And with Spring Comes Joy

Hellebore-I'm in love!

Ugh, it's a cold and windy day here. I should be out working in the yard but it's just too miserable. My neighbor's daffodils are already in full bloom but mine aren't quite there yet.

Still, there are a couple of other plants that are putting on a show, like bright blue squill. There are many yards in our town that basically have bright blue lawns due to so much squill. Before we moved here, I had only seen "bulberized" lawns in garden mags. For the short period of time squill are in bloom it looks amazing. I just hope these little buggers aren't invasive. It looks like they have the potential to be and there are already enough garden meanies in my yard as it is.

Speaking of pretty blooms, I just saw my first live hellebore bloom and I am awed at how pretty this plant is when other plants are just starting to wake up. I put in three 'Ivory Prince' last spring and am now thinking of adding more.


'Sem' false spirea is very colorful in the spring-
too bad I didn't get a better shot of how bright it actually is

 I like their leaves, their flowers, their light fragrance and the wildlife didn't touch them all year, probably because they are poisonous. I guess there's a native hellebore, false hellebore/indian poke (veratrum viride), that is also highly toxic and causes problems with livestock. If we didn't have neighbors with horses, I'd be tempted to try it; the leaves are very nice-looking.

There are other signs of welcome plant life in my flower beds: my robust male ferns are greening up and I see fresh pulmonaria leaves and flower buds. One of my favorite plants, 'Heaven Scent' jacob's ladder is looking good and I see my old-fashioned bleeding hearts pushing their ferny red shoots up a bit more each day. Lots of green or red shoots everywhere I look-very exciting!

'Eroica' bergenia in March after the snow melted

Others like bergenia, lamium, epimedium and thyme stayed kind of green all winter (well, purple in the case of the bergenia), which I would glimpse once in a while when the snow melted enough. Yep, we had plenty of snow; now we need rain. Last year was a really dry spring and I'm hoping it's not the same story this year. Please, please, please rain!

Lastly, my Sem false spirea is putting on its fiery spring show. It's leaves were so bright I just had to take a picture. So, with a happy heart after seeing all these signs of spring, I'll use the yucky weather to do some chores around the house and rest up for my next big weeding event.

Vinca, Loosestrife and Bishop's Weed-Oh My!



Here's the part of the foundation bed that I worked on today. 
It was horribly overgrown and weedy-a real mess. 
It'll be interesting to see what it looks like in a couple of months.

I have been so focused on my garlic mustard and buckthorn invasion that I haven't done anything with the front foundation, which was a big mess. The previous owners had planted variegated vinca along the foundation with some shrubs and perennials. The vinca is everywhere; it's in the lawn, tripping people on the sidewalk, climbing over and through the shrubs, and eating up the other perennials like a kid sucking down candy. That's one side of the bed.

The other side has gooseneck loosestrife which is also busy swallowing its neighbors. In another bed that's just across a gravel path, there's a third garden thug rampaging: bishop's weed. Although I don't have anything against these bullies when sited properly, they just can't get along with others in a mixed bed, so I started digging them out today.

I don't plan on keeping any of the vinca or bishop's weed 'cuz I don't have a good spot for them and they aren't particularly pretty or usefull. However, I do plan to keep one patch of gooseneck loosestrife 'cuz I do like how it looks in bloom and the leaves have pretty color in the fall.

This is what the foundation bed looked like
the summer before we bought the place-not very attractive.

All the plants in this bed are pretty basic: daylilies, heuchera, geranium, columbine, rudbeckia and tickseed. Nothing particularly exciting. It took me all day but I re-edged the bed, fertilized with High Country Garden's Yum Yum Mix, weeded and mulched, and transplanted some of the plants to new locations. (After all that effort, I'll be using a heating pad tonight for sure.)

I've never grown heuchera before and so was shocked to find how straggly these were. Instead of nice neat clumps of leaves, I found long woody stems with new growth sticking several inches out of the ground and not much for roots either. I replanted most of these so that the new growth was ground level. Not sure that's what I was supposed to do; I guess we'll find out. I had to do the same thing with a patch of 'Biokovo' geranium I transplanted. Like the heuchera, it had big woody stems with the new growth at the end of the stem.

Since this particular flower bed hasn't been touched for almost two full years, I figure I'll see what it looks like this summer and then next year-well, I hate waiting so maybe this fall-I'll figure out how to add some pizzazz to it. I'm feeling a bit conflicted, however. I like how the previous owners limited their plant palette and used big swaths of the same plant in large sections of their beds but I also don't want to waste one of the only full sun areas of my whole yard.

Of course, although overall I was happy with the results of today's labor, there were some screw-ups too. I'm pretty sure I killed some columbine plants. I also think I remember seeing some astilbe in this bed last year. I didn't see any today and may have pulled them up when I was getting all apocalyptic on the vinca. I also accidentally broke the shoots off some lilies as I was grappling with some gooseneck loosestrife.



These are where the spore on the yews came from-
weird looking, aren't they?

 Oh, and my yews tricked me today. I was raking out leaves from under them and saw intermittent wisps of thick smoke. What could possibly be burning? I searched the whole bed and didn't smell any smoke smell but I could see it. It took me several minutes to figure it out; the yews were releasing their spores whenever I bumped their branches.

The pollen irritated my nose a bit and left a tinny taste in my mouth. I was a bit concerned; pretty much all parts of a yew are poisonous. Could the spore be too? I told my kids that if I collapsed to tell the 911 folk that I had inhaled a bunch of yew spore. "You what?" they asked. "YEW SPORE" I said slowly and evenly. "You score?" was their reply. "Forget it" I mumbled and went back to my gardening.

Another Tree Bites the Dust

Perfect placement of the downed mulberry
earned my hubby fishing time on Sunday

Hi all! I am pretty upbeat today which is a nice change from Friday when everything went wrong. Not only was I informed our gutters are rotted and so is our cupola, I managed to lose my car/house keys in our woods. My spouse and I searched in the dark with flashlights but couldn't find them.

Luckily it didn't rain like it was supposed to and after I unsuccessfully searched again the next morning, I offered a $5 reward to whichever of my children found them. 10 minutes later, I had my keys back.

Turns out while I was hauling brush, the key chain, which was in my jacket pocket at the time, managed to get snagged by one of the branches (probably when I tripped on a virginia creeper vine and the wheelbarrow with the brush tipped over on top of me).

Why was I hauling brush in the dark? Well, because my peach and cherry trees had arrived and so it was time to take down the big mulberry by our driveway. And because we didn't know what the weather was supposed to be like, we figured we'd better hit the ground running Saturday morning which meant taking down smaller branches the prior evening.

I always get queasy to my stomach when we take down trees, especially the bigger ones. I didn't feel bad about this one though. It was a three-strikes-you're-out scenario. In 2009 it had been struck by lightning and we had to remove one of its main forks, leaving it misshapen and ugly. It also had leaf spot disease and some other issue that left dark smears on its trunk and branches. Thirdly, it was one of the invasive morus alba, not our native morus rubra.

We should have hired an arborist to take it down 'cuz it was quite large and if we didn't drop it right, it'd crush either our neighbor's car and newly-planted shrubs, or our spruces. Luckily, after one large dropped branch took my husband off the ladder (he says he jumped) he gained some respect for the tree, slowed down, and with our neighbor's help, managed to drop the rest of the tree into perfect position, saving car, shrubs and spruces, not to mention all of us would-be lumberjacks.

What a mess!

Dropping the tree, cutting it into manageable bits and then carting away the branches took us all day. However, I still had some time to get my Reliance peach tree and North Star cherry tree (both from Stark Bros) planted, all the garlic mustard and dandelions pulled from my future berry garden, and two virginia creeper vines trimmed in the same section of yard.

The only sad part of the whole deal was that I also ended up taking out two small trees that turned out to be Nannyberry. The small one was badly infected with cottony maple leaf scale. The bigger one was just too big to transplant and had to be removed because it was too near the house.

Nannyberry buds

Our arborist had told me they were viburnums and I didn't know there are native viburnums, so when another arborist told me they were scrub trees, I didn't research them as carefully as I should have. Of course, after I had removed them, I found a photo of a Nannyberry (viburnum lentago) on the 'net. (The buds are very distinctive and look a bit like a lily-flowering tulip before it opens).

According to the 'net, nannyberries have edible fruit and are decent wildlife shrubs/small trees. Dang it! Luckily I still have others on the other side of the property so I'll take good care of those and now I'll know how to identify their saplings.

Eternal Battle Against Woodland Invaders



Yep, all that green stuff is garlic mustard
(this is a photo taken summer 2009, 
when we moved in to our house )

 Yes, the mighty warrior is hurting mightily today.  Every muscle and joint in my body is sore...I can hardly move. Yesterday I decided I'd engage the enemy and renew my seemingly eternal struggle for woodlot supremacy against that infernal invasive, garlic mustard.  After two summers and one spring of fighting a rampant garlic mustard invasion in my backyard, I feel like I'm finally starting to win.

It was relatively warm and the ground was soft due to a recent rain...a perfect time to weed.  I like early spring weeding because the bugs and spiders aren't out in full force yet.  (Nothing creepier than sticking your hand in the crevice of some rotting wood to get a stray weed.  You just KNOW your fingers aren't alone in there.)  Also the mosquitoes aren't out yet so it's actually pleasant to be outside.

Despite reducing the garlic mustard's overall numbers and managing to retake some of the yard, it's still pretty ugly out there.  So, after an initial rush of gut-wrenching panic,  I calmed down and decided to just pick a spot and start pulling.  (I don't want to use herbicide because the garlic mustard is intermingled with native plants I want to keep.)   

This is what Motherwort looks like in April-
when the DNR said it's invasive, they meant it. 
I let one plant go to seed last year
because I thought it was Common Mallow 
and now its EVERYWHERE!

I worked all day (not even stopping for lunch) and was thrilled to see that I only filled one garbage bag of mature plants.  (I also pulled any motherwort and brambles I found but those went into the compost pile) Last spring it was five bags for the same section of yard.  (I'm a big believer in composting, but in the case of garlic mustard I burn it or put it out for the landfill even if it hasn't flowered.  GM is allelopathic and affects soil microorganisms, which wrecks the soil. One study found its negative effects lasted for at least 2 years after it was removed.)




Here is a medium-sized garlic mustard plant (leavs and root). 
They can get MUCH bigger and can flower with only a couple of leaves on them. 
If you look hard you can see all the garlic mustard seedlings around it.

  Unfortunately, I also saw thousands of healthy green sprouts with purple stems everywhere.  EVERYWHERE!  Garlic Mustard seeds can stay alive and dormant in the soil for several years.  So even though I worked tirelessly last year to make sure no GM seeded, there are still plenty of existing seeds in the seed bank.  I plan to hoe down those little guys tomorrow when I'm not so sore.  I was also thinking of trying some GM sprouts in my salad; after all they were originally a food crop.

I also had to stop and think for a moment; GM is a biennial and dies after its second year, so how did I have so many fully mature plants this spring?  Did I really miss that many during my GM-pulling campaigns?  If you don't pull them at the right time (just before they flower) and don't get all the roots, they regrow.  I'm wondering if they are like a biennial salvia I used to grow.  As long as you didn't let it flower and set seed, it acted like a perennial and I had the same plants come back year after year.  Maybe this explains the very fat and healthy GM I found yesterday.  Either that or I'm a sloppy weeder.

Can't wait to see this Hellebore flower

So, anyhow, the battle against GM has started anew and I'm hoping I have the physical prowess to finish the fight.  I'll take this rainy day as a rest day and plan my attack for tomorrow.  Besides, I have some other things to think about.  Like, why were there two wood ducks sitting in a tree in our back yard this morning?  We aren't that close to water. 

How did I manage to plant most of my shrubs in the front yard right on the utility line?  Why didn't I call Digger's Hotline before I planted them?

Also, one of the hellebores I planted last year has some flower buds on it.  When will it flower? I'm pretty excited; I've never seen a hellebore in flower before (except in magazines). 

And, there's new activity in a burrow that we found in our yard last year.  I saw something big out of the corner of my eyes zip into it the other day.  I was pretty sure it was a groundhog (I saw some cream-colored fur) but yesterday I smelled skunk near it.  I hope it's a skunk.  Woodchucks are bad business when it comes to gardening.

Why the Crabapple Had To Go

OK, I guess if you've been reading my posts you'd think that instead of loving plants I'm a tree-killing maniac, running around my yard searching for my next victim.  Perhaps that lightning-damaged hackberry or that ugly lopsided box elder by the street?

How does a tree get such a weird tri-forked shape? 
It looks like it lost its main leader when it was young
or maybe someone topped it on purpose.

So, here's why that crabapple in our front yard had to go, despite its beautiful pink floral display in the spring.  First, I'm a big believer in growing plants that want to live and have some disease and/or pest resistance.  Our arborist told us that particular crabtree was a cultivar that is known for picking up diseases and pests as fast as it can.  Unless I felt like spraying it every year, it would always have problems.  Second, it had really bad branching and so was quite an ugly silhouette in the winter, not to mention it made for a weak trunk, which isn't good in a state with wild, wild weather.  Lastly, it was in a weird location, sort of by itself on the edge of the lawn, and was shading out trees and shrubs in more appropriate sites.

I have cedars all over my yard so if I ever plant another crabapple, it'll have to be one of the rust-resistant varieties.  Luckily there are lots of lovely new cultivars available.

Sad Cedar

We have a decent-sized eastern red cedar in our front yard.  It holds down an island bed and is beloved by the neighborhood birds.  Each fall, a flock of cedar waxwings clears it of its many berries in one to two days.  Their cricket-like chirps are really loud when they are massed together and their acrobatics are fun to watch as they hang upside-down to get every last blue berry.  I've seen mice, cardinals and chickadees in its branches. 

I wouldn't have planted it myself, though, if I was the original homeowner.  And I suspect the original homeowner didn't plant it either.  The arborist told me that cedars take a long time to grow and that this one has some years on it.

Eastern red cedars are on the Wisconsin DNR's invasive plant list as they can form groves in open fields and prairies.  They are suspectible to fire as they contain a lot of resin.  And they are a host for Apple-Cedar Rust.  In fact, when we first moved in, I noticed a highly rust-susceptible crabapple was planted right next to the cedar.  I searched the cedar for signs of rust and sure enough, there were dried rusty orange pods throughout its branches.  Our arborist told us the crabapple was a cultivar notorious for its many diseases so we took it down instead of the cedar.  (Which was too bad since it had such pretty pink flowers in the spring.)  Finally, one of its most annoying traits is its brittle branches.  Snow has no problem snapping off even large limbs.

I couldn't get a good shot of the
gap from the crushed branch

We took off some lower branches so average-height and short people could walk to the front door along our sidewalk without getting smacked in the head.  Those taller folks still might get a mouthful of foliage if they aren't careful. 

I figured that there wouldn't be any more issues with this tree but I was wrong.  This past winter, wet snow crushed one of its bigger branches.  It's located mid-way up the trunk so taking it out will leave a large ugly gap.   The branch is still alive despite a good mashing so I hesitate to go that route.  I haven't got a quote from our arborist yet on having it anchored.  What do you think I should do? 

You can see how completely the big branch
was crushed and yet it is just as green as its neighbors

My Spruce Dilemma

We used to camp every summer at Hartman Creek State Park near Waupaca, WI.  I would walk for hours in the huge stands of pine planted there years ago.  The floor was covered in needles and almost nothing grew under those trees.  Since they were planted in long neat rows it gave it a weird Alice-In-Wonderland feel to those strangely quiet woods.  I've been charmed by evergreens ever since.

So, when we bought our place, I was thrilled that it had a bunch of tall spruce hiding the house from the street.   There were pendulous Norway Spruce, White Spruce (aka Green Spruce) and Blue Spruce all grouped together along with some deciduous trees and Eastern Red Cedars.

It wasn't long though before I noticed that some of the trees looked pretty sickly and there were a bunch of dead branches where the trees had shaded each other out.  That fall I noticed needles on all the spruces except the Norway turning brown and dropping.  An arborist confirmed rhizosphaera, a chronic fungal needle cast disease that infects the trees in spring but doesn't kill off the needles until fall. 

Turns out my spruce are highly stressed.  They don't like heavy clay soil.  (Oops, that's what we've got.)  They like acidic soil. (Ours is about as alkaline as you can get.)  They don't handle drought well (There's always drought in Wisconsin in the summer.)  And, finally, they were improperly spaced when first planted, so not only are they stressed but will always have crowded roots and barely enough foliage.  My arborist said he doesn't like spruce because they get ugly and diseased as they age.  He recommended I clear cut them and replace them with something else,  like fir or pine.

I was horrified.  It was one of the features of our yard that I really thought was cool.  Trying to think of an alternative, I suggested maybe he could thin them to just a few trees but because they were spaced so close together, there were too many bare spots and they would look even worse.  It wasn't much of an option.  As for taking them all out, I really didn't want to do it.  The trees are a hot spot for birds (like my favs, the chickadees) and squirrels.  I know there are red squirrels nesting in them.  And, I really do like how they shield the house and yard from the street. 

Dead branches were removed from the ground to 10-15' up the trunks.

So, I decided to just have the arborist clear out the dead branches, which turned out to be a miserable job.  All that afternoon I had two young guys up in the trees, yelping in pain as they got poked hard by sharp dead tree branches.  They tried not to take any branches that were still alive, even if there were bare patches above them so the trees still look a bit ratty, but definitely better than before their trim. 

As for the needlecast disease, I put a layer of leaves and bark mulch under the trees last spring.  I plan to put another thick layer of compost and mulch under them this spring, along with some soil acidifier granules.  The trees didn't lose their needles like they did the year before.  I suspect that it was mostly due to our weirdly dry spring weather but maybe spreading that layer of organic matter under the trees helped too. 

So, that's my spruce dilemma.  I really should take them all out and start over fresh but I'm going to put it off for now and let some of the younger spruce and other evergreens in my yard grow up some so they can provide food and shelter to the birds/squirrels.  I may also thin them out a bit, even if the result isn't very pretty.  What do you think I should do?