Birds

Spotted a hummingbird zipping around my garden. First time I've seen one this season. It took a hit off some bee balm before dashing off.

Robins, with their young 'uns in tow, are raiding the serviceberry shrub and following me around whenever I water.

Goldfinches are becoming regular visitors, nibbling at the coneflower seeds. Coneflower is also known as annual bachelor button. It's hard to believe that they can light on a bendy coneflower stem without pulling the whole stem to the ground, but they manage. I'd love to get a photo, but without an SLR, a big zoom lens, and a bird blind, I don't think I can get close enough to the goldfinches.

Latin names for the plants, just because: Monarda, Amelanchier, and Centaurea cyanus.

UPDATE: Managed to get a photo.

Spotted

First monarch butterfly passing through my garden.

Moss Loss

This clump of Irish moss survived a few winters, but not this one. Here it is last June.

Spring, awakening

Along the side of the house, near the hose faucet, there's a patch of lawn worn bare from walking. It's where I watch for a particular, lowly sign of spring: worm castings.

They finally appeared this morning.

Neighborhood lawns are halfway between brown and green. Lilac buds are ready to burst. Columbine have started to unfurl their leaves. Tulips and daffodils are up, but not yet in bloom. Any day now, Prairie Smoke will blossom.

As the GreenGirls suggest, I've planted some cool-weather crops (peas and beets) in containers.

I am slowly clearing the garden beds of leaves I laid down last fall as winter mulch. It would be faster with a leaf blower, but as long as my knees work and I have time, I like doing it by hand. Being close to the dirt feels right. There's a certain pleasure in lifting matted leaves and uncovering a pale, purplish shoot of some half-forgotten perennial.

Kill the Wabbit

I'm feeling like Elmer Fudd after finding this dogwood nipped in the bud.

The rabbit did the damage while the snow was piled high. Next year, chicken wire.

Frosted

Not a hard frost, but enough to kill the tomato plants.

UPDATE: a week later, we got our hard frost.

Peter, Rabbit

When I was a wee lad, I loved the story of Peter Rabbit. Back then, my sympathies lay with the rabbit, what with the two of us sharing a name and several personality traits.

No longer. Call me Mr. McGregor, but I am not interested in playing host to a bunny, no matter how small and cute it is right now.

I don't make an effort to keep out the nomadic bunnies who live somewhere in the neighborhood. They come out at dusk and mostly munch on the grass. They'll make a meal of certain seedlings -- especially beans - and I've learned to put up some chicken wire to deter them. I can live with that.

This little bunny, however, is making my garden its home. This means war. Me against the tiny little fluffy guy.

I'm trying to enlist the help of my cat. She's an indoor cat. When I take her outside, she's more interested in getting back in the house than chasing a rabbit.

Maybe I need to get a dog.

Lead me not into temptation . . .

I've been going to the Friends School Plant Sale for 10 years or so. When the sale was at the school, I limited myself to what I could haul home in a wagon. After the sale moved to the State Fair Grandstand, I went overboard a few times and filled the minivan. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not in my budget this year.

Last year, I finally made the trek to Gerten's. Wow. The kid-in-a-candy-store metaphor doesn't do it justice. It wasn't just the plants and the variety of tools and the size of the containers. They had piles of huge boulders, sorted by type. You want a piece of banded hematite the size of a small car? They probably have several to choose from.

This year, I've promised myself to keep plant purchases to a minimum. This tray of plants came from The Vagary, one of my favorite vendors at the downtown St. Paul Farmers' Market.

Cost: less than $20. Not a bad way to satisfy the urge to splurge.

Wake me up when Winter ends

Hardy geranium is still poking through the snow here and there in this patch of boulevard garden, but it's about to be buried under snow for three or four months. The blackberry lily in the foreground is 2 or 3 years old. Back left is a a heuchera or heuchurella I transplanted early in the fall. I like how its seed heads look against the snow.

High winds and low temps delivered a light, powdery six inches of snow Saturday, the first day of December.

This blanket of snow should last for a while. The forecast calls for continued cold temperatures and two more snowfalls this week. That's good news for the garden.

Snow offers a nice insulating blanket to the garden. The goal is not to try to keep the garden warm, but to prevent the soil from repeated cycles of freezing and thawing. Snow cover also prevents the drying effects of wind and sun.

The city plows added to the snow cover along the street.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

A week ago, we were experiencing a drought. I was watering places that I never water in normal conditions. Soil that I wasn't watering was dry and hard.

And then it rained. And rained again. And again. This stretch of rainy days started out with some real soakers -- approximately 2 inches, two days in a row. Since then, it seems that we've had at least a mild shower each day, and very little sun.

I've had enough.

I'm not hurting like the people in the southeast part of the state. Nothing washed away. Just sopping wet.

Mushrooms are popping up in places where I've never seen them before. Slime mold is forming on some of my cedar mulch. I can't dig, divide, or transplant, as the soil is too wet. Mowing the grass is out of the question, too, until we have a couple of dry and sunny days. I had to throw away a couple dozen tomatoes that went bad on the vine.

And the humidity is driving me batty.

Yum!

It's strawberry season! Picked about 2 quarts today. Not hearing any complaints about my obsession with gardening. Might even get the kids to help with the weeding.

Got Milkweed?

Of the dozen or so milkweed plants growing in my boulevard, this caterpillar preferred the smallest. Perhaps the young leaves taste better.

The caterpillar in the photo disappeared later in the day. It turns out that monarch caterpillars are quite vunerable to marauding bands of nature-loving children who scour the neighborhood, plucking leaves bearing eggs or small caterpillars in the attempt to "raise" them in their homes.

Such is life.

Rainy Day

The last poppies opened up overnight. Between the wind and the rain, they won't last very long. Managed to get a lot of my recently purchased plants into the ground yesterday. Hoping they enjoy the wet weather.

Sunny Saturday

Morning showers put a quick damper on our neighborhood yard sale, but they passed quickly, and we went on to raise a nice sum for our paint the pavement project. One neighbor potted up some of her perennials for the sale. They sold before I could buy one. Not to worry, as Linda will give me some divisions later.

I got to know a couple more of the neighborhood gardeners. One cleared up a plant mystery for me. (Thanks, Jo!) And I shared some perennials, some of which I had recieved from other neighbors. What comes around goes around.

We ended the sale around 3:00 in the afternoon, and with my wife's tacit approval, I spent the next six hours working in the garden until I couldn't see any more. I know that she'd rather I work at clearing out the basement, but I'll save that chore for a rainy day. Or a humid day. Just not on a day like this one.

Busy Bee

I've seen a bumblebee and a honeybee. I managed to get a photo of this smallish bee against the white petals of a strawberry blossom.

Cedar Compost Bin

Nine years ago, in the dark ages before municipalities started to sell subsidized bins to encourage backyard composting, I built my own compost bin.

I used rot resistant cedar, and lined it with black plastic mesh fencing to keep the small stuff from falling out. The corner posts were long enough so I could sink them a few feet into the ground, holding everything in place. I even built a small partition so that I could put newer compost on one side and older compost on the other side.

A couple of years ago, while moving the bin, I discovered that three of the posts were rotting under the soil line. I cut off the decayed portion, and and now the rear posts sit on concrete cylinders and the front posts sit in metal post anchors.
One of the problems with the plastic mesh was that it let sunlight in, which kept certain weeds growing and allowed seeds to germinate. I decided to line the mesh with heavy-duty landscape fabric. Not the kind sold at home centers, but the real stuff, sold at landscaping supply places like Leitners. This has prevented any weeds from growing in the pile. I secured the fabric with galvanized lumber ties.
This year, I've added one more feature: six-inch corrugated drainage pipe, perforated style. I expect that these will allow for a lot more air to flow through the compost, helping it break down a bit faster.
A few years ago, I got one of those black plastic bins, and now I use a two bin system. This spring I filled the wood bin with last summer's compost, leaves saved from last fall, lawn thatch, and kitchen scraps. I'll be able to use it to top dress my beds in late summer or early fall. New stuff will go into the black plastic bin until the wood bin is emptied.

More photos at my picasa gallery. The stack of 4 corrugated drainage pipes in the back left corner? After the compost settled, I pulled those out and filled the hole with kitchen scraps, new garden greens, and old leaves.



UPDATE: I've decided that the horizontal tubes were too much bother. I can't tell if they were effective, but they certainly got in the way of turning the pile.

To veg, or not to veg.

So here's the dilemma: how much effort (and space) do I put into growing vegetables this summer? Vegetables require much more attention than flowers and shrubs. This summer, I am hoping to add hardscapes and other structural elements to my garden. And then there's my paying job. I want to be sure that I don't bite off more than I can chew, so to speak. This summer, I am reluctantly cutting back on the veg.

A friend of mine has, with each passing year, decided to turn more of her garden over to perennials, fruit trees, and such. She figures that the produce farmers who sell at the local farm markets can raise her veggies for her.

No matter how many vegetables I grow, I still make a weekly trip to the farmers' market. So why not plan to get all my veggies there? This year, that argument has a strong appeal.

However, I read in the Pioneer Press that many Hmong farmers are having trouble renting land this year. Many of them are city dwellers, who rely on rented farmland outside the city to grow their crops. Housing development is a prime factor in making it harder for them to find rental parcels. This year, some are reporting that landowners who had rented them small parcels in the past are choosing to use that land for corn this year.

And that reminded me of Michael Pollan's recent piece in the New York Times, You Are What You Grow.

After explaining how the current farm bill encourages the production of corn and soybeans, which are turned into the added sugars and fats in processed foods, Pollan writes, "the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce."

Indeed, the experience of Hmong farmers in St. Paul seems to suggest that the current farm bill actually works against certain farmers who grow fresh produce.

And they are among the farmers who grow my produce. So yeah, it is personal.

First flower

Prairie Smoke, Geum triflorum

The first of my perennials to blossom. Tulips and daffodils and crocus not withstanding, the first non-bulb flower is noted with joy.

It's Alive!!

Toad Lily, Tricyrtis 'Miyazaki Hybrids'

Purchased at the UofM Horticulture Club sale in May, 2006. The one I bought in 2005 failed to survive the winter. I suspect that I planted it in soil that didn't provide enough drainage. Hoping to help this one succeed, I planted it in a slightly raised bed, in soil dug down and mixed well with peat moss and other organic material.

Ice Out!

My yard and garden are free of surface snow and ice. There's still ice underneath piled leaves, and the north side of the compost bin has ice in it. In the back yard, the top eight inches of soil are frost-free. The same tulips that are pushing up in the front yard have yet to appear in the back. I could probably get three different bloom times from the same spring bulbs, depending on where I planted them in the fall.