Morels Found!

I cleared one tiny section of the hill-
still alot of garlic mustard to kill

Yikes, it's been a hectic month around here!  Excitement!  Exasperation!  Extreme muscle fatigue!  With each day that I accomplish something in the yard, I feel a bit less stressed and panicky but there's still SO MUCH to do!  

I continue my battle with garlic mustard.  By this time last year I had my yard totally cleared of flowering GM. Due to all the rainy days in April this spring I am barely getting started.  This past Sunday my neighbor came out and helped and having that second pair of hands really helps.  We were both excited to see how much our Mayapple patches have expanded.  It's amazing what a difference clearing out weeds has for the native plants.  We also found morel mushrooms.  Turns out my neighbor didn't know there are similar looking mushrooms that are poisonous (false morels) but the ones we found were the real deal: the right kind of cap and pitted texture, and hollow on the inside.  Yay! 

Yesterday I took a break from the GM and trimmed dead branches from the cedar out front, put more soil on my asparagus trenches (oh, their little thin stems are so cute!), weeded dandelions out of my little front lawn and then mowed and fertilized it with corn gluten.  If this stuff does what it says it does, I'm in heaven.  An organic nitrogen source that also kills any weed seeds that dare germinate in its presence?  Wow!  It's a good thing too because the dandelions are out in full force this week.

Amber Queen Epimedium

Yes, I ran the range of emotions yesterday.  Happiness (when I found my Amber Queen epimedium in bloom for the first time.  Fear (when I accidentally knocked over a metal trellis I had pulled out of the shed and it whacked me hard on my face (I haven't looked yet but I'm hoping I don't have a black eye.))  Frustration (when I found that those naughty chipmunks had dug out every melon, squash and cuke seed I had planted out in containers on my deck. A 2nd-story deck!  Seriously?)

I was also embarrassed.  A couple of my kids brought home pine tree seedlings from school for, I don't know, Mother's Day or Earth Day or something.  They were pretty much dead, I think, but about a week ago I dutifully spent a morning ripping out buckthorn so I could plant them.   Some of the buckthorn I just threw back into the woods but the bigger ones I left out in the ditch by the side of the road for "processing" at a later date.  Turns out I missed the email about yesterday being our city-wide brush pickup day.  I'm sure the city workers were not happy as they dug through the mess of thorny branches sticking out every-which-way.  Sorry, city workers!  That wasn't my brush for pickup!  Still, they did get it removed so one less job to do for me.  Thanks, city workers!  I promise to pile my brush more carefully in the future, just in case you stop by to grab it.

Anyhow, since I'm still experimenting with what plants will survive in my yard, most of my perennials are new to me and a bunch of them are in bloom now.  I'm really digging native Creeping Jacob's Ladder with its cute little blue blooms but despite reports of deer resistance, something decided to eat one down to the ground.  Add that to the spray list!  

Yum!  Morels!

Oh, and I doubt I'll add it to the spray list but something's been working over some Sweet Cicely.  That's also a native and it has a distinctive anise (licorice) smell when the leaves are messed with.  That's why I find it surprising that deer would munch on it; I thought they don't like smelly foliage.  I had to send this particular plant in for identification at the UW extension but I like its ferny leaves.  I don't, however, like it's long spiky seedheads and I noticed it seeds itself liberally.  Very liberally.  Still, it was a native plant that I didn't have to buy and I've never have to water, so it works for me.

Speaking of native plants, we went looking for morels at our local state park and I noticed that I have many of the same woodland plants in my yard.  One thing I don't have is Large-flowered Bellwort (uvularia grandiflora) which was blooming all over the place at the park.  It's got a wilty look to it that I'm not sure I find attractive but I've added it to my to-get list for next season.

My Frohnleiten epimedium is also blooming and it's flowers are so different from Amber Queen it's hard to believe they are the same type of plant.  Frohnleiten has sunny yellow shooting-star-type flowers and its foliage is glossy green whereas Amber Queen has these funky jester-hat-shaped flowers and red-mottled foliage.    So far, nothing has eaten either so they are both on my for-keeps list.

Frohnleiten Epimedium

Also blooming for the first time is my "Little Lanterns" columbine.  It's like our native columbine but in miniature.  I picked off the blooms because the plant itself is still so tiny.  Turns out there's sweet nectar in their blooms too.  When I was a kid I'd pick columbine blooms and suck out the nectar.  I can see why hummingbirds like them.

Nothing touches the Mayapple, Wild Ginger or Sweet Woodruff and the ferns haven't been messed with either.  Gotta love that!   I noticed there wasn't any Wild Ginger or Sweet Woodruff in the state park.  They prefer a more acidic soil than what our area has.  They seem to be doing fine though and it's been a couple of years now.



Creeping Jacob's Ladder

Yesterday I put out my tomato and pepper plants and my tropicals so of course we had a frost warning last night.  It's a good thing my spouse turned on the news.  11 pm and we were out in the back yard, putting blankets on everything tender.  I need to get a light out there.  Stumbling over things in the dark is not much fun.

Anyhow, today I'm going back to the garlic mustard weeding.  And maybe moving mulch.  (Did I tell you my mulch story?  Did I ever mention that Murphy's Law is a force alive and well in my life?  I ordered 6 yards of mulch from the city and specified on the form that I didn't want it where I had it delivered last year.  I even drew a map of the new location where I wanted it dumped.  Later, I got a phone call verifying that I wanted the location changed.  The day the mulch was to be delivered, I got another phone call to confirm that I wanted it dumped in a new location.  So, I'm out back clinging to my hillside so I don't fall to my death as I weed GM and I hear a truck.  Hmmm....wonder if that's my mulch delivery?   Then I realize that the truck sounds were coming from the wrong side of the house.  Noooooo!!!!   I rush as fast as someone clinging to a steep hillside can rush to the front to find my six loads of mulch dumped smack dab in the middle of our 2nd driveway, exactly where I told them NOT to dump it.  I have one week, maybe two to get it all moved before my patio contractor needs to use that driveway.  I can NOT win!  Ever!)



Wild Ginger foliage

 I found another tag for a long-gone perennial.  It has me worried.  I keep finding tags in the dirt for perennial plants but no plants.  I wonder why they are gone.  Was it the dang wildlife?  Was it the clay soil?  Did the previous owners not realize that liberal applications of mulch on a yearly basis is a must-have soil conditioner when you've got clay soil?  I wish I knew why they focused on annuals and why so many perennials are MIA.
Still, today the sun is shining (we haven't seen that too much this spring) and I've got a bird with an orange belly singing a beautiful song in the trees.  Perhaps a baltimore oriole?   I've got a cup of hot chai in my grip and a tasty peach muffin in front of me.  Have a happy day, ok?




Going After Gooseneck Loosestrife

I've already blogged about my front yard's foundation planting; it was very unattractive because it was overgrown and some of the nicer plants were getting muscled out by others that don't hold much charm for me.

One of those bullies is gooseneck loosestrife. Now, don't get me wrong. Overall, I like this plant. I like its unique white flowerheads and it does a good job of smothering weeds. Also I like its subtle fall foliage color. However, the previous owners had this planted by the front entrance in full sun and since I don't do much supplemental watering, by mid summer it was a big patch of ugly and diseased foliage. GL likes moisture.

I didn't want to take it out but since it swallows up any neighboring plants I also didn't want it in any of my perennial borders either. So, even though I was totally dreading doing it, I decided to rip it out. I also have a patch of it in a different area where it is controlled by a large spruce so I've consoled myself that it's not like I am totally giving up on this plant.

The easiest way to clear out the patch would have been to smother it or spray it but I needed the space ASAP for an overabundance of strawberry plants I had ordered in a moment of cabin fever madness. That meant pulling it all out, which basically meant removing the top 6-8" of soil in the bed. That's because the roots of gooseneck loosestrife form a dense patch of salmon-pink fleshy underground shoots and white fibrous feeder roots.

It took me all day but I managed to clear enough space to put in my strawberries before the rain started. In fact I got done early enough to transplant some perennials, rake and fertilize the front lawn (I sprinkled Garden Supply Company's Yum Yum Mix and compost on the grass) and I also got some peas, lettuce and spinach seeds planted (I know, I know, I should have done that weeks ago).

As I was forking wood mulch I was musing on how much easier that job is when you have a pitchfork versus using a shovel. Later, I realized as I was winding twine around some poles to make a pea fence that I was enjoying myself. It was actually fun to try and figure out how to get the twine to do what I wanted without cutting it. I never noticed before that I like jury-rigging things.

It's important to notice the small things that bring a person happiness, right? Maybe it's all these little bits of happiness that makes gardening so enjoyable.

As I surveyed my day's work I noticed that the strawberries I put in several days ago have really taken off; I was surprised to see they leafed out so quickly. I guess all the rain we've been getting is to their liking. So tonight I've got a sore back and sore hands but I'm happy that I was able to get so much done and that my newest batch of strawberry plants will get a good soaking.

I thought they were dead but they live!



Surprise!  Rue Anemone popping up among the oak leaves. 

 Sigh...Another yucky day. My frustration is building as day after day goes by and I cannot weed...Sigh again. Yet even now my yard still holds surprises.

Last year a bunch of plants I had planted in the spring had disappeared by fall. Did the wildlife get them despite my spraying Deer Off on them every month or so? Did they not like my soil? Did I not water enough or too much?

I had forgotten that many native woodland plants rise up like Lazarus in the spring and then go dormant to avoid all that drought and heavy shade found in a woods in summer.

So, I was practically giddy when I took a stroll between icy rain showers and found that my virginia bluebells (thanks Tana!), blue cohosh, rue anemone, "gold heart" bleeding heart, columbine and wild geraniums have started making their appearance. Yay! (The blue cohosh and rue anemone in particular were surprises; I was sure they bit the dust last summer. )

Still no sign of some plants that struggled last year due to my neglect but I may yet be surprised. I had bought a clay-tolerant butterflyweed (the regular dry soil butterflyweed is one of my all-time favorite plants; in my previous garden I had both the native orange and the cultivated yellow type). I wanted to see if it could survive in my heavy clay front yard and I chalked it up for dead as I didn't see any activity until one day in mid-September when I started weeding the area that is hopefully going to be my itty-bitty prairie garden and found it alive and well. I have no idea when it started to grow but it had to have been mid June at least. Same thing with one of its relatives, a woodland plant called Purple Milkweed (no, not the kind that is considered a noxious weed). It also took forever for that one to getting going.



Look who's peeking up through the snow?  It's a blue cohosh plant

 I came back in chastened by these little plantlings' desire to live and have resolved not to go nuts at the Flower Factory in Stoughton this year but concentrate on the plants already here. (Of course, last year my husband almost fainted when he saw the receipt for FF when I got a little crazy. There's another reason to keep my head this year.)

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.