construction the Larry had intended to use in another project. The "box" is bottomless but buried deep enough to prevent root spread. It worked! The funniest thing is that the mint did what mints do, and scurried along under the soil until it ran into that barrier. Then it scurried along the perimeter of the barrier. Round and round it goes, and since the barrier doesn't end, the mint keeps going, but only right up against the barrier!

I might have to plant something in the middle!

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That was last year's lesson learned. There were more lessons this year. Last year I succeeded in getting Queen Anne's Lace to survive transplanting to the end of my garden, where I thought I wanted wildflowers.

I LOVE Queen Anne's Lace. I DO! It isn't a native plant and IS invasive, but has a lot of uses. I'm known for walking along a quiet, little used "Robinson-tucky" dirt drive and gathering the flowers. First I debug them if necessary, and then I pop the flower in my mouth and it's lunch on the go! They taste resinous and tangy, and not at all like a food. But they leave your breath fresh for quite awhile; and I'm not dead yet.

They also make lovely pressed flowers for crafts - pretty lacy doilies to glue in your scrapbooks and never look at again until you see them crumbling out of the book. I'd rather eat them.

What Queen Anne's Lace does best is procreate; everywhere. For a year or so you think it didn't survive and then one spring your garden is covered with ferny looking shag carpet.

So, I pulled a bushel basket full today.

Do I learn from these experiences? Apparently not.

Wild White Yarrow



Goldenrod

These and several other invasive plants (all of which I purposefully transplanted to my "wildflower bed") added a little color to my fingernails, though I am not deluded into thinking I have the invasion vanquished.

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There are other "invasive" plants, however, that I was thrilled today to see chugging along slowly in their little corners.

Sweet Woodruff.

I don't have the lush thick growth I see in catalogs but I like how it spread out all piecey and scattered. It more or less scatters over 20 or so feet.

Hops

I first met hops climbing up through the scrubby trees at a campground, where we lived for almost 5 months waiting for our house to be finished. I tried unsuccessfully to get it to grow from cuttings. Finally I bought a plant and accidentally planted it in it's perfect environment. Right now it nearly covers the ground, but soon it will nearly cover the garden swing and a small arbor next to the native Witch hazel. Hops is native, as is Witch Hazel.

Wild Ginger

I bought one plant at Gene Stratton Porter's Wildflower Woods near Rome City, Indiana. http://www.genestratton-porter.com/WildflowerWoods.html

Porter was my mother's favorite childhood author and mom passed that love on to me. How cool is it that "Freckles" (my all time favorite book) was there ready for me to read over and over until I nearly have the book memorised - during the growing up years when mom used every opportunity to teach me (instead of "you can't do ____, because..."), "See? Look what you CAN do, because...". Gene Stratton Porter never met me, but she was there, in person, in that book. And she still is, and she never tires of saying, "You can do anything."

Here, at the Limberlost Porter Memorial in Geneva, Indiana, I was given a small cutting from a variety of house plant that grew in this window, when G.S. Porter lived there.

I have that plant still.

I have known, and forgotten, its name. It doesn't care what I call it. It just sits there contented, 6 feet up, and just about to touch the cathedral ceiling.

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But I digress.

Back to the garden. It was refreshing to see the Azalea blooming so well this year.

I thought I had lost it last year.

Just above the Azalea, in my "fountain" planter on the deck,

chives and sage are in fine form. Moss too. Yeah, I put the moss there last year. There was a bare spot. Well, at least the moss is native!

In the bottom "fountain" planter, the thyme isn't looking good. I hope it perks up, but if not I'll replace it.

This Aronia was new last fall,

and I kept it in the pot because it was so attractive in that bare corner next to the garage with the purple berries covering each branch. Now it's ready to bloom and so healthy! I'll plant it out as soon as I research where it will grow best.

Any suggestions?

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Just as I was getting chilled enough to go back in the house, I walked past the old relic -

That carved bear.

Larry won him at an auction in his hometown at Brush Valley Days.

Yes, we treated him just the way we were told to do. But that was 15 years ago, and like us, he has aged a lot. If you look really closely, you can tell he was a bear even though his nose and feet are gone. He frightened young children when he was new, but now he has nearly become the log he was made from again. I like him better the way he looks now.

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Now for a fitting way to end the morning .......a cup of hot tea, a sunny window, a wooden rocking chair, and a very old brittle copy of "Freckles".

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