Digging the Garden

Yesterday, after what seemed like more than six long months the thermometer here finally hit 70 degrees.  walking around my garden I was overwhelmed with that number: 78.  As in 78 days until my garden will be on tour hosted by Master Gardeners.   After raking out a couple small beds, and pulling some quack grass from the rectangular island I refer to as the potager; after the neighbor boy (actually a young man a few years older than Handsome Son)  inquired over the fence while tearing the siding off the too close other neighbor's house that said neighbor was siding (and roofing) the garage that half sits on my property (we are that close--proximally only).

I am overwhelmed.

I think Spring is here, but Summer is nipping at her heels, surely.  Especially in these Times of Extreme Weather, central Wisconsin seems to build up this heat dome quickly.  A quarter inch on ice on my windshield Thursday morning.  Frost again this morning.  There are still hummock of snow banks lurking.  Trying to stake a Japanese cypress a bit too weepy in habit lead to the discovery of hard, frozen ground just two inches down in that spot.

So I sat down and strategized what to do, what has to be done, and what can be done to deliver the most bang for time used.  You see, I have never kept my garden in display pose perfection, never spent too much time plotting and planning exactly where to plant early greens, onions, or potatoes.  Last Spring on the graduation of Handsome Son and Party to Follow, mulch was my friend.  The roses and clematis were all in bloom.  I bought three cheap hanging baskets with lots of color and had pots of coleus.  And two days before mulched everything, weeded or not.

And then it rained, torrentially, beginning about an hour after graduation.  It didn't rain again until late September.

So I decided Spring clean-up, which always seems to me to be fraught with difficulties.  This is when I kill plants.  I start too early before I can really sort out what is growing and what is not.  In case you are not aware, although the calendar say nearly May.  NOTHING has budded out, no shrub or trees are even thinking of sending up their leaves.  Some might as well  be dead, as brittle as they appear. No peony eyes, no forsythia buds, no buds on salix.. willow? No buds on that?

So weather forecasters say four nice days and then sleet... or snow?

Just 77 days...

Last Friday in April

Akebia quinata, no signs of growth...yet..

Friday morning and it has been three days since we have had snow on the ground and rain or snow falling here in central Wisconsin.  I would be doing the Happy Dance if this was March.  As all of you know by a quick peek at the calendar, a handful of days remain until May. I think that is "may", as in, "May I go out and play in the garden Mother (Nature)?"

I have been continuing to prick out and move seedlings into bigger pots and that starts to lead to problems with room versus light.  Dr. Darrel Apps confessed to me he has the same problem in his basement grow room which is three time or more the space of my attic space.  He also said for the garden walk he is thinking blue (the full page story on the up-coming July county garden walk was in the Spring Garden section of the local weekly newspaper)...and that he had to remove his dogwood (verticillium wilt) (EEK!) and that he has a cardinal nesting in his blue spruce ("See!  But oh, so low Pam's (feral) housecat will get them!")

Darrel was busy raking out his front border where he thinks the daffodil 'Tete-a-tete' will bloom in a week.  This is a short, floriferous, very early, quickly clumping, natural looking daff suitable for drifts or woodland planting, appearing very native-looking.  He has it planted in a envious drift across the width of his entire front border which also had a redbud tucked back by the house and stoloniferous dogwood, blue spruce, and a second dogwood alternifolia.

It's a great show from my front porch.

He also confessed he has been out to one of the secret Amish nurseries in the area.  Secret, is sort of code.  All the gardeners pretty much know where they are, but they don't advertise or have a website or phone.  They have nice things though, so gardeners KNOW.

Top pruning on my "dwarf" malus 'Honeycrisp'

Late last summer, I noticed what long shadows my apple tree was beginning to cast on my potager.  It's funny how some plants can be just the right size and then in a season, they are too big.  My apple tree 'Honeycrisp' is supposed to be a graft on dwarf root stock.  I guess, not so much.  I wish I had made the cuts late last winter, rather than this; but regular pruning each year has come to my apple tree.

My forsythia has yet to show any sign of life so if Spring has finally arrived there is very little to show for it yet.

Just 78 days until the Garden Walk...

Mail Call

Crocosmia - x crocosmiiflora 'Emberglow'
Gladiolus Frizzled Coral Lace
Gladiolus - callianthus 'Murielae'

Brent and Becky's Bulbs is sold out of my choices above.

I also purchased this Alocasia 'Borneo Giant'.  It came in a box two feet long.  It was still a baby at 6-8", but I'm thinking a little shot of heat in transport and it might have filled out that shipping box.

Two days without snow on the ground, although I did still have frost on my windshield this morning.  Most of these bulbs will get some sort of start indoors.

Daffodils! (And Garden Scourges)

Daffodil spears

Whether there is snow on the ground or not, my bulbs are trying to grow.  There is some sort of quality of light.  There have been so many overcast days.  So few sunny days.

But there are these sprouted daffodils.  One on the left actually has a bud.

It was 60 degrees late, late yesterday afternoon.  That is not a misprint.  Today, is cold.  Farther north they canceled school... another snow day.  Here, we did NOT have snow, though.

This weekend the forecast calls for sun AND 60 degrees. 

NOT daffodils!  These are actually surprise lilies.

The foliage looks like a daffodil on steroids.   When I was a naive gardener, a long time ago, I would get slightly excited to consider what the bloom of these beefed up daffodils might be, only to watch then turn brown and wither without blooming.  Then in August, BOOM!  From nowhere a stalk shoots up and blooms within 2-3 days, incredible pink blooms without a leave in sight.    I have a couple in my hosta bed under hosta just to mess with people (evil genius...).

Scilla

 These form a nice glow of blue.  I used to be able to see the flowers.  Now, I just see the glow of blue.  One of these days on the end of their bloom (when I can still find them), I will move these out so I can once again see their blooms. 

I'll probably also place some other places, too.  That way, when the gravel is graded or the snow plowed on the alley, I won't be at risk of my bulbs being graded and shredded onto the neighbors yard.

I feel I garden against all comers.

The mean rabbit...

This fat Budda rabbit is a stand-in for the bad rabbit poser in my garden yesterday.   I get out of my car and there in the border six feet from me is a brown cotton-tailed rabbit.  I walk over about two feet from the frozen rabbit, "I can see you!" I point my finger at Rabbit.  Rabbit hops off six feet.  I re-center.  "I can still see you!" I scream.  Obviously, the Rabbit Cloak of Invisibility stolen from some poor Romulan is just not working correctly.

The weather...

A broken pot of muscari (I love this blue!)

My crazy neighbors...

I have blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and an echinecea nitidia planted along my neighbors garage.  Finally, after my staring at that pile of metal trash he affixed to my side of his garage for ten years; he has decided he will re-roof and side  his garage-- just in time  to accidentally trample landscaping in my yard right before the Garden Walk.   Hopefully, he'll get his project completely before everything leafs out.  Otherwise, I wish him the joy of those blackberries just out of the picture on the right.

I have already had to remove two badly broken branches from my spruce.  The middle of my bridal wreath spirea has a chunk of frozen ice holding it to the ground.  I am hoping some nice warm sunshine encourage branches to orient more to the south and also to fill in with some new growth.  The bottom six feet is very sparse since having snow plowed up against my spruces' trunks and through the spirea and roses under-planting these evergreens.

Allium 'Summer Beauty'

 

 

 

If you don't grow this allium, you should!  The foliage is flat,wide, and green; flower head is sterile and long-blooming.

Weather note:  Snowiest MONTH on record for Wisconsin at 51 inches...not just snowiest April.

Sprinter Snows

Out the door, it would be nice to eventually plant that planter...

 I am seriously going to have a conversation with the village Snow Witch.  I am seriously concerned about the vitality of plants when they spend an additional two months dormant.  The high today was 42 degrees, no sun.  For the most part, the mid-day snow melted by sunset.

Scene today down the street

My best view across the street

Nothing is growing, Nothing is budding.  After last summer's drought and extreme heat, this long dormancy might be especially bad for shrubs, trees, hay fields, dormant bulbs.  I'm not sure where this strange weather is taking us.  I think a very cool growing season. 

I hope not.

A Rough Week for Our Country

Most anything appearing to be growing in the garden is doing so without green chlorophyll; no green on tulips, geraniums, nor these hens and chicks

I couldn't help but be struck again by how eloquent President Obama is, especially this evening in his role of Consoler-in-Chief when he said it's been a tough week for our country.  The Boston Marathon, ricin (really? again!), and the Texas fertilizer plant, various economics reports and the stock market's lockjaw reaction; these of course make us, as a country, turn inward and ignore strange, young people running countries with possibly nuclear-armed ballistic missiles...

And although, he didn't come out and say the words, "I feel your pain,"  in that southern-accented drawl of another famously eloquent Democratic president, As always, I felt Barack Obama actually gets it.

I first heard then citizen-only Barack Obama speak as I was getting some composted mulch for my garden.  He was nearly literally standing on a mulch pile (versus a soapbox) speaking to any and all who would listen. 

(It seems like) a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I had another garden.  It was a bit smaller garden and a haven after and from long days in the restaurant, and later at Motorola.  It was Elgin's Lord's Park, with its free composted mulch program available on a first come, first served basis.  I would line my trunk with plastic sheeting or a tarp and make the less than a mile round trip, filling my trunk each spring day until there was no more mulch to be had, the ant-like residents each carrying away as much as we could.  

The mulch pile at Lord's Park was located next to the Lord's Park Pavilion.  The Lord's Park Pavilion, I believe started out as more of a folly and then bandstand in the 1890s.   By the time I had come to live in Elgin, it had been totally rejuvenated and featured some enclosed rooms.  The Elgin Parks District had a thriving recreational program at the time and the space was also available for meetings, classes, and family get-togethers.  My son took tumbling/dance class there at age three.  (Not a dancer, although his basketball career challenges my thoughts that he is not a "tumbler".)

On this particular day, I was having a difficult time backing up my car to the mulch pile, there being so many vehicles parked around the pavilion.  So being curious, I went to take a look see, and ended up standing in the back of the room listening to a young unknown wannabe politician speak.  Standing, because I expected to beat a hasty retreat.  Later standing, because I totally forgot I was.  For 45 minutes...

I went home mulch-less, and repeated the gist of the young politician's speech to the to-be father of Handsome Son. Later that spring, we both voted for the young Mr. Obama and were more than surprised when the young unknown politician actually won. 

I can only imagine how many little seeds like this Barack Obama had to plant before enough of them sprouted.  But like the plant every gardener sees and instantly wants; intellectually, he had that effect on me.

Presently, I, for one, though, trapped in the seemingly never-never land of central Wisconsin, where Spring is just not coming this year; have been spending a lot of time pondering our extreme weather and world events.  The seeds of so many things waiting for us in our futures are laid out clearly for us, even now.  We somehow just need to see them.

Right now, it is not clear to me how, and more importantly why, two young men from Chechnya taken in by this country would want to inject horror into the lives of so many celebrating a beautiful spring day in Boston.  Just like I was struck on 9/11 by how nice and blue the skies were across the country and especially in New York, when young men would unthinkably and intentionally fly commercial aircraft into skyscrapers. 

How out of touch can you be?  What is inside of these mad, young, men? Am I the one that just doesn't see?

My downed branches of white pine loomed large covering nearly my entire front yard, but made for a puny pile after my 80-year-old father cut them into short pieces tossed them into the trunk of his car and left before I even got out of the shower.  My father and a chain saw, still a powerful force...

A year ago to the day, Red Jade crab apple was in full bloom.  It makes me a bit happier to think it will surely bloom again sometime this year.

More of the Same, Sprinter Continues...

"Keep swimming!"  Is what this fish with its stern upper lip might be saying to those in the southeast corner of the county  or anywhere in the Midwest where streams and rivers are flooding their banks.  A decorative fish plate on my garden fence, hung using a plate holder.  It has held up very well and has been there ten years or more.

Each day it is more of the same, temperatures in the twenties at night, hovering between 34 and 42 during the day.  Usually no sunshine, very overcast, and either wind or rain, sometimes snow, too.  Sometimes, it is LOTS of rain.  Not a lot changes in the garden.  The birds are very loud, though.  They must carry on their procreative mating rituals, I suppose, in between building snow forts or igloos, or whatever they think they can build.

I have to say, since re-organizing my garden calendar to include the season of Sprinter to describe this weather, I feel a lot less anguish.  Gone is the need to get out into the garden.  Gardening just isn't done in Sprinter.  I think checking my calendar Sprinter generally continues until sometime mid-May.   I think then we are probably up for a couple weeks of a cold Spring, followed by a cool Summer starting sometime after the summer solstice.

I have likewise gathered Summer itself may be shortened up with our Killing Frost coming late August.   It is a tad disconcerting at best.

So as the Sprinter winds continue to blow, the boxer continues to hunker down by the furnace vent.  I continue my indoor gardening under lights, and get this... a gardener who is actually getting her house clean.

"Pretty," You Say?

THAT

is not

THIS!!!

Picture courtesy of Annie's Anuals

You can see from the foliage how I hadn't noticed before today.  Yesterday, as the bloom to come developed I had my doubts. 

Now, I know.

The seed sold to me as agrostemma githago milas by Select Seeds, is NOT agrostemma, at all, but rather centaurea cyanus.  I only ordered from Select Seeds because I didn't want to divide up my seed order across like ten separate companies.

Burned!

Valuable real estate under my lights for something that I collect seed for each year and direct sows easily here, even in last year's drought conditions.

Last time this happened I had ordered this delicately colored petunia only to have a have one bloom looking like a petunia decorated in a wild cranberry and white stripe like the Barnum & Bailey Circus tent.

Come on, people!!!

As if the weather hasn't been enough.

This morning while preparing breakfast, I noticed I need to sharpen the edge on my French chef knife. 

Jason?

Rain = Indoor Garden Day

They are cleomes--I don't care what you "thought" they were...

There's a lot happening in the Indoor Garden Space during this busy Sprinter Season.  Many of the cuttings and seedlings are blooming.  (This always excites me no end as I do not have the very nice (read VERY expensive) halide light set-up my neighbor, Dr. Darrel Apps, has in his underground grow room.) I have plants blooming under regular old florescent lights. I do check that the lights are rated minimally at 3,000 lumens.  (If you want to grow plants under lights do not think using the energy efficient 1560 or some such will do it for you!)

Linaria posing with tomatoes.

The coleus are all looking superb.  The local retailers around here charge an outrageous amount for wimpy little things so I am always careful to hold over some nice cuttings in the fall which I pot up and keep by my loft windows on a table salvaged from the dump strictly for this purpose.  (I painted it black and serves as a nice plant stand, but with its slightly uneven surface would have made for a terrible table.)



This has me excited.  My first seedlings from iochroma.  Armchair gardening in Winter, I came across iochroma grandiflora.  Anything with grandiflora as part of its Latin nomenclature stops me for minimally five seconds.  Reading that it also is a member of the nightshade family, which for me equals "easy to start from seed", hooked me.  Actually finding seed, though was limited to one seller on eBay or Amazon (I forget which.), unless I wanted to hand over much more money for a plant.  Also, unknown to many, tomatoes, nightshade, peppers, potatoes are actually perennials given a cooperative growing zone, with none of that biennial-ness that can make gardeners in central Wisconsin "&%CRA@#ZY" (like Jack-Nicholson-in-'The Shining'-crazy).

Blue salvia seedlings

 Working on that lime green and deep blue motive for my summer garden I started these blue salvia using the baggy method.  They were taped to my fridge, and had definitively decided which way down was.  I am currently messing with their tiny plant brains with them lying on a shelf under my light rack waiting for me to get in gear and prick them off the coffee filter and pot them on.  (Caution: Evil genius at work.)

Asian Spring Onions waiting for Spring

Eggplant, basil, parsley, cilantro, and green amaranth caudatus

 This Summer, the Master Gardeners are featuring my garden on their garden walk.  I seriously want to mess with these tourist gardeners with separate signs on the same plant in different spots in my potager labeling some cilantro as cilantro and others as coriander.  They are actually the same plant, but when speaking of the seed it's coriander.  You'd think that the seed fennel and the edible bulb variety fennel would rather have separate names versus all being lumped to gether with the other fennels some of which are merely decorative and do not produce the edible "bulb" part (which grows above ground like celery).  I don't even think there are any selected cultivars of cilantro!

Cinnie, the rain-depressed dog

Boxers, with all their facial wrinkles got the lock on SADD.  Rain, she does not like.  The gardener who first  said, "Take a picture, it lasts longer," must have been talking about central Wisconsin and sunny skies.

Checking the weather we have thunderstorm with a side helping of hail scheduled (no need to worry about foliage on trees and garden plants. Yay!).  Also, snow scheduled four of the next seven days and rain and overcast weather all but Saturday, on which day the Gardening Twins are celebrating their birthday (indoors).  Yay!

And, oh, the southeast part of the county is flooded out.

Nothing But Blue Skies

Blue skies are a rare treat these days as we are in high Sprinter season.  Although fairly cold, the yellow crocuses were again in bloom.  The sunny warm on my black sweat pants, black long sleeve sweat shirt, and down-filled vest made for comfortable warmth as I worked to clear the downed limbs of the white pine.

My clean up resulted in these piles lines along my street.  It might not seem like a lot, but there are five separate piles about three feet tall, five feet long and about four feet wide.

Also, my sidewalk to the front porch is piled a couple feet high with strictly pine needles.

My pagoda dogwood in the shadow of my white pine was spared.  No falling limbs fell on this side of the tree.

And, my fireplace vent cap has a a new jaunty tilt, until I can get one of the young men that regularly pull up a chair to my dinner table up a ladder to right it.

Today, I managed to get several sunny hours of yard clean up in.  Hydrangeas were cut-back and  the Knock Out roses were trimmed back to the main stems and within 8" to 10" of the ground.  I cut off the top half of my 'Sweet Autumn' clematis.

The birch 'Crimson Frost' is looking good.

Privet hedge is looking good.

Yeah, I 'm weaving 3/4" stick in my sweet cheery tree, all part of my evil espalier plan.  Actually, in a previous life this cherry tree was a person due some bad Karma.

Yup, the spruce that had all that snow slammed into them from my "thoughtful' neighbor is looking pretty thin on the bottom six feet or so.  Looks like someone else might be building some bad Karma.

The blue skies of today are not expected to stick around to mar the unremitting overcast days we have come to expect during Sprinter.  Rain and possible flooding expected nearly everyday the next week.  Possible snow on Friday.   Good thing, I was running low...

Sprinter Season

Ah, Sprinter!

That wonderful season here in central Wisconsin which can include spurious moments of snow sculpting (an excellent off season use of my gardening tools!)-- The Gardening Twins and I have been getting very good at carving out dragons from banks of snow pushed up in the yard after snowplowing.  In addition to snow carving, Sprinter also includes time for indoor gardening under lights.

I wish I had a picture of the truly nice scaly 15' dragon we carved last week.  Instead, oh frabjous joy! I have a picture of a teeny, tiny crocus!

This crocus is incredibly tiny, maybe 1/2" in diameter and the palest yellow.  Quite cute!

A little out of focus, but this is my hosta bed under my large white pine.  Those two spots of bright yellow are crocuses.  You can see I have a lot of clean-up from the ice storm.  The white at the top is my deep ditch level with snow.

Sprinter is also the time to observe garden heaving, always a joyous occasion!  Gardeners wishing to experience Sprinter heaving need to be sure to plant and transplant new plants in late Fall.

Sprinter winds bring dessication of evergreen plants like boxwood on foliage above the snow line.

Allium 'Summer Beauty' is a member of the allium family know for their use in Sprinter tonics and early Spring salads.

This established perennialized clump of tulips 'Ballade' is emerging.  This might be a phenological indicator that Sprinter may be coming to an end in a few weeks.  These tulips retain their red leave coloration throughout Sprinter.

Today, the temperatures hit 50, almost a normal high for Sprinter.  It is the latest day in 38 years to hit 50 degrees in central Wisconsin during Sprinter.

Sprinter always includes lots of flood warnings and wildlife living on the raised roads running through low-lying areas so be careful driving in these areas.  We are forecast for a couple inches of rain on Thursday, but do not despair fellow snow sculptors!  Many inches of plowable snow are forecast for Friday!

Ambassadors Bearing Gifts

The beauty of the applied Fibonacci Sequence

As Winter has determined Spring's arrival will be on pause...

Sweet Autumn clematis trapped in ice

Not only trapped in ice, my Lapin cherry is suffering peculiar tortures all its own to conform to my evil designs.  See the strings? E-s-p-a-l-i-e-r...

As the Ruler of my own little part of the blogosphere, also the Head Gardener, Chief Cook, and Dog Walker of the Kingdom of Talking to Plants (because frankly there is no one else to talk to and nobody listens anyway...),  AND IT IS TRYING TO SNOW AGAIN!!!

(Jason, You need to up the Gardener Suicide Watch you have secretly implemented on my Kingdom.  Be sure all the hori hori knives, dibbers, and pruners are accounted for and in a safe location.)

During these overcast and cold days of Sprinter (a new season we have here in the Kingdom of Talking to Plants, declared by the Ruler when we are already six weeks beyond meteorological winter...and our forecast and environs look more like smack-dab in the middle of Winter, except for terribly random minutes of sunshine--which should be announced with the fanfare of those long trumpets (with no keys requiring a lot of lip work to play)-- so no subjects of the Kingdom miss even one errant minute of sunshine, because we are decidedly UV light-deprived as well...

So during these sad times here in the Kingdom we have used this rectangular Magic Looking Glass thingee to visit other kingdoms far and wide in the World of the Blogosphere. 

We have seen corpse flowers in bloom, flowering cherry and almonds, hellebores (all you gardeners who can grow hellebores-- of the non-foetid sort-- may rot in hell), dogwoods, women who recklessly run with delphiniums (!), other nearby kingdoms also caught up in the chilling grip of Sprinter,  and the cheerful and joy-filled daffodil watchers of the kingdom to the north. 

Additionally, Ambassadors from other lands, blue jays, robins, and the like (in addition the the Crown Prince Handsome Son and his Fair Lady) have been visiting the Kingdom of Talking to Plants.  The aforementioned Ambassadors have been treated to two beautiful, dried head of sunflowers, a collaboration between the Head Gardener, Baby Gardener, and Gardening Twins and Our Kingdom's Math Department. 


1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,...

You get the idea...

The jays are the first I have seen this Sprinter, having been absent all Winter. They showed off their colorful finery to the amazement of the subjects of this grey Kingdom.  A group of 3 (5? very rowdy, spurious, and frenetic) male robins have also provided entertainment in the form of a joust over the wing of a rather dowdy lady robin, however, she seemed to have chosen a choice nesting spot just off my deck.

So entertainment for sunflowers seeds, a fair exchange.  (The Crown Prince desired more substantial fare.)

So reading on the travails of other parts of the Blogosphere, I sometimes desire to reach out and hand another kingdom either this seed or that, or a division of a hosta, or a piece of a clematis.  An ambassador bearing gifts, in the form of pass-along-plants.  Looking around the Kingdom, I realize this has long been a tradition amongst gardeners.

I am open to any and all suggestions for exchanges amongst the Kingdoms of the Blogosphere. 

So what are we gardeners still looking for this Sprinter?  Hankering for seeds of native plants (penstemon digitalis, ligularia dentata or japonica, clematis heraclifolia, etc.), extra heirloom tomato seeds from that packet (because God knows you probably don't need to plant the entire packet-- and like the growing season is even going to be long enough to ripen tomatoes anyway!), a division of a neat-o hosta (should they actually poke up their pointy eyes), a cutting from Clematis Josephine (or any others), some of The Fairy rose?  Something else, piece of a sedum (I think I need to do a feature this next week on the many sedum I have! Check back!)?

Anyone?  What are you looking for?