Garden Evolution

First, there was a series of wicked storms in November through January, events which caused many a tree to bend over and lay parallel to the ground. Then there was the six foot layer of snow which covered my property February through mid-April. Too many trees would never grow upright again. This was the garden equivalent of receiving a truckload of lemons.  My version of making lemonade was to create a new garden space.

Any tree or seedling with more then a thirty degree bend was sawed at the base. The sawing coincided with my 2015 load of rotten rock delivery - rotten rock is pink granite too rotten to sculpt. The stuff serves a superb base for paths and sitting areas. Here is the current pile and the new entryway into what I will call the Fern Garden. I found pillars at my favorite antique store, West Bay Antiques,  in Gouldsboro last week - of course, now I need gargoyles. I also am searching for a few more beams from the dump's burn-pile so that I can fashion a raised bed which will feature...me.

My planned design is a circle of sitting area at the end of the entryway. The ground falls away gently from the sitting area and already has a host of fiddleheads. The green jardiniere is three feet is diameter, a score from an antique store in Owego, New York about a million years ago. The ferns were already established in the shady interior and will now grow more prolific. Perhaps I need a statue or two as well?

Planting at Last

I am enjoying a weekend with two unencumbered days. After I did an hour of rotten rock path restoration, my dog Walter and I took a short trip to the dump and a long trip to Ellsworth. I bought goose food and groceries and the beginnings of the plant list I assembled all winter long: a little flat of portulaca, two bush honeysuckles, a tiger eye sumac and a Joe Pye weed. The portulaca went into the hanging planter on the deck, the Joe Pye weed was installed near the pond, the honeysuckles went into last year’s salvaged bed near the echinacea, and the sumac was given its own nook within which to grow six feet tall and six feet wide. There was rain last night and fog now, I will actually water today to "drive" the water further into the ground. Plants and paths will get a much needed drink. The weather has been dry with temperatures locked into a 40 degree low-60 degree high pattern. I haven't planted my seeds because I have been concerned about soil temperatures as well as the need to water tender seedlings. Now of course I am itching to put everything into the ground. We'll see how much restraint I exercise through this day, good thing I literally have a ton of rotten rock that I can play with. 

First Flowers

Granted these are "store-bought" but they are flowers on my deck, daffodils scheduled to pop open tomorrow, coltsfoot blooming along the roadside. This is the year of the gourd, I have over thirty seedlings under the grow light. Last year was the year of the moonflower and that species failed miserably in every condition I offered (sun, shade, south, north, dry, moist....). I saw frost on the roof two nights ago, I am not thinking frost is behind us. But I am knowing that I raked the last of the snowbank into oblivion on Sunday and the perennial foliage increases exponentially with each passing day.

Hiatus

Never mind the five inches of snow that fell in one night the second week of April. The last thirty days are a memory. All the waiting is a memory. I bought violas home today and planted them. I brought horse manure home today and planted that too. Never mind that I had to skirt a snowbank in order to get to where I wanted the horse manure to be. When will that snowbank be a memory? My guess is April 30. This is a list of what I can see growing: daffodils, iris, ladies' mantle, yarrow, columbine, lupine, day lilies, sedum, Shasta daisies. Small - yes. Alive - yes. Alive is all that counts.

Thaw

Thirty-four degrees feels like a whole lot of degrees, especially when the degrees are accompanied by zero precipitation. The geese were inspired to walk up the trail to the garden shed. Perhaps they imagined they might find bits of growing vegetation. No such luck. But there is some small degree of thaw - the snow on the roof of the shed, and on my house, recedes a bit further each day. I'm soaking Passiflora incarnata seeds. I brought the potting soil indoors from the shed, wanting the soil to change from a frozen block to a friable and plant-able substance. The chickadees are singing their Spring tune. The time changed last night. It's all slow but it's all change.

Recored Breaking Be Damned

I'm done with breaking winter records and so is my crazy bougainvillea. Deer Isle and my garden have been the recipients of over 6 feet of snow within the past month. There have also been record-breaking cold temperatures, I don't want to know any of the details about them. If I ignore the facts, perhaps less plants will die, that is my strategy. This is a picture of my crazy bougainvillea also in the act of ignoring and beginning to bloom in my studio despite the pile of snow in the outdoors (the pile is taller than me). I have read that snow is poor man's fertilizer - that the snow captures nitrogen from the atmosphere as it falls, and I can look forward to a lush-er season because of the snow. I therefore anticipate a veritable jungle, given the depth of "nitrogen" on the gardens.

2015 Seed Order

Here are the only seeds I plan to buy (someone should remind me in June that I said that in February). They arrived Saturday - I did not crop the dish or the computer out of the picture so that perhaps one can discern that seeds are all 1/4 lb. packets. Shady Woodland Mixture, Beneficial Insect Attractant Mixture, Bee Feed Mixture, Butterfly and Hummingbird Mixture, Xeriscape Mixture Eastern US... "Mixture" is clearly the operative word. My plan is to sow them mid-May, water as needed for a few weeks and see which things germinate/grow/survive the slugs and deer, etc. and which survivors attract local pollinators. Survivors/Attractors get kin.

Reflecting

Because there is a new blizzard and because I have read through my current seed catalogs to the point that the catalogs themselves are tired, I have been looking at pictures of my property and the progress. Once upon a time, there was a cabin, a neglected trailer next to the cabin, and a pond. No walkways, no gardens - although there was a significant amount of Comptonia proclaiming that sweet plants could indeed live here. This Google Earth photo says so much to me: the trailer is replaced by the main pollinator garden, there is an interlocking series of paths to the pond, to the goose Palace, to the rhododendron gardens, through the woods (plural), to the deer feeding station. Every inch of path was built with cardboard and gravel and a wheelbarrow. In the beginning, the driveway was a series of holes fringed by long reaching fingers of alders. No longer. The ankle-biting blackberry vine ground cover is replaced by a hundred other plants that welcome both my ankles and a host of helpful invertebrates. So much has changed. I will hold tight to the thought that the property is all resting under the newest blanket of snow, waiting to explode into green once again.

Blizzard Topped With More Snow

Within a week, my gardens went from bare and brown to buried under more than two feet of snow. My snowshoes and I are reacquainted and have made numerous loops of the woods, down to the goose Palace and the pond and back up to the house. I can also report that the bottle tree is doing an excellent job of capturing evil spirits as they meander down the driveway. Or do evil spirits slither? In any case, my debris pile now has an insulating snow roof and there are tracks everywhere indicating the feeders are being visited by a wide variety of critters. Several seed catalogs have arrived and January 2015 is hours away from done. This feels like "winter progress."

New Year's Day

I had no true plans for my own holiday supper but was well pleased to see this doe visit with her fawn for their meal. They surprised me and I surprised them as I was clearing the last of the blow-down from the backwoods walkway. I dropped my tools and went indoors so they could dine in peace. All paths are now navigable, the forecast holds no snow cover for plants. Sawing dead limbs and tossing brush will have to content me for a while. I read the following on Garden Rant and liked the words enough to repeat them. It's a good gardening thought for 2015 - shaking hands with the divine.

http://gardenrant.com/2014/12/trees-in-memorium.html

"I hope the New Year brings the opportunity to garden with joy. And even if things will be planted in memorium, I hope we can all take comfort in the fact that we are gardening in collaboration with something grand, and every time we put something in the ground and wait for its transformation, we are shaking hands with the divine."