My Weeds Are Very Sorry

Four Years of Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 12:11:00 +0000

I started this blog four years ago today.

It has been a rewarding diversion, and it has brought me commenters and friends from all over the world.

When I started I was still a relatively new gardener, just beginning to realize I had something to show in pictures and something to share in observations. What fun it has been!

But after 490 posts, I'm ready to move on. When I visit a garden or walk in my own, I am constantly on alert for blog-worthy photos or thinking of what I could say about what I am seeing. I think it's time to just go out and enjoy.

It's time to sign off this blog.

I'll continue blogging on my journal, which is an online diary I have kept for these four years as well. It is just mundane garden tasks, weather reports, complaints, and lots of random ideas for the garden as I think of them. If you still want to see photos of my garden and what I'm doing in it, it's on one of the tabs at the top of this blog.

If you just found My Weeds Are Very Sorry, please visit the archives and read some old posts.

If you are one of my constant and loyal readers, I thank you so much --- you have been my audience and my outlet for four rich and rewarding years.

My weeds are still perpetually remorseful and they will always misbehave. But I'm ready to enjoy it more and write about it less.

January Mornings

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Sun, 26 Jan 2014 12:22:00 +0000

One morning this winter the coyotes came to visit. It was a family, a mother and four pups. Jim wanted to get all five in a shot, but they wouldn't pose together. The pups tumbled and played and they all took turns stalking and hunting in the pines at the edge of our yard.

One morning this winter I got up early enough to see the sun rise over the tree line. Through the window I watched the frosted leaves of a Dawn viburnum, very aptly named, greet the sun.

One morning this winter the sun was already up when I opened the bedroom door. The sun, seeking enlightenment, was examining the books on the bookshelf.

One morning I noticed that there will be flowers on the magnolia next spring. The fat fuzzy buds, oblivious to snow and polar vortex temperatures, promise it.

I'll be ready.

Luxe

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 13:19:00 +0000

Plants that have rich mahogany tones always draw my attention. I like shades of deep cordovan, plummy wine, and tawny cognac.

I am obviously supposed to be living a different life, drinking expensive liqueurs and wearing fine leather accessories while sitting on luxe furniture.

I noticed this when I was going over the photographs Jim took on several garden visits this past summer. The shots I asked him to take were often of plants that had deep coloring.

Like this Hydrangea serrata 'Preziosa" that we saw at Whiteflower Farm in Litchfield, Connecticut (yes the same Whiteflower Farm nursery that sends out the glossy catalog). It was fall, and the red-wine blooming hydrangea was next to a golden amsonia hubrichtii and the combination was extravagantly rich.

I have Hydrangea 'Preziosa' in my garden, but it is small, has never bloomed, and is barely hanging on. I moved it, of course, and in the process I kind of divided it in half (which you really can't do with a woody shrub) and now I have two barely surviving hydrangeas. Will they ever look like this?

At Wave Hill Garden in the Bronx, New York City, a magnolia with leaves backed in velvety mahogany brown caught my attention. It is Magnolia grandiflora 'Bracken's Brown Beauty', and it is a beauty. It's the hardiest of the southern magnolias.

It's the congac-colored leather-looking underside of the leaves that gives it such a rich look.

Mukdenia rossi 'Crimson Fans' is a red tinged glossy ground cover. I saw this at Cornell Plantations in Ithaca, New York. I was immediately drawn to the richly tipped leaves. The leaves are quite large, the plant mounds over in cascading fans, and the painted edges of the foliage shine jewel-like.

I have several small mukdenias that I planted last year, but of course mine are puny and look like nothing so elegant yet. But those wine tipped fans intrigue me, and someday I will have them.

I grew red tinged clover in a pot last year, because I liked the soft dark splashes on its leaves. This is real clover, Trifolium repans, complete with little white pom pom blooms.

Even humble clover looks luxe dressed in a rich amaranthine.

Towering Nuisance

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 21:33:00 +0000

Eastern Cottonwood trees (Populus deltoides) grow all around us in areas that were disturbed by the builders.

They are fast growing, messy, weak wooded trees that do not live very long, but they grow to a huge size in a short time. Then they die, and start showering branches and debris all over.

In June the female trees blow white cotton fluff all over the neighborhood where it accumulates just like snow in corners of the patio and around plants in the garden.

Hundreds of little cottonwood seedlings must be weeded out of my gardens and out of my containers where they land and quickly sprout.

The meadow has little cottonwood saplings popping up all over.

When we moved into our new home almost 10 years ago, there was a cottonwood sapling on the back hill that was my height. It was just a five and a half foot thing, leaning over on the steep hillside.

I could easily have cut it down then by hand with my pruning saw, and I considered doing that many times, but I didn't do it.

I regret that now.

Last summer I looked up and the cottonwood had suddenly achieved an ominous presence. It towered over everything in my yard, and it had outgrown the maples and oaks near it on the hill.

It is still a young tree, narrow and upright. It will soon spread outward and dominate my entire garden even more.

As skinny as this cottonwood looks, it is too tall now for me to cut it down, and the trunk is too big for any hand saw. I need to pay a tree removal service to come in this winter and take it down.

Why didn't I cut this down when I could have a few years ago?

The mother of this cottonwood sapling was a big old thing that stood at the top of the ridge, just above where the skinny one is growing. It was dead as a hammer when we moved in, and just stood there, dropping branches and self destructing when the wind blew.

When the trees around it leafed out and the grass greened up, the dead cottonwood just looked gloomy and it cast a pall over the whole scene. Old snags in the forest, or even in a woodsy garden, can be structural and interesting (and provide perching and rest for birds) but this cottonwood was too much looming deadwood at the top of the ridge.

A road runs along this ridge, and the dead tree was on town property at the edge of the road, so when it started dropping limbs on passing cars, the town came and took it down.

They left cut stumps by the roadside where they rotted all winter. One spring I managed to roll one onto its side, get it started rumbling down the hill and chased it to the bottom, where, on hands and knees, I rolled it over and over to a spot in my garden.

The stump was beautifully adorned with turkey tail fungus, which made it more a work of art than a functional side table in the gravel garden.

The turkey tails eventually dried out in the sun, and now I do use the cottonwood stump as a side table, so some good came of this big, messy, dead tree.

I don't know if I'll get anything useful when the young cottonwood sapling is cut down this winter. Maybe some slender logs to burn in the fire pit.

I wish I had acted earlier to remove the sapling before it suddenly became such a big nuisance towering over everything.

Queen Z

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Sun, 12 Jan 2014 13:05:00 +0000

I have written about Zenobia pulverulenta before, but she is growing on me more and more each season.

It gets its botanical name and its common name, Dusty Zenobia, from the fact that the leaves are dusted with a silvery film.

The "Zenobia" part is horticultural fluff; that name came from a time when botanists named plants after Greek gods or random figures of antiquity. It was a fad for a while.

When this lovely little shrub, native to the southeastern US, was first named, Linnaeus put it into the andromeda family. There were hundreds of plants classified in the andromeda family -- so many look so similar -- and the class got unwieldy.

Later, in 1834, a Scots botanist, David Don, started taking apart the huge andromeda family of plants and creating new divisions, and he separated this one into its own class. Why he named it after an ancient queen in the mideast is a mystery.

Queen Zenobia was a third century queen of Syria, who staged a revolt against Rome and conquered Egypt and, well, you can read about her here. I'd rather get back to the horticultural queen Zenobia.

Here you can see the powdery gray blue coating, which is what the "pulverulenta" part of her name means: powdery:

New leaves emerge delicately tinged in red. Everything about this plant is refined, so I can see why a queenly label seemed appropriate. Although the real queen Zenobia was a rebel and a conqueror and not at all delicate in her dealings.

She holds her leaves in winter and looks great against snow. Some years the leaves turn a rich russet and stay through the winter, other years they remain green. I have always liked the unusual leaves close up, and the tiny white blueberry-bell blossoms in spring.

But this year I saw that the little flowers turn to silver berries, and I really like that. I don't know why, but I had not noticed that before, or maybe this is the first year it set fruit.

I'm also noticing that the whole plant shines from a distance, making a nice light contrast in a border that draws the eye.

I am seeing for the first time that it develops a graceful loose form which I like. This one is under a viburnum that I have limbed up, and a groundcover persicaria with pink wands weaves around and through it.

I have two other zenobias under a birch tree. Their woodsy look goes well under trees. In fall the blue powdery cast is not as noticeable, and the plant glows with subtle copper tints.

Mine are all 'Woodlanders Blue', which has a lighter glaucus leaf color. The species is a medium green, not as dusty looking. I got mine from Woodlanders Garden, which introduced the blue-leaved cultivar. They are a mail order nursery in South Carolina that I like -- the plants from them are big and beautiful and well packaged.

(Be careful in searching for them -- it is Woodlanders dot net. Woodlanders dot com is something else entirely.)

I am discovering new reasons to like Dusty Zenobia. It is growing on me each season, and I think of her as royalty in my humble garden. Queen Z.

James Golden also admires this plant and did a great post on growing zenobia in wet clay on his blog View From Federal Twist.

Bury My Heart

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 15:25:00 +0000

The winter weather has been wild in the upper US, with severe cold one day, and warm, wet fog the next. We haven't had as sharply bitter temperatures as further north, but I did wake up to minus 7 F (-21 C) degrees the other morning and it was cold.

In those temperatures the snow crunches and groans loudly when you walk or drive on it. It's that loud, complaining sound that only very frigid snow makes underfoot.

The snow from the latest storm was cold and dry but it stuck to the trees in a way that looks like whipped cream carefully swirled on the branches.

It looks so white and so creamy and so artfully dolloped on everything.

The big spruces have dots of cream on the tips of their branches, and the denser dwarf Alberta spruces are positively coated.

It kind of looks like the soft serve machine at Dairy Queen malfunctioned.

There were tracks all around. I wonder how the wildlife stays warm on nights when the temperatures are below zero.

All of this pretty ice cream is being washed away today in warm rain. Tomorrow we go back to very frigid weather. I can't keep up with the wild swings.

The new year has started not just with crazy weather, but with an unhappy development here. The heart shaped stone in my dry stacked wall has fallen out.

It was there on New Year's Eve. I know because our guests that night admired it and I told them all about building a stone wall this summer with no skill and sore knees.

On New Year's Day it was lying on the pavers. Just plopped out.

Then the snow came, and I had not yet picked it up or done anything with it, so my heart is now lying on the ground under the snow, freezing.

I had used stone glue to fix it upright in the wobbly wall, but the wild weather -- the freezing and thawing and refreezing -- used its frigid black arts to expel my stone heart and then bury it.

This is just too weird.

With the bitter weather and the oddly unsettling sight of that hole in the rock wall, it is a good time to stay inside. Which I may do for the rest of the winter.

Permissions and Wishes

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 18:48:00 +0000

Back in November, C.L. Fornari wrote a post on her blog Whole Life Gardening that made me smile. It's about persimmons and permission and mixing them up and the idea of a Permission Tree. Go read it now, and then you can come back here and I'll tell you why I loved it so.

Did you read it? Good.

I enjoyed her post at first because I thought it really was about persimmon trees.

I like to read about trees that I grow, and I have planted three persimmon trees in the meadow behind my house. They are Diospyros virginiana, a native tree that produces interesting orange fruits. My trees are still so little that all I can do is read about others and dream.

That lighted yellow tree in the center distance on the hillside is a young persimmon
that I brought home from Kentucky in my carryon luggage, stuffed under the airline seat.

I liked her post because when she pictured a possible Permission Tree, she thought of the real Wishing Tree at Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

I have seen that tree, festooned with the wishes of many children. Here it was the day we visited:

And I laughed reading her post because I too confused the words persimmon and permission. The brain is only so nimble and mine is aging.

But her idea of a Permission Tree captured my imagination. Couldn't we all use one?

I like how C.L. describes a wise old tree that would listen to us, counsel us, and dispense or withhold permission to do the things we are thinking about doing. How valuable that could be.

And of course the Permission Tree has to be a persimmon.

Will mine ever be big enough to do the job?

"You want to do what?"

Guests Are Expected

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 13:17:00 +0000

We are expecting guests to visit this winter, as they do every year. Here are a few that came last year. I hope they make a return visit -- we're ready for them!

The bobcat as seen through our dining room window. The fresh kill was a rabbit. A very large one.

This wild cat, Lynx rufus, is supposed to be reclusive, hunting at dusk and dawn. But ours visits in the daytime, feeds at all hours, and is not bothered by being so near houses. The pictures are fuzzy because they were taken through the window, and Jim did zoom in. But the bobcat was no more than 15 or 20 feet away, in the tall grass at the edge of the yard.

A parade of turkeys. They are God's goofiest creatures. They're just dorky in a regal kind of way. They always march along the edge of the yard, half in the tall grass and half out in the open, daring anyone wild or human to mess with them.

The coyote does not visit very often, but we know they are around. The yipping and howls outside are eerie in the middle of a dark winter's night.

This picture was taken with the zoom; the coyote is not as willing as the bobcat to come into the yard, and prefers the half-woods behind our house. There is no mistaking the coyote for a dog -- he is big.

I thought all canines were exclusively meat eaters, but this coyote visits a nearby crabapple and eats the fallen fruit, leaping backwards each time he grabs one off the ground, as if he just killed it. We spent over an hour one afternoon watching him stalk fruit.

The red tailed hawk is a constant visitor in my garden, all year long. We often hear the high pitched "screeeee" above, and look up to see it. Birdsong all over the yard goes suddenly quiet.

Some visitors are a little greedy, and too many come at once. But all are welcome.

The black bear might be by this winter. I went to an education class on black bears at our local library, and learned that around here they will awaken from hibernation at various times in winter and wander about, then return to hibernating.

I have not seen the one that cruises our area, but neighbors have called to say it was in our yard, or that they encountered one on the way to the mailbox. Some visitors are a little more intimidating than others.

Of course the white tailed deer herds are always here. I try to be open minded about them, and accept them as I do all the other guests, but they do so much damage to my plants that I really can't tolerate them in my garden.

They are the unwanted party guests who always show up, eat too much, and won't go home.

Everybody else is welcome to come and visit in small groups or singly.

A Wish for your Holiday

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Tue, 24 Dec 2013 13:16:00 +0000

Going West For A While

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 13:04:00 +0000

So Far So Good

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Sat, 14 Dec 2013 19:04:00 +0000

So far this season the stacked stone wall I built so laboriously last summer has not fallen down, despite freezing nights and thawing days.

But the plow has not come up the driveway yet to bury it, and a long winter of expanding ice and heaving soil is still ahead of us.

But so far so good. It even looks nice in the snow.

Because Snow

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 13:30:00 +0000

I am going to repost something from 2010 today. Because it is the holiday season and I am baking cookies, and it is snowing outside right now.

December 12, 2010
Christmas does not smell like pine needles or balsam fir to me. The season is not evoked by cinnamon or cloves or peppermint. All those are wonderful scents, but the one Christmas aroma that makes me shiver with pleasure is the smell of a Mediterranean evergreen shrub's seeds: Pimpinella anisum.

Anise (not to be confused with star anise, which is Illicium) is a plant that looks to me a little like Queen Anne's Lace.

The seeds are used for herbal remedies and flavoring. And it's that flavoring, the anise extract, that brings Christmas home to me the minute I smell it.
My mother made anise Christmas cookies every year and I make them now. They were not elaborate pressed cookies or springerles or the Italian anise cookies you can find. They were really just an iced sugar cookie with anise extract added, cut into Christmas shapes. I love them.

Descriptions of anise flavor always say it tastes like licorice or tarragon, but it really doesn't. It has a whiff of licorice, but it is much, much lighter, almost citrusy or even minty. It is very refreshing.

Still, it's a taste that is not to everyone's liking.

'Purple Haze' agastache

Santa likes these cookies, and I love them so much I like to have a little anise in my garden. But I can't grow Pimpinella in my zone 5 garden. I do grow Anise Hyssop, or Agastache, which has an anise scent to its foliage when you touch it.

Agastache is a great plant, with tall spikes of blooms all summer long that bees love. Mine is a deep blue called 'Purple Haze' and it anchors the back of my garden with its tall frothy spikes. It's one of those workhorse drought tolerant plants that just goes all summer with no care.

There are other plants with anise scened leaves. The most notable is Illicium floridanum, called star anise or purple anise, which is a beautiful dense evergreen shrub with glossy leathery leaves. The leaves emit a fragrance of anise when crushed.

I'd love to grow it, but there are a couple reasons I won't. It is not hardy here, although I could put it in a container and bring it onto the porch over winter.

Purple Anise, Illicium floridanum

The other reason: it has stinky flowers. The aroma is consistently described as smelling like fish. How can a plant with leaves that carry the essential fragrance of Christmas for me have unpleasant flowers? Who thought up that combination? Eeeeww.

Illicium floridanum bloom

Salvia guaranitica, Black and Blue Sage, is called Anise Sage. I grow it, and it's a beautiful large sage with vibrant deep blue flowers. But the leaves do not smell like anise. When you crush them you get an interesting sharp scent, but it's not anise.

There is an anise scented goldenrod, Solidago odora, a native plant that is supposed to have leaves that smell like anise when they are crushed. I could try that.

There is also an anise scented basil I could grow in my garden . . . but wait, now we're getting confused. I mean, basil should smell like basil. I like basil and I like anise. I'm not sure what you gain by having one smell like the other.

In fact I'm not sure what I gain by trying to replicate such a specific and evocative memory of a smell in my garden.

While anise does come from the seeds of a plant, it's not the plant that carries the delight. It's the cookies. It's the season, it's childhood, my mother, and Santa. It's snow and it's good stuff baking.

I really don't need to grow anise scented plants in my garden --- I just need to make sure there is anise extract in my pantry. Mmmmm.

Uplift

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 12:53:00 +0000

I have been pruning the lower branches of some shrubs in an effort to create small, upright trees out of them, and the work has been very rewarding.

One is a hybrid witch hazel, Hamamelis x intermedia 'Diane'.

I am trying to love 'Diane' but it's hard. The spidery red flowers open in late winter, but they are miniscule and few and are completely obscured by brown desiccated leaves that hang on all winter.

Leaf persistence will diminish as the plant ages, from what I have read, so eventually, in years to come, the leaves will be off when the witch hazel blooms in February.

If only.

In summer Hamamelis 'Diane' is shapeless. The pleated green leaves are glossy and crisp and look nice enough, but the whole shrub was just a leafy blob.

So this fall the pruners were called for, the garden surgeon was prepped, and the lower branches were lifted up. I like the twisty, architectural shape of witch hazel 'Diane' much better now with bare branches below.

Imagine this as a small, spreading tree. Imagine those candelabra stems as thicker trunks, shapely and twisting. Imagine.

I also limbed up a viburnum. It's a Viburnum prunifolium, which wants to be a multi stemmed bush about 10 feet high. But with some pruning of the lower stems, they can be trees, and can reach 20 feet in height.

I started when the viburnum was a small shrub, and made cuts over three seasons. The trunks were twisted together and the cuts looked crude, and I thought I had butchered the whole thing.

But this fall I was happy with the way the bottom of this blackhaw viburnum is lifted up, exposing a few multiple curved trunks

There is a green plastic mesh tube around the stems, please ignore that. It's there to protect this shrub-becoming-a-tree from the deer. Just imagine this viburnum as a twenty foot tree, with elegant curving trunks and a wide crown of foliage, covered in flat white blooms in May.

The best I can do is show you a suggestion of what is to come -- the white viburnum blossoms were only at the bottom this spring because a frost got the upper blooms, but imagine how it will be. Imagine.

I am also limbing up another Viburnum prunifolium that is planted near the house, between the air conditioning units. An unfortunate placement.

It started as such a tiny thing in 2006, not even a foot high, but unlike the other blackhaw viburnum, it always had a single trunk, even as a tiny sapling.

And unlike the other blackhaw, it is stiffly branched, reaching out all over. I have kept the lower branches limbed up, and I like how tree-like it is becoming.

Another shrub that can be a small tree is Cornus mas, cornelian cherry dogwood. It is not naturally as tree-like as a flowering dogwood, but it is not suckering and thickety like redtwig dogwoods. Sort of in-between, it just seems to want to be a tree, so I'll help it.

I trimmed off some lower branches, but still need to do something with that rightmost stem jutting off to the side. A vee-shaped double trunk might be nice, but I'm thinking I should eliminate it. Maybe.

Imagine the dogwood all grown up and spreading, with a strong central trunk and those droopy leaves providing shade. And in early spring, before the leaves come out, it is covered in a yellow haze of flowers, looking for all the world like a forsythia, but standing upright.

To help you imagine that, here's a mature one in bloom, limbed up, but with three trunks. Maybe I should keep that angled stem on mine?

Another dogwood, Cornus racemosa, is the last of my pruning projects. This one you really will have to imagine -- I don't have much to show, since mine is little. I just planted a one-gallon container plant this fall.

It is called gray dogwood, and it can form big mounding thickets that cover some real estate. But trimmed and kept in check, they can be graceful trees.

Here is one just leafing out in spring at Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It takes some work to get this form. Gray dogwoods I have seen growing naturally are quite weedy and rangy, sending stems up all over.

But I am encouraged with the successes I have had so far pruning my other dogwood and the viburnums and witch hazel into small trees. I think I can keep the new gray dogwood gracefully pruned too.

There is something in this work that makes me feel like a sculptor. It's very uplifting.

Dinner Menu

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 22:34:00 +0000

Here is what is on the menu for Thanksgiving in my garden:

Winterberries (Ilex verticillata 'Red Sprite')
Everyone says the birds like these, but in my garden it is the deer who strip the berries off before I can enjoy seeing their festive red against the snow. They'll be gone by Christmas, but they make a fine Thanksgiving treat right now.

Chokeberries (Aronia arbutifolia 'Brilliantissima')
These are on offer for Thanksgiving, but nobody really likes them. The birds will not touch them until late winter, either because there is nothing else left then, or because it takes that long for these fruits to mellow and become tasty. They are not a favorite but they are on the menu.

Viburnum berries (Viburnum prunifolium)
There are only a few of these navy blue fruits. This young viburnum only had a few flowers last spring, the first year it bloomed. This picture was taken in late October when the leaves were still on. Now, with all the leaves down, there are actually only a few raisin-like berries left, so this will be a rare Thanksgiving treat for just a few birds.

Holly berries (Ilex x meserveae hybrid 'Blue Princess')
Several years ago I planted four blue holly shrubs and they were supposed to be a mix of male and female. But all four have dense crops of red berries, so all four are females. They are being pollinated by another type of holly nearby, either the winterberries in my garden, which seems unlikely, or some other holly in the neighborhood. Thanksgiving is a family holiday, so we won't fuss about paternity right now.

American holly berries (Ilex opaca)
This is a newly planted female holly tree, and I am thrilled to see berries. I did plant a companion male Ilex opaca nearby, but the little sapling had just three or flour blooms this June. But that was enough. This Thanksgiving a small quantity of American holly berries are on the menu.

Dogwood fruit (Cornus florida)
They look yummy and there are plenty for this holiday. This dogwood is a pink flowering variety and it has stunning fall color that starts out mahogany purple and becomes fiery red, so it's a visual treat in many seasons. The leaves are down now, but there are still some berries left for Thanksgiving.

Eastern Red Cedar berries (Juniperus virginiana)
The tiny blue fruits are so pretty, and quite blue when photographed in shade. The junipers grow at the far end of the meadow, out back where I can't see them easily, so I don't know if cedar waxwings have found them. I have not seen waxwings, but that doesn't mean they haven't been there. I hope so. They are invited guests for Thanksgiving.

Bayberry (Myrica pennsylvanica)
I did not realize bayberry is dioecious, like hollies. You need a male to pollinate the female shrub to set fruit. Apparently my bayberry is a male, because there have never been any waxy, aromatic gray berries. Alas. But I make up for it with another winterberry holly with delicious red berries right next to it. No one will starve. Although there will be no traditional handmade bayberry candles to decorate the Thanksgiving table.

No one will starve indeed. In addition to all the juicy berries, there are so many seedheads, with plenty of good things to eat on the black eyed Susans and many other perennials still standing.

Rose hips are plump and red, especially the hips on the redleaf rose, Rosa glauca, which are huge.

Cotoneaster has red berries and deep purple foliage. It is down at ground level, tucked in below a big spruce that offers protection for skittish feeders.

Two corneliancherry trees (Cornus mas) grow in my garden, but they are young and have not fruited yet. They are supposed to have big red berries that make a great jam, and I am eagerly waiting for that some year.

And I have three young native persimmons (Diospyros virginiana), which will someday produce orange globes that only a hard freeze will make edible. How I long to see those some year.

That would be excessive, wouldn't it? Already I have too much on the menu for a holiday feast for birds and rodents and deer and people.

How grateful I am for the utter abundance of my garden and the grace in my life.

Burnt Sugar

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 13:18:00 +0000

I learned something new recently. I learned katsura trees are aromatic even after all their leaves are down.

In early November I took a walk around the neighborhood one morning, and suddenly caught the unmistakable sweet smell of katsura trees, Cercidiphyllum japonicum.

In autumn they smell of vanilla or burnt sugar. It reminds me of angel food cake baking, or of being at a country fair in autumn, with cotton candy machines spinning out fluffy cones of stickiness that sweeten the air.

There was a katsura tree on the street next to us, and then two at the top of another street. The amazing thing was that in the early part of November, the leaves were all down. I did not even notice that there were katsuras nearby until I caught that fragrance, then looked around, and there I was, standing right near a bare and leafless tree.

I'm starting to be able to tell a katsura from the furrowed bark and stiff, twiggy shape, although it's hard without any heart shaped leaves to check. But the caramel scent was so unmistakable!

There were dried brown leaves at the foot of each tree. No leaves remained on the branches. Can it be that the aroma lingers after the leaves have fallen? Wow.

I thought it was the coloring of the leaves in fall that produced the sweet fragrance. But all three of the trees I saw on my walk were bare. They had lost all their leaves and what laid at the base of the trunks were just a few dried remnants, not a big pile of freshly fallen leaves.

The few dried leaves on the ground did not smell like anything; it was the air that smelled.

Jim didn't smell the fragrance at all, although he knows what I am talking about since he did get the wafting scent from a whole stand of katsuras in the parking lot at Cornell Plantations when we were there in October 2012.

A mature katsura can be a huge spreading thing. Young ones, like the trees I saw on my walk, are stiffly pyramidal, usually branched low to the ground, and kind of twiggy. Once the scent alerted me, I could tell by the shape what the tree was, even though it had no leaves.

Young katsura at Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge, Mass.

Young katsura at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass.

Mature katsura at Arnold Arboretum at Harvard.

Naturally, I have a katsura tree in my yard, planted for its shade (eventually), its pretty redbud-like leaves and its orange fall color. And of course for the promise of caramels in autumn. But my newly installed tree had no scent this year. It was just put in this September, so as a new transplant it is adjusting.

But how I want to smell that burnt sugar aroma while sitting on the porch some day.

It's November now and time to think of pumpkin pies and stuffing and turkeys. But for some reason I am dreaming of angel food cake. There is a mix in the pantry. I might ask Jim to make one, just so I can smell it baking.

Or I might go take a walk in the neighborhood for the same hint of burnt sugar with far fewer calories.

Liquid Gold

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 13:22:00 +0000

At this time of year the first rays of sun in the morning light up the magnolia tree outside the bedroom window as if the sun was pouring liquid gold on the branches. It happens just as I wake each morning, and it lasts about half an hour.

At first the sky lightens outside, and I can see a sunny day is ahead. I lie in bed watching the air brighten behind the still dark leaves of the sweetbay magnolia.

Then, all at once, a few leaves on one branch turn gold. They are not the topmost leaves. These few leaves part way down are gilded, lit from below.

Then, happy with the result, the sun drips golden light all down the single branch it has chosen.

Finally, after about 15 minutes, the entire top of the magnolia is bright, creating a stained glass window in the sunshine, and I know it is time to get up.

I enjoy the sweet bay magnolia outside the window in all seasons, but this only happens in November. The sun is at just the right angle to pour liquid gold down the branches at the exact time that I wake up.

This year the sweetbay magnolia has some nice fall color, which adds to the bright golden stained glass effect in morning. Magnolia virginiana doesn't always color, but this autumn the leaves are a rich butterscotch, brown and gold, with a few green leaves for contrast.

I planted this tree in 2008, and it was a little thing in summer 2009 as the first photo shows. In 2013 it had grown over the top edge of the roof.

Magnolia virginiana in 2009

Five years later, in 2013

It has an open and loose form, which I like in front of the window. It catches light at all times of day. Sweetbay magnolia leaves have silvery undersides and they glitter when a summer breeze moves them.

It flowers in early summer with creamy buds that open clear white. The leaves stay on through winter, usually green, but this year I am hoping the rich mix of butterscotch persists.

The flowers are supposed to have a lemony scent when they open in June, but to my disappointment, my tree does not. That's okay. It makes up for it in November. As the darkest time of year approaches, this pretty tree opens the day dripping in gold sunshine.

Biltmore

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 13:45:00 +0000

We visited the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina in mid September. Several people commented they were eager to see the Biltmore, but were put off by the price. They asked if it was really worth it.

Well, yes and no. In my opinion.

The tickets were $59, more if you wanted the $17 audio tour of the house. Online advance purchase brought the price down to $44 without an audio tour.

If you are going because you want to see the house, I think that price is steep. It is a 33 room period-era showplace, operated as a hotel for the Vanderbilts and their endless guests. To me it seems overdecorated in heavy Victorian style, designed to make you gawk at what money could buy in the 1890s.

It is most impressive, but you have to be a real fan of this kind of architecture to get $60+ worth of enjoyment out of an hour and a half tour.

Or you have to be a real fan of the Victorian era, or lifestyle excesses to get a kick out of seeing it at those prices.

Many visitors seemed less interested in the history of the Vanderbilts and more into whether Anderson Cooper ever lived here (he didn't, but with his mom, Gloria Vanderbilt, he did visit some of the rooms that were still available just to the family when he was young.)

Parking is free, shuttles from the lot to the house are free, restrooms and cafe food are convenient, and the whole enterprise is well run, clean and efficient. If you don't want to buy the $17 tape recorder tour, there are docents in many rooms and they were very informative.

Now, on to the gardens. Were those worth it?

I'm a gardener and I have studied Frederick Law Olmsted's career, and so I say yes.

There was much to see and appreciate, including the eye candy kinds of showy gardens -- pergola walks, a walled perennial garden, a rose garden, a tropical conservatory. There were fields of mums, blocks of annuals, all heavily maintained and in pristine condition for late in the season.

But if you are only interested in flowers and European-style gardens, the price is still steep -- even if you justify it at $30, half the ticket price (assuming half the cost is for the house tour, half for walking the gardens).

I thought the real value was seeing the designed landscape beyond the formal gardens around the mansion. This was Frederick Law Olmsted's last commission at the end of his life, and he had not just hundreds of acres to design, but hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and mountain to work with.

Originally the Vanderbilts owned 125,000 acres. This view is what you see from the house. The estate is much smaller now, but still vast.

Olmsted insisted that the forest be preserved, and not cleared out to make sweeping open lawns. While my companions (my sister and my husband on this trip) saw only trees and meadows and a pond, I recognized that what Olmsted built to look so natural was completely manmade.

He expanded a millpond to become a lake (where scenes from Last of the Mohicans were filmed. I had trouble imagining that, but ok). He cleared land for farming on the estate, and leveled hills and built paths.

He built dips in the terrain, sheltered by trees that only now, 100 years on, are mature and stately. It all looks natural, like he didn't do anything, but it is a highly designed space. Money, of course, was no object.

The bridges and man made structures are reminiscent of Central Park, but more rustic.

For a little more on Olmsted's impact on Biltmore click here.

For a biography of Frederick Law Olmsted click here.

I read about his life in the biography "Genius of Place" and was amazed. He was uneducated, barely getting any kind of elementary tutoring as a youth. He never attended a college.

He was not a landscape architect. He was first an experimental farmer, then a reporter for the NY Times writing about slavery in the south, a gold miner in California, the commissioner of the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War, and several other things. He fell into creating Central Park sort of by accident, late in life, and then went on to do other park commissions.

He is a native son to us -- Olmsted was born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, and is buried here.

Bottom line, in this blogger's opinion: a visit to Biltmore is too expensive for the ornate house and showy gardens. You can see those in Europe and you can see those in Newport, Rhode Island or New York.

But the evidence of Frederick Law Olmsted's genius shaping the geography in subtle and barely noticeable ways is well worth it if you know what to look for.

Read the biography before you go.

Carnage

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 12:09:00 +0000

Oh my god, blood all over the walk, wheel tracks leading away. Did Jim fall off the John Deere lawnmower and then get run over?

But no, there he was, coming down the path, ready to do chores, no sign of mishap or injury. Hey.

I was pretty upset when I saw those pools of blood. This part of the walkway is right outside the bedroom window, and if some creature had some kind of mishap, it was awfully near the house. No sign of feathers or fur, though. No screeching sounds the night before.

Just this evidence of foul play in the morning. And it was still wet. There is a huge coyote who visits our neighbor's yard, and we have bobcats who hunt near our meadow. What could have happened?

I went to investigate.

But wait. As I stood right over the evidence, the walk was clear -- there was only a dribble of dampness along the stones.

I backed up and once again the stones were blood soaked. Huh? I looked up.

There, in the distance was the culprit. The red maple, blazing in the sun, had cast a blood red reflection onto a little patch of wetness in the shade.

The tracks in the grass were my own, from the garden cart. The dampness was from a little bit of spilled hose water. The sight of carnage outside my window was nothing more than autumn sunlight and fall foliage playing tricks.

I have to tell you, it really scared me.

As Planned

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 12:19:00 +0000

October left us, November arrived, and overnight, it seems, the Norway maples turned butter yellow, the silver maples turned lemony and the red maple in the back yard went up in flames.

I planned the walkway around the side of the house to feature the red maple at this time of year. It's the focal point as you round the walk, although honestly you can't miss it from anywhere in the yard, inside the house, or half a mile up the street.

I even planned it so there would be an allee effect, with the maple framed in the distance as you walk the short path from the driveway to the back of the house.

A multi colored fothergilla is at the start of the walk, and the maple is at the end. It works the way I planned.

The fothergilla is enough to make you stop before you even start down the allee.

I also planned a pop of flame red color to anchor the far right front corner of our lot, where I put in a red oak last year, but it is nowhere near as big as the maple.

And yet this skinny red oak is not bothered by its wispy stature. It puts out a confident blast of red, even though it is eight feet tall and has the girth of a drinking straw.

It will some day have an effect like the maple, but I'm tickled that at this young stage it is so blatantly red in fall.

When I go back inside the house the flaming red fire of the maple lights up the kitchen window. A red glow reflects off the table, the floors, the counter.

Even in the bedroom, where a leafy green magnolia by the window screens the view, there is no escaping the fire outside. Red light pools on the dresser top.

The autumn sky at sunset also reflects the riot of color below, but softens the golds and reds to peachy rose. I couldn't plan anything this beautiful.

The Light in the Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 04:03:00 +0000

In the waning days of October, before last weekend's frost changed everything, there were mornings when the light stopped me in my tracks.

The rays were so specific, lighting up just a tree or a clump of irises, and catching each falling leaf in suspension.

It was startling how bright the colors were as the autumn light was getting lower and lower each morning.

The blueberries gave me such pleasure this summer with bowls of blueberries for my breakfast. Now, long past bearing, they were lit up by the early sun.

'Gro Low' sumac caught fire below a witch hazel as the sun came around the corner of the house.

White reblooming clematis was focused in a shaft of sunlight right outside the kitchen window.

It took me a while to get the coffee made on those mornings. I was too taken with staring out the window at the light.

The first morning that we got a hard frost, the air above was cold too. Contrails streaked across the sky. There were three more V shaped rays just to the right of this shot, but they were exploding directly out of the rising sun and my camera couldn't take the picture, nor could my eyes comprehend what I was seeing. I thought the sky was starting to crack open.

There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.

The strange, focused light in the morning is different now that frost has announced winter's intentions. There has been a shift, and the season moves on.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

A Plant That Likes Me

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 13:10:00 +0000

I started with six tiny little plugs in four inch nursery pots.

I planted them in exactly the wrong spot, in too much sun, in dry soil. They normally grow in woodland shade near streams.

I put the six little plants along a raised free draining berm, competing with spruce tree roots and facing full west.

And yet, in hot sun those six tiny plants spread and filled in to become a stunning ground cover all along the berm. Out in the sun they have grown dense and twiggy and full. They color beautifully in fall, all coppery and bronze.

This is yellowroot, Xanthorrhiza simplicissima.

Not only did those six little plants spread into this curving stretch of dense ground cover, but I have dug and moved many to other spots, I have dug several to give away, and I have dug out a lot that were crowding the spruces and hollies. This woody one foot high shrub covers ground.

It's not aggressive, or a problem. It just happily bulks up and stretches out.

The yellowroot that I have seen growing properly in its preferred conditions is a more open plant, growing in individual clumps. In the deep forest or along stream edges it is delicate and I don't recall seeing any fall color.

In my garden, in the sun, it seems to be on steroids.

In summer the foliage is a clear, light green. The leaves look like celery and the roots really are bright yellow. It roots easily, wherever a stem touches the ground.

In April the upright woody stems sport subtle fuzzy purple flowers, just as the leaves emerge.

I did not do my homework when I planted yellowroot. I did not even consider the moisture or light conditions it needed. I never intended a sweep of ground cover under the spruces, I thought I'd just have six little yellowroot clumps scattered about for effect between the spruces.

But this plant likes me.

It likes me a lot, and has performed beautifully in all the wrong conditions.

Recognize This?

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 13:17:00 +0000

Do you recognize this plant?

I saw this compact, glossy shrub at Wave Hill Garden in New York City in early October. It was covered in subtle greenish little flowers. I was struck by its rounded, full shape and the deep green, almost black, shining leaves.

This was an eye catcher and exactly what I think I need for a spot my garden.

Do you know what it is? Does a close up of the little flowers help?

How about a close up of the leaves?

Yes. This is common English ivy, Hedera helix.

Ivy! A dense, full shrub, about three feet high and pleasingly mounded.

Immature, vining ivy leaves

Here is something interesting about ivy: when it is immature it is a vine and we all know how aggressively it climbs and how long it can get. A monster. The leaves have three pointed lobes that we all recognize.

But when an ivy vine reaches the end of its structure or the top of a tree, it has nowhere further to climb, and it then matures.

When ivy matures it changes genetically. The leaves lose their lobed points and become rounded. The vine stops being a vine and the topmost part of the plant becomes shrubby and dense.

If you take a cutting from the shrubby mature part of the ivy, it will keep its altered genetic characteristics -- you get another mature shrub form of the plant.

But if you plant the seeds from the mature flowering ivy, you get an immature vine, and you are back to having rampant vining English ivy.

Weird. I had never seen a mature ivy before, and it was pretty. That alone was worth the trip to Wave Hill, but there were many other delights that day as well.

Wave Hill is in the Bronx, but feels miles away. It's tucked into a busy neighborhood, a couple streets off Broadway, with aggressive traffic whizzing by at its edges, but all is serene inside the grounds.

It overlooks the Hudson River, across from the Palisades.

It is a mature and old garden, with beautiful tree and shrub specimens. That's not a flowering tree -- that snow white blast is the foliage on a variegated 'Wolf Eyes' kousa dogwood.

It had been a private garden originally and has beautiful walks and pergolas, a greenhouse, flowerbeds, and the original stately homes.

It's a relaxing garden, with the iconic Wave Hill chairs dotted about the lawns to encourage sitting, and many families spreading out picnics on the grounds.

The "Wave Hill" chair

I spent more time on our visit sitting around than walking through the garden areas. That's a giant bottlebrush buckeye behind me.

You can't beat a day when you learn something completely new and astonishing about a boring old plant, you get to sit in a beautiful oasis in the city, and you have a bottlebrush buckeye for a backdrop.

Doesn't get any better than that.

This Calms Me

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Fri, 18 Oct 2013 04:33:00 +0000

All the drama in Washington has seriously unnerved me lately. I am out of sorts and need to calm down. So I turned off the TV and went outside for a walk around my yard.

Aromatic aster - Aster* oblongifolius 'Raydon's Favorite'
(*Symphyotrichum now, but it's hard to change)

The deep red is Itea virginica, with red berries of Aronia arbutifolia behind.
The edges of this shot are purposely blurry. This is an art shot.

This calms me. It just does.

This calms me too, every time I walk down the path and around the curve.

This is the first year the bottlebrush buckeye hedge (Aesculus parviflora)
has turned so golden yellow in fall.

Sheffield Pink mums (Chrysanthemum, -- they didn't change this name, did they?)

Fragrant sumac (Rhus aromatica) has its best season in fall.

Another shot of the itea and the aronia berries above it.

The west side of the house, with the gravel sitting area behind this garden border.
Do you recognize the little red tree on the left? The sourwood that I post about all the time.

Another look at the west side, with bright red salvia 'Hummingbird' in front of
the purple Raydon's Favorite asters.

Candy lily seedpods (Pardancanda norisii. They are very similar to blackberry lilies)

Doublefile viburnum, (V. plicatum tomentosum, 'Shasta').
It's a deep rust color that just doesn't photograph well from a distance.

Up close I can get a richer shot of the doublefile viburnum's leaves

Looking back at the house from the rear of the yard.

Rosa glauca, with no foliage left, but lots of hips.
I transplanted this from another area a few weeks ago. I hope it survives.

View from behind the iteas. Montauk daisies (Nipponanthemum)
are bright and cheerful next to the garnet red itea.

Thanks for taking this tour around the yard and staying with me through this post. It's all just random things I saw, no particular meaning and no significant observations, nothing to ponder. Just my garden.

My refuge.

Another art shot with a blurred frame. I like it.

Drought Dependent

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 21:09:00 +0000

We had a wet, cooler summer this year and almost everything in my garden loved it. It all looks wonderful, healthy, and beautiful. Plants that were nice enough in prior years have just bloomed and bloomed all season long this year, and filled in where they had not before.

I've already told you that my strawberries and blueberries were abundant. They loved the early spring rains.

I did not know how good it could all look, with just a few extra inches of rain early in the season.

But not all plants loved the wet, cool weather.

I noticed this summer that the wild Queen Anne's Lace was largely missing. In other summers the lacy white wildflowers were everywhere, all along the roadsides and running riot in the meadow behind my yard. This year there were only a dainty few. They must need drier, hot conditions to be at their best.

And this year bush clover Lespedeza thunbergii 'Ido Shibori' was a medium sized green shrub with arching branches that are open and airy. In this photo, in late September, the tiny white flowers are gone by.

What a contrast with last September when this shrub was a giant haystack, covered in a profusion of little blooms.

Yes, this is the same plant. The over-bright lighting in the photo above was terrible when I took it last year, but you can see what a monster it was. Species bush clover can be a huge mess of a plant, but this cultivar, 'Ido Shibori' is a much smaller variety. Even so, it was a big sprawly arching fountain.

The pea-like blooms don't read well from a distance, you need to see them quite close up.

Not only was the entire plant about 2/3 the size it was last year, but the flowers were brief and sparse. The overall shape was actually nicer this year than that big haystack was, and the plant is healthy and fine looking, but I missed the little flowers.

MoBot says lespedeza is drought tolerant, but this experience makes me think it is actually drought dependent for best growth and flowering. It certainly did not respond this year as it has in the previous two hot, dry summers.

What a difference a few extra inches of rain and a July below 100 degrees makes.

A Trip to the Compost Pile

noreply@blogger.com (Laurrie) — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 11:51:00 +0000

Our compost pile is behind a row of spruces at the back edge of our property. Beyond the compost area is a weedy open meadow and then a forested hillside. Behind the trees a busy road runs.

When I looked up from my chore at the compost pile, this is what I saw recently. All those trees in the near distance were planted by me over the past seven years to screen the road behind. They are filling in, and now in October they are beginning to color. I am startled at the sight when I look up.

That stiffly tiered tree in the center right is a sassafras. I planted several at the same time, and this one is the only tree that has this open, tiered form. It turns orange weeks before the other sassafras trees even think about it.

Zoom in, and you can see it, starkly horizontal, right in front of a partner sassafras, still green and leafy and quite full. I planted both at the same time. Why is one so different?

Zoom in to some of the red trees that are coloring up, and it is evident that red maples, Acer rubrum, are quite shameless. This one is pinky blue red, very gaudy up close, but from a distance quite richly colored.

The overcast skies broke for a short time while I worked at the compost pile, and for several moments the sun was bright. The red maples made the most of it, posing in front of blue sky. I told you they were shameless.

But when the sun went in and the skies grayed over, all the red shouting toned down a little.

I finish my work and turn around toward the spruces. This is what I see. The spicebush, Lindera benzoin, is kind of a nondescript shrub all summer, but in fall it drips lemony yellow.

To my left the hillside is coloring up in russets and orange. I did not plant these trees, they run along the opposite side of the road by a neighbor's house and are a wild stand of red maples, Norway maples, sugar maples and other trees.

I'm done with the compost now, and wander out into the meadow. I absolutely love my blueberry farm this time of year. These vaccinium plants are new, just planted this spring, but how vivid they are in October, all spindly and scarlet. I got a ton of blueberries in July, even on these brand new shrubs.

It's not all pops of red out here. As I wander through the meadow, bright purple asters jump up out of the weeds and surprise me.

I leave the meadow, cross over the little arched bridge and walk out in front of the spruces on my way back to the house. I turn around for a last look at the area behind the spruces, and it does not disappoint.

When you make a trip to your compost pile, you take your camera, don't you?