Spring beauty

I've been so bad at keeping up with this blog and good grief, although today is April 21, outdoors it is already midsummer. Everything that was supposed to bloom in the spring bloomed and everything that was supposed to bloom a month from now.....bloomed (Roses! I have roses the first week of April!). There's a lot going on out there but I want to capture the beauty of what was blooming a couple Sundays ago before I venture out to Kansas again tomorrow.

The Dwarf Crested iris (Iris cristata) I planted last year along the stream bank was blooming. I only got one bloom but the rest of the plants are looking good so hopefully next year they will be spectacular.

The non-native irises were blooming too and of course, they were spectacular (irises always are). I remember the very first iris I met. My best friend in high school's mother was a gardener and I remember walking out the back door of their house one spring and seeing her mother's irises in bloom. They were the most exotic thing I had ever seen...regal, sturdy, delicate, upright and tall...irises just have a special presence to them. Although I did have a big collection of houseplants as a teenager (dozens), I hadn't realized until now that I had an equal interest in the plants growing natively outdoors too. I remember talking about trilliums with my friend's mother, a plant she coveted. I had seen trilliums growing in Northern Michigan and promised to dig her up some if I ever found them again. That was a lonnnnnnnnnng time ago but every spring when I see my first irises in bloom, I think of Mrs. Maki. :-)

Last year I had planted some Heart-leaf Golden Alexanders (Zizia aptera) in an area I had cleared in the woods...

...but this year, you can hardly see them because of all the mayapples that took over this newly cleared area (I was trying to get rid of the coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus)... a native plant that is absolutely everywhere. Everywhere. It's in the honeysuckle family...you can tell it's a relative because it makes its presence known absolutely everywhere. Everywhere! Coralberry is a woodlands plant and is probably of some use to deer if they are starving but in my 15 acres of woods, nobody seems that interested in it.....especially me. Okay, end of rant.).

Mayapples. Mayapples. Mayapples. They were coming up everywhere...this one was popping through an old oak leaf.

I remember when I saw my first small colony of mayapples when I first bought my land and was so happy to find that 10 square feet of native prettiness. Hahaha. Those mayapples are just everywhere this year. To the horizon line. Mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum) are spring ephemerals so in a couple months they will be gone...I sure wish that boring coralberry/buckbrush was an ephemeral. Too bad it's an "everpresent."

Violet Wood Sorrel (Oxalis violacea) was blooming right on the path. I had never seen it before.

You can tell it's in the oxalis family because of the shamrock leaves.

This has been a spectacular year for Spring Beauties (Claytonia virginica). I usually find them lost in the growing grass but they were as elusive as mayapples this year. :-)

They were blooming in every little cranny in the woods, as well as in the areas that get a lot of sunlight.

The oak leaves were beginning to unfurl.

Feathery prettiness even before they let go...

I walked past a little 4 foot tree in the woods that looked like yellow-green Christmas bulbs were hanging from it.

That little oak tree had five huge oak galls on it. Five. It was something (here Tilly helps with the photography by moving in to provide some extra contrast).

This year the hickory leaves are unfurling when they feel like it. I remember them synchronizing their ballet a few years ago so that it seemed like all the unfurling took place in just one day. I've been watching these guys unfurl for a couple weeks now. It's random this year for some reason.

Still, it was a day full of spring beauty...but this guy wouldn't know it. He had his head stuck in a hole in the dirt.
I pulled him out to get a look at him to see if we had met before.

Nope. New box turtle to me. He was unimpressed with me and everything around him...nothing new there when it comes to turtles.

I sure would hate to have to perform in front of an audience of turtles because whatever you do to entertain them, nothing will impress them. Nothing.

I put him back in his napping spot. So much concentrated spring beauty around him but since he's a turtle, it's all a big whatever to him.


But of course, not to me. :-)

"You remember me?"

Last month an old beat up car drove up my driveway and the driver, an old Asian man, yelled that question to me...many, many times.

I was in the middle of planting crocuses. Tilly had managed to retrieve some of them to tenderly chew while her brother walked off with the box that held all 500 of them. Well.....that's how many there were before the dogs got involved...and I noticed one of those dogs had walked off with my dibber too while I tried to get things in order while that car came to a stop.

"YOU REMEMBER ME?"

I had never seen him before. I was sure I hadn't.

"You gave me beer. You gave me cake."

Well, that sounded like something I would do.......but I was pretty sure I had never met him before. But maybe I met him at the barbecue Aussie's family had earlier in the year so I asked him if that was where we met. Now it was his turn to look bewildered.

"Nah......You no remember? You give me beer. You give me cake."

I told him I think he probably had me confused with the previous owner of the land from years ago. She was a former beauty queen (he must have some crazy eyesight to have me confused with her).

He considered that and then we both confirmed to the other that we had never met. Glad that was figured out. Turns out he lives in a house up the road. Sarah told me that when I live in the country, be prepared for people to just drop by and walk right on in through your front door.

He enthusiastically related his biography. "I'm Korean. My wife, she white. I am 66 years old. We've been married 38 years. That too long."

He went on to say that he had two sons. One of them went to Harvard and is now living in the Philippines. What took me a little aback was not the Harvard education but that someone's kid actually moved some place that was not next door to his parents. It seems like everyone's kid moves next door or to some other house on the same property. Out in the country, you could say they live on family compounds.

He said that the house he lives in is the house his wife has lived in her entire life (I think she was born in it). They thought they might have to sell a couple years ago because of the economy but his wife cried and cried about that because she knew every tree on that property (and had probably grown up with a lot of them) and did not want to leave her trees behind. That just touched me. I guess my neighbor was able to keep the house by finding yet another job to add to the ones he already had and that kind of ends his story and mine for the day.

I don't have many photos from that day because of the unexpected long conversation, me trying to get approximately 500 crocuses into the ground, and then having to search for the garden tools that were not in my hands when I was talking to my neighbor. Those dogs wandered off with everything.

Bo did show up on a later day with a lost spade exactly when I needed it so I know everything I lost is still out there...I just have to be patient for their return. One day one of those dogs will show up with another one of my lost tools in his or her mouth and if garden tools could talk, I'm sure they'd say, "You remember me?" And I would!

More birdhouse perils

One mullet birdhouse went up...

...and then the other mullet birdhouse went up.

It was completely uneventful getting both of them up and that made me very, very happy...confident even. Those two houses looked good despite me having a hard time figuring out what straight was (even with a level) because I don't think one tree out there grows straight up.

But when I tried putting this birdhouse up, the tree immediately started to pour out sap as soon as I drilled a hole for the bolt that would hang it. The sap just gushed away. My confidence was gushing away too....panic had moved in.

That oak tree was shooting out so much sap that after a couple hours I took the birdhouse down because it was as sopping wet as the tree. This was horrible. What was going on? This has been an odd winter (all winters are odd to tell you the truth) what with day temperatures in the 40s and 50s and sometimes 60s and night temperatures in the 10s and 20s and 30s. Sap flows when the weather sets up like that but why this one tree and not the others....and why oh why would it not stop?

A couple weeks later, it was still leaking. I wasn't sure what I could do at this point...I was kind of thinking about putting a tampon in it. :-/

But rather than do that (!!!), I decided to wait...and hope that that tree figures out a way to heal itself soon. In the meantime, I put up the birdhouse I had removed earlier and hung it high on the hill...on a tree that stayed dry once I drilled a hole in it. If any other tree gushed like that one oak, that would be it for me regarding the drilling of any future holes in any future tree. It's not like the birds out there need my birdhouses anyway because there are plenty of dead hollow trees for cavity nesting birds to use for their nests. Makes me feel awful hurting a tree...I just don't want to risk doing that again.

But now confident with another birdhouse successfully put up without a tree crying about it, it was time to put up my very last birdhouse.

It was such a pretty day. Although the earth was brown and there was still ice on parts of the creek, the sky was a glorious blue and the temperature was in the.....60s! Fabulous.

That last birdhouse went up uneventfully....exactly what I was hoping for....and then I dropped (!!!!!!!?????!!!!!) my ratchet wrench.....directly down into the creek. Well, what's the big deal in that? Well, take a look at where my eye level is and where that cedar tree is in the distance. That's kind of high up.

And I had dropped my wrench in a wild part of the creek that I had never set foot on before...because the sides of the creek are steep from the top all the way down to the water. There are no flat areas on the banks (what banks?) to walk on. I also imagine lots of snakes hiding in and around all the rocks in the creek bed too. I couldn't get down the slope where I had just put up the birdhouse, it was too overgrown and too steep so I had to find a flatter area to cross the creek and then make my way back again to where the wrench was lying...

...on the thawing ice just a little bit beyond this tree. I have to admit it was kind of exciting because I had never been in that part of the creek before. Bo smartly stayed on the other side of the creek and distressingly cried and whimpered but Mary followed right behind me (with her 6 foot branch she kept whacking me with) while we made our way across the rock and ice and cold water to get to that darn wrench.

But hurray, it was retrieved! And if Mary and I could figure a way to easily navigate ourselves across the creek on the flatter parts ahead of us.... we could celebrate with some canine Costco confections once we got ourselves back to the "treatmobile." Which we did.

It was such a pretty day and I finally had all of those birdhouses up (three went up last year, nine went up this year!). What a great feeling.

When I drive to my land in Kansas, I cross the Kaw River and always think about stopping and taking a photo but before I complete that thought, I have already crossed the river. The sky had been beautiful all day...and when I stopped my car on the bridge because I had preplanned to do just that, the view of the setting sun was exquisite. A perfect ending to the completion of this year's birdhouse making and hanging project.

One last thought about birdhouses (probably because it took such a long time to get them put up and I still can't believe I'm finally done, done, done)...

Somebody has already expressed an interest in moving into this birdhouse I put up a couple weeks ago...or maybe they already have.

I had checked the other two woodpecker houses I put up last year to see if the interiors needed cleaning...which they did(!!!!!)...so maybe this birdhouse will see some baby flickers (or whatever was hatched in those other two birdhouses) this spring too. :-)

First Gardening Casualty of the Year

Although it's not quite 2012 yet (still have an hour to go...).

I was checking on things on my land in Kansas a couple days ago and noticed that a tree I had planted earlier in the year, a tree that I carried gallons of water up a hill twice a week for the whole summer, was....gone.

Oh wait, there it is, flat on the ground.

It's not like there aren't thousands, thousands of other trees to choose from, big and little.

My pretty little "Cherokee Princess" dogwood was no more because of one bad bunny, or some other little varmint with overactive chewing equipment which gnawed around the trunk and then down into the roots.

I had this awful feeling that other things had happened while I was away (it had only been two weeks!). And.......they had. I had planted three little shortleaf pines (Pinus echinata) in a row and it was a regular Goldilocks situation with the three of them. One was left alone. One had a little bit of its side branches removed. And then there was one that had been sliced in two, totally destroyed.

The top was discarded and left on the ground.

The bottom was discarded in a sense too...because it had not been eaten either. Just a casual chew...for no reason. I don't think pines recover when their main leader is broken so that poor little tree is a goner. Bad deer. Bad, bad, bad deer.

However, the thimbleweeds (Anemone virginiana) I planted were doing just fine.

Even the ones that grow there naturally were untouched.

The Blackhaw Viburnum fruits from early November...

...were still there in late December.

Wahoo seeds? Nobody seemed to like them either.

Odd thing. I plant for wildlife but when the wrong wildlife gets in there and chomps them down, I get a bit peeved. I guess it's because those deer and bunnies are so darn thorough when they take things down, literally.

Another mystery was what was going on with the tomato cages I had used to mark other things I had planted in the woods. Nearly all of them had been pulled up and tossed. What the heck? Not sure who to blame on that one...bad raccoons or bad dogs who were not paying attention to where they were running.

Oh well, I had enough of brown plants, both living and not so much living, but all of that was forgotten on the drive home because things became extraordinarily colorful at sunset.

And to punctuate the prettiness, a check mark (not quite a "v") of geese flew across the pink spotted sky.

It's not the dramatic sunset you see in the southwest or the dramatic ones you see at a coast but what was happening behind me while I was driving away still had a lot of drama for a sunset happening on the "plains."

While I was taking pictures, an approaching car stopped because they felt compelled to watch the beautiful sunset too.

Even the place that Rex calls "the messy house" because of all the abandoned cars and trailers surrounding it, looked beautiful.

Not sure where I'm going with this but it did fortify me. If I can garden with turtles, I can garden with other animals that are compelled to take things down. They might have teeth but when I return, I will have chicken wire.