‘‘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!