‘‘Twas The Day Before Christmas

 And we woke up to temperatures just barely above zero. We knew the storm was coming, and I got all the outdoor lights taken care of a couple of weeks ago. So last minute prep included making sure I had plenty of dry firewood (in case the power goes off-so far so good!) and doing a last plant check. My chard had survived so far, but I didn’t expect it would make it through this prolonged bout of extreme cold, so I harvested what there was. A nice supplement to tonight’s meat-heavy dinner- just a quick sauté and a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar, I think. But it’s never as beautiful cooked as when it’s fresh from the garden!

I did a fairly minimal light show this year. The red lights along the roof have been up for about five or more years. I added the white lights at the entrance for practicality, and the colored lights along the bushes in front also illuminate the side path.

Moved Indoors

In September, we hit the first string of nights below 60 degrees, then below 50 degrees. That was the signal to start bringing in the house plants.  Starting September 25, I've been moving many of them indoors. They are generally bigger than they were went they went out, and I've divided some into multiple pots and I am trying to propagate more. So far, I've managed to buy only one new one this season! But still, there is just a lot to contend with.

 I acquired some shelves on which to put my plants over the winter last year as the collection grew. Some of that furniture went outside with the plants, so I had to first clean all the furniture and get it back inside before the plants could come in. Then the plants themselves, and their pots, had to be wiped cleaned, and then thoroughly sprayed with horticultural soap before bringing them in. So it was a bit of a multi-day production.

All my plants were in my "new" sunroom last year, but I expanded some into my morning room (as I call my office for its eastern exposure). I follow "urban jungle blog" on the 'gram, and that has made me up my game for how to position the plants. I decided spreading them out both looks cleaner and simpler, and it also brings the lushness to more of the house. Puttering among them all is a pleasure for me.

Some plants are still outside, but nights now are down in the thirties. No frost yet, but it's coming. The ones outside can take more cold, and I may try to overwinter a couple of the hardy ones in my plastic grow-shed, maybe with more protection. The grow shed only saves a couple of degrees over outside unless the sun is shining, but if it gets really really cold I could put a ceramic space heater (which I own) out there via extension cord. The other trick with the grow shed is to remember they don't get any precipitation there, and so they need some watering during the winter. I'll almost certainly put the (hardy) banana there, with an eye to planting it in the ground and starting a banana grove next year. I don't have a non-freezing sheltered place, but my above-ground spare bedroom normally has the heat vent closed (when no-one is staying there which is almost always) and it gets down around 60, I think. So I may try to put some of the plants that want some dormancy, but not actual freezing, in there.

Many of the plants I brought inside quickly lost a few leaves. I don't really trim and prune them during their summer vacation, so there was some catching up to do. I don't think the loss of leaves was indicative of bigger problems, as they seem to have settled into their new places without continuing to go bald.

Summer Glory

 I came home to a solidly green jungle, but I woke up today to this:

I planted this a year ago in my front rain garden. It’s a native hibiscus.

Wildlife in my Garden

The pagoda dogwood watched by Bixby

 I have a very wildlife friendly yard. Bixby and I have amused ourselves for hours watching birds and squirrels and rabbits and their antics. One memorable moment was spent watching two nuthatches chasing each other around and around the trunk of my tulip tree, up and down. (Nuthatches are one of the few birds I recognize, because they are the only ones that spend a lot of time head down on tree trunks.)  I watched a squirrel on the very tallest, thinnest, branches of one of my service berries, clinging perilously with three paws as the fourth brought the berries to his mouth. From my living room couch, I watched many different kinds of bee-like creatures pollinating away on the many-small-flowers-in-a-cluster pagoda dogwood just outside the window. Now I can see the small, hard, round berries ripening all over it, and I know from experience they are a big favorite with the birds.

Maybe the begonia will come back?

Much sex has gone on in this yard!

But not all wildlife is welcome everywhere. I'm all in on trying to maximize pest control this year. I want an ornamental and productive garden!

Deer, of course, are the worst, but rabbits and squirrels also take a toll. I've paid attention to what plants are most subject to mammal munching, and I've tried to make sure that anything not on that list have some form of protection before being placed outside the high fence. I judged wrong, and my lovely begonia is down to just stems, in what may have been a single deer mouthful!

Netted flowers

I've put thin plastic netting over my three small square shady beds along the Court, and so far it seems to be holding off disaster. I had put a couple of strawberry plants in one of them, and before the netting went up they got eaten to nubs three separate times (luckily, they still had roots). Now, with the netting, they are growing and blooming. I don't expect any strawberries this year - my goal is to have them come back next year. I've got dahlias and cosmos and zinnias and chrysanthemums in the other small beds - these are all of varying attractiveness to deer.

The vegetable cage

I've had netting around all sides and the top of my 4' x 8' vegetable bed for a few years now, and it reliably keeps anything larger than a half inch out. I've got peas coming along in there, a favorite of rabbits (planted in March, only started blooming a couple of weeks ago). I put tomatoes and eggplants and peppers in there, the first time I've planted them in the ground in three years. I'm hoping the soil-borne viruses are gone. I'm trying tomatoes and eggplants in pots in another sunny spot in the yard, and I had them surrounded by a short 2' pet fence (keeping out rabbits) and under a translucent woven fabric cover, making an impregnable fortress until the tomatoes and eggplants started blooming. Since then, I've rolled up the sides hoping for pollinators but also hoping the deer won't munch through the openings. I've got some tomatoes and eggplants and peppers in pots inside the fence, vulnerable to squirrels but not deer. 

The big thing is a 4-line beetle and
the white specs are aphids

I'm examining these plants daily, and some of the bottom leaves turned yellow. I decided they needed fertilizer, and I had some granular stuff from past years. (Mice had nested in the bag, but I decided the stuff at the bottom of the bag was probably still good.) I've applied that a couple of times, and also cut off all the yellow leaves, and I think they are looking better. 

Asian lady beetle

But my eggplants and tomatoes have aphids! They are horrible white flecks that seem to twitch convulsively, clustered at the top of the plants. The internet suggested a jet of water to blow them away, and also suggested neem oil to kill them. So almost daily, I'm hosing them down, (which makes the bugs disappear for at least the next few hours) and at least once a week following up with sprayed neem oil. I may be gaining on them, at least fewer leaves appear to be chewed. I did spot a lady beetle on one of the aphid-infested eggplants. It was an asian lady beetle, according my app, but it still likes to feed on aphids, so I left it alone.

Potted tomatoes, peppers,
eggplants and zucchini,
inside a tent fortress

I started zucchini from seed in my biggest pot. I put a solid row cover wrap over the whole pot to ward off vine borers. Once the zucchini starts blooming, I'll have to decide if I'm hand pollinating, or if I'm going to individually wrap each stem in aluminum foil to keep the borers out. 

I harvested arugula and lettuce on different days. In each case, I filled the sink with water, dumped in the leaves, and washed each leaf individually, examining for slugs and earwigs and deciding if there was enough un-munched leaf to eat. There was so much arugula that I ended up cooking it (sauteed with onions, finished with lemon juice) so I wasn't worried about residual live bugs, but I still examine each forkful of lettuce suspiciously before putting it in my mouth. Several hours after the lettuce wash, I discovered a tiny slug on the kitchen counter making a break for it in his (ahem) sluggish way towards the dark behind the coffee pot. Yuck!

With all this hand-tending, can I call any vegetable harvest "bespoke"?

Mighty big bowl of arugula

In my natural wildflower garden in the front of the house, there aren't really any pests, just critters trying to live their lives. But after doing some weeding there, the next day I discovered an embedded tick on my calf. I took a picture before I removed it, and found a (University of Rhode Island) website where you can upload a picture of a tick and they will identify it, and tell you what diseases it may carry. I had a lone-star tick, and it does NOT carry lyme disease. But it does carry other viruses that can cause fevers, and also a weird enzyme that can cause a lifetime allergy to red (i.e. mammalian) meat. I just finished a murder mystery yesterday where someone who had that allergy was killed by slipping her some beef-based protein powder! Ooops?

Green

 With the full flush of spring, leaves popping out, everywhere I look it is SO GREEN!

This is a pagoda dogwood in front of a fringe tree
Green with white-ish flowers both

This pagoda dogwood fills my front window with green

The red columbine and the pink geranium
stand out against the green

Not all greens are the same -
this hosta really stands out!

This very peculiar flower is known as
Dutchman's Pipevine, and is host to the
(wait for it...) Pipevine Swallowtail Caterpillar!

For context, this is the pipevine on the fence behind the chairs

Garden Record-Keeping

I blog here partly as a means of keeping track of what is going on in my garden. There is a long and honored tradition of garden journal-keeping. In fact, garden records from centuries past are being mined for understanding how weather and climate has changed over time. On a modestly selfish note, I find myself sometimes reviewing these blog posts to see when I did what in the garden, and how it has changed over time. Photos are so important to see what was going on.

Tulips planted in 2018 are starting to fade.
Time to order new bulbs for fall planting.

I just looked back over the April and May entries I made from 2019 to last year. That (2019) was the first year after I lost the Big Spruce and got the fence up, totally changing how my garden functions, and of course June 2019 was when I retired for good and all, giving me a lot more time to work on the garden. I made some ambitious plans then, and I've carried out some of them! But looking at what I did and wrote in past years during the busy spring season has made me sad that I haven't blogged so much here. Even worse, I haven't even always taken pictures of what is going on! I've been busy in the garden (and inside, with seed starting and indoor plants), and I have taken very brief notes of what I've done, but not enough observations or photos of what has been happening. So here, I'm going to do some catch-up blogging. (Note: between writing the first draft of this and now, I've been out there and taken maybe a hundred new photos, so I'd be able to illustrate this and subsequent posts.) It's a grey day, still very wet from last night's downpour, and I had an especially good and vigorous workout earlier this morning, so I'm good with flopping on the couch with the computer actually in my lap. It seems so self-indulgent, with the world going to hell around me, but I'm keeping up with my tiny little piece of it.

Species tulips in the side yard last longer.

Because I started things from seed inside, and bought more things to set out later, I've been impatient with the weather we've been having. We've had some very nice days - rated 10 out of 10 by the Capital Weather Gang - but we continue to experience serious periods of cold weather. It's also often been grey, but rain has been below average (last night with over an inch helped!)  We had temperatures overnight in the 30s last week, and we'll see low 40s this weekend. We skirted the edge of a frost just two weeks ago. I planted peas in the ground in my back veggie bed in early March, and they came up slowly and have only poked along since. (They may have gotten nibbled by rabbits, because I didn't deploy the protective netting until much later.) Peas are traditionally the first crops to be planted, but it's been several years since I tried them. 

The traditional demarcations of spring planting seasons are: (1) As soon as the ground can be worked in the spring; (2) After substantial risk of frost is past; (3) After all danger of frost is past; (4) When night-time temperatures are in the 50s; and (5) When the soil has warmed up. I sat down and figured out when those dates have been lately, and then backed up from those dates to start seeds indoors under lights. But each of those dates has been later than in past years. To be fair, we've actually tracked fairly closely to the "traditional" date for the last frost - but the last several years have been warmer and I bet on it as I bought plants and started seeds. We still haven't gotten to nights in the 50s and warm soil yet, but I think the next two weeks will get us there. 

The ugly but effective grow house,
with Bixby for scale and decoration

My back patio, with two sides brick walls of the house, faces east and south and is very sheltered. I started bringing plants outside to the patio the second week of April, at first bringing them in at night, then finally leaving them there. The bricks absorb heat during the day and provide some warmth at night. I have shelves there, and plants on the lower shelves have a roof over their heads which also helps trap the heat at night. I have a "grow house", a white plastic-covered green house. I've been using it as a shed to store crap for years, but after a major de-cluttering last year, this year I've put some of my plants out there. It warms up substantially during the days, (at least five degrees on a shady day, and up to plus-twenty degrees in the sun!) and it cools to nearly ambient at night. I have a couple of big five-gallon buckets of water in the grow house, and the water heats up during the day and releases heat back into the air as it cools at night, which maybe can keep the air slightly warmer than outside.

This corner has deer protection from the fence
and a surprising amount of sun. I want to move the grill
and get rid of the bush to be able to put potted plants in the sun.

I've been observing the past couple of years, the sun and shade patterns around the house and yard. They are substantially different than they were when I moved in. For years, I've been in denial of the increasing shade from all the trees I planted. I'm finally accepting it, and that has led to some plans to reshape parts of the yard. Leaves have only emerged in the past two weeks (again, I've been impatient) and now I'm getting a better idea of exactly what to do this year. I'm amazed at how different my sun room is, now the leaves are out. My sunny room is now filled with a green, shady, cool, ambience. I intend to deploy a lot more pots outside, and tailor their placement around the yard to the light conditions the plants need.

The back entrance to my house (on the right).
There is a gravel driveway under the grass, to be renewed.
The new stone walkway will run from the end of the driveway
at the house to the gate.

I am contracting for one big landscaping job. The back entrance to my house is the flattest way in. There is a driveway with an initial steep slope about four feet up from the street, but then a gradual slope, and then it's mostly level from the driveway to the kitchen door along the back of my house. And the kitchen door threshold is only two steps up from the ground. (The front entrance has several steps from the street and then more steps on to the front porch.) If ever I have mobility issues, this back entrance may become my main entrance. So I've hired a local landscaping firm to renew my old gravel driveway, and then build a wide (at least 42", wheelchair ready) stone walkway from the driveway to the kitchen door. And to do it without sending the water that currently pools there into my basement. (No point in building a ramp up to the door, I don't actually need it yet and maybe never will.) I'm at the company's mercy on scheduling, but I'm looking forward to having it done at last. Once they are done, there may be more changes I make to the yard around the back. I'm delaying some projects that won't be directly affected until I can assess how things look and feel with the new walkway.

Spa Day

The weather climbed up into the seventies this week, and I decided it was time to give all my houseplants a bath. I’ve had a minor spider mite infestation, and wanted to tackle it before it became major. Many houseplant books recommend washing plants regularly to remove dust and pests. I’ve seen instagrams of folks taking a shower with their plants (check out urban jungle blog). My shower was broken and too small anyway, so the window of warmth allowed me to proceed. 

First they all went outside, then they all got hosed down. After a brief drying period, they all got sprayed with neem oil and went back inside.

Bixby has a thing for spraying water. He goes nuts chasing the stream and has to jump and bite it. So he participated in the plant wash, and proceeded to roll in the dirt to dry off, and so he got a dog wash in the kitchen sink. I bought the only bottle of dog shampoo at CVS, and the advanced oatmeal formula has made him fluffy and nicely fresh smelling.

I completed my spa day by fixing my broken shower and cleaning myself off. My old shower knobs used to leak, were fixed by a plumber and replaced with ugly plastic knobs, which only lasted a couple of years. Another trip by the plumber gave me a new set of plastic, and when they started to spin freely this year, I decided to tackle it myself. But matching old parts is hard. I ended up, after three visits, with metal inside but plastic outside “universal” knobs, that don’t match but work. This is clearly a temporary fix, but “temporary” could be a couple of months or a few years. The joy of old houses!

Notes from Outside and Inside

Jasmine on my corner

The last couple of weeks the weather has finally gotten nice enough to do some work outside. It's too early for most planting, and I don't do garden "cleanup" in the traditional sense. I let many leaves and dead plants stand all winter. Some dead stems I knock down but leave in place, I rake leaves off the grass, and I may do a little raking of leaves that have piled up especially thick some places in the garden beds. I clean up and turn over my small vegetable beds. But mostly, I let my naturalistic garden be, deliberately, in order to allow insects to live out their natural life cycles in leaf litter and inside plant stems. It's a bonus that allows a certain degree of laziness to feel virtuous. 

But there is pruning of woody things to do this time of year, before the sap starts flowing. And now that the ground isn't frozen, many weeds stand out greenly from their browner surroundings. The birds and other critters are constantly bringing liriope, english ivy, vinca, and ajuga into places were it is not wanted. To get down and weed is a not too active activity, so it needs to be warm enough to feel comfortable. I've been able to spend a few hours most days doing a bit of this, and it feels great! Besides the subtraction work, I actually got out there and planted peas this week! The traditional day for peas and lettuce to be seeded outside is St Patrick's Day here in DC, but as an experiment I went ahead and did it.

Blooming now, besides the witchhazel, are hellebores and the yellow jasmine at the corner. Crocuses are up - February 19 was the first bloom (I kept checking). Daffodils will get going within a couple of days.

Endless puttering opportunities

Every day I'm puttering with my indoor plants, spending even more time with them than outside. I'm constantly checking water levels rather than watering on any kind of schedule (screwing up watering is the number one problem with potted plants). I pull off dead leaves, transplant and prune, rotate them for even growth or move them around. I've got four of the Aerogardens going, and things transfer from them into either pots with soil or what are called "kratky jars" - simply a container with water and no soil. I've got salad greens growing in two of the gardens, cherry tomato plants (bearing fruit!) in one, and I just started some tomato, pepper, and eggplant seeds in the last. 

Two cherry tomato plants, one red and one orange
Nothing ripe yet!

Isn't this the cutest little pak choi?
I started more seeds, as much for looks as eating

Four Lettuces and a Cabbage

 My indoor gardens continue to produce. I harvested enough lettuce for two small salads for myself. I grow heirloom varieties: Merveille de quatre saisons, Red sail, Rouge L’hiver, Black seeded Simpson. The cabbage is a baby tatsoi. I started several seeds in one pod, many germinated, so I harvested all but one plant so I can see if it makes a cute little mini-head. In the same spirit, I’m trying “tennis ball” lettuce, a butter head type supposed to make cute little rounds. Kale also is said to do well, and chard and arugula.

I’ve got green tomatoes! I started two types of mini-cherry types- the plants are supposed to stay small, as well as making small fruit. One red, the other orange. I transferred several of the starts to pots, and left two plants in the hydroponic machine. The hydroponic ones are blooming away! I pollinated by vibrating the clusters of flowers with an old head on my electric toothbrush (thank you, internet) and I’ve got some tiny little fruit starting to grow! This is so much more exciting even than lettuce!

Meanwhile, outside, it’s too early for anything except cleanup. But my witchhazel is blooming, as it should. Last year this time, crocuses were blooming, but not yet this year. 

Indoor Gardening

This west-facing window also has some lights

Since I always ride the trends about half a beat behind the wave, I'm now fully into indoor gardening. Some of the plants I'm raising inside will be planted outside in the summer, some will move with their pots outside and then come back in, and some will stay inside. Most of the ones to go outside were bought mail order from a specialty place. They came in four inch pots, and they will turn into giant bananas and brugmansias and blooming ginger and bouganvillea and other delights, I hope. Some are vegetables that were started in the hydroponics systems, and will be moved to pots and eventually outside.

There is a constant balancing act here - I buy plants, then need to buy furniture to put them on, and supplemental lights to help them grow. Now, with leftover pots, maybe I need some more plants? I'll be starting more seeds in the hydroponic gardens - those work really well - but then they will need to move to pots.

The cozy corner

My updated sun room lends itself to plants. I've decided I like concentrating them in that bright room, and I've also festooned the room with supplemental lights to make the growing days longer and bright every single day (even when blizzarding like right now). I spend the middle of the day out there, and in the evenings if I'm going to watch TV. It definitely has calming impacts on me to see the greenery everywhere. And, I'm enough into the mindset of the grower than I don't really see the plant itself when I look at it; I see what it could come to be when it gets bigger, puts out more branches, starts blooming.

The south window; palms and basil and cyclamen

 

The development section in the east window
Sad looking lemon and lime trees, a very bad Christmas cactus,
a cherry tomato in a hydroponic milk jug and some paperwhite bulb starts

 

Big Dreams for the Garden

Plans

While huddling up inside in the warm, I have big dreams for my garden this coming year. I've only got one trip planned for the summer, not until the end of June, so I should be around to actually do things. And, I've decided that I have enough energy and strength to do many of these things myself (see: last year's rain gardens and rototilling for new grass). Right now, my effort consists of browsing the web and catalogues and exercising my credit card, giving me a sense of doing something without actually moving from the couch.

My long-term objective is to transform the yard into lower maintenance. Key to this goal are the strategies of (1) more container gardening, to focus my physical efforts into concentrated, manageable spaces; and (2) more shrubs and fewer perennials in the ground. Overlaid on this is the realization that many parts of my yard are not visible from inside the house. I should focus a lot of my intensive gardening on the views and the patio because constantly looking at something nudges me into action. And now, I have a much better understanding of sun patterns in my yard, and I think I'll be more realistic about what will do well where. Less wistful thinking about how there used to be sun in a spot where a decade ago I planted a tree which has grown considerably since then.

My exuberant sunny exotic plant zoo, from 2012
This is close to what I imagine
But sun/shade parts of yard are now reversed!

There is a meme that keeps showing up in gardening social media: a crowd of people shouting at the cheer leader: "what do we want?" "ALL THE PLANTS" "where will we put them?" "WE HAVE NO IDEA!" I have often fallen prey to this problem - from catalogs or at the nursery, buying things without a plan. So far, I've ordered plants and containers with a clear plan. I've also ordered many seed packets with a less clear plan, but I rationalize that as "seeds are cheap" and "they keep for years". (Both rationalizations are not necessarily true.)

I just ordered (very small) plants to go along the side street - "the court". (They won't ship until the nursery decides it's planting season.) Once upon a time the edge visible from my bedroom window was filled with four huge Norway spruces and anchored at the driveway end by a white pine that was dwarfed by the spruces. The spruces died a dozen or more years ago so I took them out, and for a while this was the sunny spot where I could grow tomatoes. On the short but steep bank to the street I planted a mix of native grasses and sedges, some of which survive to this day. I planted three small (3' high) native trees between some new raised beds for vegetables and the street. One, the hackberry, grew quickly into a nasty tangled and thorny mess so I took it out. (It has high wildlife value, so the suckers that still appear are tolerated and cut back every year.) One, a redbud, is huge and lovely every spring, but casts a big shadow. The last, a dogwood, is feeble and limping from the shade cast by the incumbent white pine (which leapt for the sky after the spruces had gone), and is on probation. The three raised beds I had put in are no longer sunny enough for tomatoes, and I haven't decided what to do with them instead. They are prime deer grazing venues, and variously but largely shady, so it's tricky. The things I've tried in past years haven't worked great.

I ordered some woody evergreens to go along here -  on the bank along the street - prostrate, low-growing pines and columnar hollies. They are supposed to tolerate some shade. We'll see if they make a decent finished-looking edge to the street. The plants I ordered will be about six inches tall, so it'll take a couple of years to find out what they actually look like.

I also ordered a couple of dwarf rhododendrons to go under the pin oak along the court side of my corner. This is very shady (though before I planted the pin oak, and for a few years after, it was sunny and had roses). So if these (6") plants survive, they will be broad-leafed evergreens, but may not bloom profusely. I do not really see this corner from inside the house (I can crane my neck from the bedroom) but having a screen along the street makes sense to me. 

For reference, existing garden spaces

I ordered two large metal raised beds which haven't come yet. (I had planned on one, but the New Year's sale catapulted me into two.) My plan for these are for the sunniest part of the yard - in the front where the big spruce fell over in the Big Wind almost four years ago. This is sloping, outside the fence, and taken over by tall prairie plants, mostly volunteers from around the 'hood. It is largely invisible from inside the house, which has let to some neglect. I have attempted to tame it each spring, and by July it is beyond me. So the current plan is for the raised beds to be installed and leveled, and to keep them civilized. I think regular rounds outside them with the weed whacker will allow them to flourish. This area is, however, on the deer highway up from the creek, so exactly what to plant in them is yet to be determined. Annuals this year, for sure, maybe big elephant ears and cannas and bananas. I may also net them to keep off the deer, though I don't like the look around ornamentals (versus vegetables). 

Outside my bedroom window on the side are azaleas and weeds. For years I have fantasized about having a lilac blooming outside my bedroom window so that I can smell it in bed (during the two weeks a year it blooms, the rest of the time it will be fairly ugly green foliage). I even bought a lilac a couple of years ago, and it died in the pot before I was ready to plant. I will have to dig up azaleas in order to make room, (may re-plant some to street-side) and the azaleas are also surrounded by weeds. It's a pretty big job, though one that could be started any time the ground isn't frozen or wet, so it doesn't need to wait until planting season. At any rate, I don't plan to buy any lilacs until I've done the work.

Things are Blooming

 On New Year's Day, a few brave things (exotics all) were blooming. The weather is crazy unseasonably warm and seeing even a few sparse blooms lifted my spirits. 

This is a jasmine that looks like forsythia

Lavender

My epicly huge rosemary: want some?

Indoors, my first-ever forcing of paperwhites