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

Rain Garden

 Much of my gardening is driven by changing light conditions - trees grow, trees fall, buildings are built, and the light changes. When the giant spruce fell in my yard in March 2018, conditions changed substantially and the ripple effect continues. 

Peculiar blossoms and fruits

I had a Carolina sweetshrub bush, bought and planted in the waning days of the last century, in front of my house. It was one of several bushes planted in a little thicket beside the walk to my front door, deliberately to create privacy and block views from the street into my house and yard. I only put in shade-adapted natives: the sweetshrub, several blueberries, shadbush, dogwood, oakleaf hydrangea, arrowwood viburnum and cranberry viburnum. For almost two decades the Norway spruce overtopped them and provided shade from deep to dappled, and so they all poked along, establishing roots, growing slowly, intertwining as they way. When the spruce fell, the brakes came off! Now, it is a thriving deep dense thicket, ripe with berries and caterpillars and thus a prime bird habitat.

The sweetshrub, planted at the end of the thicket, was a real winner in the light-and-water sweepstakes. It turns out, this bush can spread by sending out underground suckers, creating a thicket all its own encroaching both on the other bushes and the lawn in the other direction. I realized by the year after the tree fell that it was dominating the space and might have to go. As I thought about it, I grew enamored of the idea of making prime full-sun space available for a rain garden. But it would be a considerable project. 

I dove into the thicket periodically to methodically dig out suckers, beginning with the ones farthest from the main bush. A few of the suckers I transplanted to the opposite end of my yard where there is currently deep shade. Last year, I got the size of the bush down to maybe three feet in diameter, and cut it all off to about four feet high. I kept eying the standing corpse and dreading the task of digging it out.

It's ripe for the plucking!

Houseguests to the rescue! Last October my boat partner and her husband vacationed in my basement for a week (almost as nice as their aborted trip to the Azores, no?)  And one lovely day while they were staying, my sailing partner and I indulged ourselves with weekday sailing, leaving her prone-to-seasickness husband to stay behind and work on his book. But, he asked for anything that needed doing outside. I suspect he wanted to mow the grass, but I pointed out the bush and where the tools were kept, kind of as a joke. But we came home to find the bush gone, all of its sticks bundled for removal and the roots out of the ground, a tidy hole in the ground left behind.

Waiting for next steps

All spring I worried over what to do next. I had spoken to a local contractor about doing a rain garden project, but he never pursued me and I'm past begging for folks to come do work I could do myself. I knew I had to dig out the space, connect to a buried drain from the roof gutters, modify the soil, buy lots of plants. It seemed a big and daunting project, and I did nothing about it. Every time I walked past the scar left behind it gnawed at me.

But, the kedge (planning a big difficult trip to make myself get in better shape) worked! In fact, not only am I in better physical shape, but mentally I'm more ready to tackle difficult things. And, once I got into it, making the rain garden was very manageable.

So, I dug out the space.

I modified the soil.

 

I bought some plants and put them in. It needs more plants, but July is not a great time to acquire plants - spring ones are gone, fall ones are not in. Some things I wanted are not available, and I may end up shopping my yard to move some things from elsewhere. Fall is a great time to do this.

I mulched the heck out of it.

Finally, we had some rain and I was able to watch as rain from the roof drained through the pipe and into the garden, where it filled up and then drained slowly over the course of some hours just as planned!

The one sad thing is this is still the deer highway where they come from the creek into my yard (to eat all my apples). So far, that hasn't been an issue with what I've put in. I'll continue to look for less appetizing plants.

EDIT: As it turns out, last night (evening of the day I wrote this) we got 1.5” of rain in 25 minutes! Towards the end of the downpour (when I thought it was safe) I went out to look. There were a good 6” of water in the rain garden throughout the bowl, with active draining from the roof. When I went out about three hours later, it had all drained away. Exactly the way it’s supposed to work! 

Signs of Spring

My girl made street signs for me.
I'm hoping to help decrease wrong deliveries.

We've had a stretch of not-terrible weather - including some actual nice days. At this time of year, a "nice" day is one where it gets up to at least 50 in the sun, there is sun, and little wind. More sun and less wind allows the temperature to sag downwards from 50, as long as I dress for it. 

I've spent a couple of days in the yard, either finishing my fall cleanup or starting the spring cleanup, depending on how self-critical I'm feeling at the moment.  I'm also very focused on house-training Bixby - it's going really well - and we step outside for a few minutes nearly every hour we are home. This time outside allows me to search for and find even the tiniest hints of spring.

It feels like we've had no actual winter  though we did have one short-lived minor snow. These nice days make me long for spring, but it's really too soon.

Daffodil and crocus foliage tips are emerging, as they do every year at this time. My winter-blooming plants have not really come on yet. My witchhazel does have some buds but no blooms. My hellebores were all transplanted last year and I'm seeing some healthy foliage of some of them (and some died) but nothing that looks like the beginning of blooms. My winter jasmine, which hangs over the wall at the corner, has just a few little blooms and may come on stronger soon. 

Daffodil tips by the back entrance

There are several plants with green foliage year round, and these stand out. One gardening tip I heard but didn't act on as well as I would have liked last year is about how to use that to your advantage. Because certain weeds (onion grass, english ivy, vinca) are green when most plants around them are not, you can target them more easily for weeding right now. Because of the mildness of this winter, there are more things green than normal, but the principle still holds. 

This plant, golden groundsel, is NOT supposed
to be blooming yet, but it should be green

I successfully killed a lot of grass in my very back in the fall, and didn't get to planting the new grass. Therefore, there is a big mudpit waiting for me. I'm going to look up about how warm it has to be to plant new grass, and look for a 2-3 day window for taking on the big job.

First Hard Frost

 It was 25 degrees when I got up this morning. But sunny! It didn't get much above 40 degrees. Records set everywhere (for cold). Leaves are coming down fast. But the colors this year are fantastic.

June Blooms

I suspect this is not everything, but it's a lot. In contrast to the early spring, most of this stuff are things I planted just for the blooms.

June 1: The little daylily strip I planted. Yay!

Called Spigelia. I love this and have it repeating in front.

June 16: Daylilies that haven't always bloomed. Must be the light.

June 16: Wild petunia. Planted it once,
seeds itself freely (a GOOD thing!).

June 16: Stokes aster, being crowded out.

June 17: St. John's wort, beloved of bees,
seems to have seeded the whole neighborhood.

June 17: Common milkweed.
Fragrant, beloved of bees and monarchs.

June 18: I will have to look up what this is.

June 18: Sundrops! I always wanted them.
Now I have enough sun!

June 18: acquired from a now-deceased neighbor.
Spreads a bit too much. Forget its name.

June 22: My patriotic pot!

Oakleaf hydrangea. I was surprised by the pink. Also, huge pollen drifts. Loving its new sunshine,
I'm going to have to cut it back. But it is really luxuriant this year!

May Wrap-Up

Yikes! I am so far behind if I wish to chronicle this year in the garden! So, here's a wrap-up of the merry month of May, in photos.

Overview of the newly fenced front, complete with grazing wildlife.

Tradescantia: found wild around here, spreads freely.
I have planted it, but not here, this is a volunteer.

May 9. American wisteria: love the purple blooms.
Slight re-bloom after first flush.

May 14. Baptisia, false indigo.

Nothing false about the shades of blue. I love this, 

have it all over.

May 14. Threadleaf bluestar on the corner.
Mostly grown for its fall foliage display.

May 17. Siberian Iris.
These came from Mom's garden on LI.

May 17. Peony and roses.
I didn't plant the peony, so it's more than 20 years old.
The roses had been deer eaten to the ground a few times.
Best display ever.

May 19. Blueberries.
I would have to work to protect from
birds and squirrels if I really wanted to
eat any. 

Two views of the roses. I planted this bush years ago. It didn't bloom for several years, because of the shade from the now-gone spruce. Also, was eaten down by deer at least once. So this is almost all new growth and it is spectacular!
Note another (more purple) false indigo at its base.

The first of what is going to be an amazing lily display!

Nothing Equals Washington in April

Unless it's Washington in May - I'll let you know in about a month.

We've hit the point where it's impossible for me to catch everything that is blooming in my yard, so this is only a sample.

Redbuds are fabulous

Grape hyacinth from at least 12 years ago

Virginia bluebells - you will find huge patches of these
on the floodplains along the Potomac and other waterways.
The foliage disappears by midsummer, and the ants move and
plant the seeds so I never know where they will pop up.

Golden Groundsel
Makes a neat groundcover when not blooming.

There are three different tulip varieties here, and my white rhododendron.

I didn't realize my mix of yellow tulips included
a double. I generally avoid these freaks.

Woodland phlox.

Trillium. Rare, hard to grow and slow to spread.

Spring beauties. They grow wild along the creek.

The hellebores are still going
but fading in color.

Apple blossoms. This tree is probably too close to the house, sadly.

Spring is slowly springing..

The crocuses popped open yesterday, all over the yard.