The Voice of the Cicada is Heard through the Land

It's cicada mania time! We are big fans of the little guys. I've got little holes all through my yard where they've tunneled up, and then they shed their skins and head for the tops of trees. At mid-day on warm days, there is a hum in the background - not actually loud enough to compete with a conversation, but clearly there. Bixby, the fraidy-dog, had to cautiously explore. But now, he's enjoying playing with them on the ground. So far, I haven't noticed him eating them.

Seventeen years ago, we celebrated big time. My sister got tshirts for the kids. We had a barbecue at my house and everybody tried a grilled cicada. My sister had in her head that she wanted to grab and grill some at an upcoming office picnic, and she thought she needed to rehearse, to see if it would actually work. So we all tried them. Charred, with hot sauce and salt, with a big beer chaser, I got one mostly down, but it wasn't an experience I am likely to repeat.

Never in a million years could we have pictured, in 2004, what we would be in 2021. We have such a big hole where my sister should be, and yet we are so blessed. And never could we have forecast how the kids turned out. Take a look at those three, and pick the most likely to be working for the Defense Department, for example!

So I had to do Tshirts, of course, and we had a smaller family celebration.

Where will we be in 2038? Will the cicadas adapt to the new, warmer and more volatile world we'll be living in?

Oasis

Here’s the entrance to the private part of my garden.

 I love my yard! I love that I can just hang out there - the weather and the bugs have cooperated a lot so that just sitting or even napping on my little private patio is the best!  I’ve even fallen asleep out there at night, reluctant to go to bed. And the first cup of coffee in the morning is often out there - hence the blanket. The chaise and cushion is absolutely the best investment ever!  

In the winter and spring the patio is sunny in the mornings, but now with leaves out it is always shady and thus mostly cool.

Here is my little outdoor sanctuary, 
With indoor plants enjoying a summer vacation
And my potting bench

My guys like it too

Rose Tree

This is not actually a “rose tree”. I planted a climbing rose under my pagoda dogwood - I may not have realized at the time it was a climbing type, instead of a bush rose. Under the tree, which grows a foot or so a year lately, it has been shaded. But nature finds a way, and its top tendrils have climbed up to find the sun. My initial reaction, as the branches between the rose and tree were weaving together, was to cut the rose back. But why? Let it find the sun! I like it!

In other news, I have roses everywhere. It’s a good year for them!

Editing

I love clematis. My fence allowed
me to add several around.

Things are of course progressing apace in the garden. I've mowed the lawn twice already - and the second time, it was too long to mulch, I had to bag and compost to avoid having it mat down and kill the other stuff. I started seeds, some veggies and annual flowers, from scratch. Until just now, it was too early to plant tomatoes and other tender things outside, but it's time to get going on that now. 

I'm starting to get an idea of how I want the yard and the gardens to evolve. I've got several distinct areas on my corner lot - inside the fence front and back, outside the fence front and side and back. I've got a few ambitious ideas I have made little progress on. But I've decided that "gardens" will be in the front - inside and outside the fence - and the rest will have smaller raised beds and containers to be planted, with the balance lower maintenance grasses and shrubs. And in the gardens, I intend to be very dense with plants, so that there is not so much area for weeds to take hold. I am thinking about views from inside the house and from seating areas outside. 

A collection from the longest-planted part.

Some of this thinking has grown from the way my oldest garden - the shady front inside the fence - has evolved. I started twenty years ago, a less affluent novice, putting in single plants, or sometimes going all the way to three at a time. Now, those individuals have either died off or proliferated. Most of my time inside the fence is editing. I either weed something out completely, or, often, serve as a referee for a border dispute between types of plants. I like having a patch of something, though they are often interwoven. But every year, something takes off and doesn't play nicely with the others and it has to be pulled out. Not necessarily excluded from the garden entirely - I actually spend some time moving things around. The entrepreneurial aggressive plant of the year differs year to year - a few years back it was Joe Pye weed, this year it's green-and-gold, weaving a complex pattern of sprawling stems along the ground. 

Golden groundsel

My current thinking is something that likes my garden well enough to be a thug probably can find a place where I'm fine if it just takes over. I'll leave it there, and try to police it's ventures elsewhere. But where it is, it becomes much less work. A good example is golden groundsel (Packera aurea). I added a few to a shady, damp spot a while ago. It took off and took over, both seeding nearby and spreading. I'm ripping it up inside the fence, but outside the fence (and downhill) it is also thriving. It has these composite yellow flowers for a long time in the late winter and spring. The rest of the time, it is a decent less than 6-inch groundcover. It will stabilize the steep slope, as long it is thriving. Outside the fence, I'll do almost nothing to it.

 

This moss phlox requires full sun,
scarce around here. This patch is huge!

 

Known as flea bane, this wildflower showed up.
It's welcome some places, not in others.
But it's easy to pull up.

 

This is green-and-gold, where it can stay on the steep slope.