elainegrey

The hellebore in the front are budding -- i've not visited the ones i transplanted from Mom's woodland patio yet. And i saw my first bittercress with buds.

Today i scrubbed the front steps. There's still a ... patina  ... on the bricks and sandstone, which i appreciate from a wabi sabi aesthetic and the general principle that patinas are protective layers.  I think this spring after the pine pollen-calypse[1] i will use a touch of bleach though, because the algae growth  on these north facing steps is pretty significant.

[1] note that "calypse" in "Apocalypse" is from the Greek /kaluptein/ ‘to cover’ -- and that is PERFECT.

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In other news, i finally had all the usual caffeine today. I'm still eating much lighter and differently. Christine's eating normally today, so hopefully i'll be fine tomorrow. My sister came down with similar the same day Christine did, which was just 24 hours or so after visiting with Dad. I'm finally coming down on the side that this is some contagious misery as Dad's sweetheart and someone else in the organization Dad is involved in also has misery.

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These photos were taken on Sun 21, when i was raking the mossy glade (and other areas):( Read more... )

The past few mornings have been clear when i went out with starry, starry skies. And it's quiet: the temperatures have changed. I think this was the first morning when even waiting and focusing imy listening, i didn't hear frogs or insects, even from over the crest of the hill and the creek behind our house. It may be that i just know from the map that it's there, but i feel i can hear the sounds from that direction in the spring and fall when the sounds directly around the house have quieted.

It dropped to the freezing point at 6:42 AM, per the new sensor sitting in the front yard. It's clear there, and should get the coldest and hottest temps. It's also in a sleeve of plastic louvers, so that it can be in a sunny area and still report air temperature. I think i need to replace the sensor at the back fence: it reported temperatures in the 50s (F) for too long. And even though the woods makes its own climate, the trees are not that insulating. First, i thought it was that the battery was dying (and eventually the sensor stopped transmitting), but i replaced it yesterday. I don't know how far back in time i am going to have to distrust its readings.

I've been cranky about the autumn, a sign of the mild depression. I think i'm beginning to appreciate the color in the trees, even though there isn't bright shouts of clear color. The dogwood i can see from my office window and the front porch is such a dull garnet that i have muttered to myself about its mournful aspect. But walking up the drive this weekend, the sun through the leaves was resplendent. And while most of the trees around our home -- other than the persistent pines -- sort of drain the lushness from the green, leaving a dull yellowing green, this weekend the light in the woods (again, backlit leaves!) was a golden color. Maybe color change is on its way.

I still have three persimmons on the persimmon tree: i did not loose them to critters or humidity despite the stilt grass encircling the tree. I think one chestnut cluster is gone (squirrels?) but one is still high in the tree.

I keep trying to catch my negative thoughts and turn them. Particularly my frustration at not getting as much stilt grass out before it's gone to seed. I am making progress on ecosystem restoration here though: it's going to be OK.

So, now i can just focus on getting the sweet gums that shade the solar panels removed. (Oh, the species tree is not so colorful as the brilliant liquidambar street trees in Mountain View, CA) The black cherries have already lost their leaves, so they can stay. And i can look forward to picking out and planting some colorful shorter shade trees, like sourwood. Maybe some fringe trees (which have drupes that can be cured like olives).

May Day!

Blooming:
* Rose buds on the miniature roses.
* Blue eyed grass.
* Hyacinth-like Camassia leichtlinii ‘Blue Danube’, a western US native. The larger, pale blue native quamasn, Camassia scilloides has been blooming in the rain garden.
* Solomon's plume! A wild plant i had rescued when we cleared, thinking it looked like a nice plant. I never noticed it blooming before. An arcing stem with alternating linear leaves (looking much like Solomon's Seal) but ending with a little starry plume of flowers.
* Eastern columbine, small red and yellow rocket flowers dangling from tall thin stems
* Virgina waterleaf with it's curling cormb of pale blue flowers.
* Some sort of fleabane, maybe Erigeron philadelphicus -- the large patch in the glade looks lovely, and a new patch is at the foot of the mulberry. This daisy like flower looks lovely and not weedy.
* The mulberry is blooming!
* The chestnut might be blooming, or budding, at least
* blackberries!
* Lyre leaf sage's purple spikes.
* Sage itself -- and the sage flowers have a marvelous flavor - strong like sage, but marvelous
* Bearded iris from the previous owners, i think it's 'Jurassic Park' with greenish-yellow standards and purple falls.
* Green and gold, a low growing gold Asteraceae flower.
* the moss phlox, another low growing ground cover, is fading
* Some white ornamental onions that need to be moved somewhere.
* A bouquet of rain lilies, Zephyranthes atamasco in the rain garden
* Some scarlet clover, here and there, and the white Dutch clover everywhere.
* Japanese false hawkweed -- invasive and not particularly attractive
* Star of Bethlehem -- invasive and LOVELY
* Some lingering spring beauties
* Chives and the walking onions and many of the brassicas
* An occasional violet and the mock strawberries.

Excitement in the last week, i finally made a dish of Sochan or cutleaf coneflower. I had a plant show up a few years ago from seed, identified it as Rudbeckia laciniata, found out about its edibility, moved it to the garden plot, let it get established -- and now i've eaten it. I'm delighted. I want a huge patch -- or several patches -- of it. It's attractive and it tastes good. I like brassica greens (less mustard, more the others), but sochan is probably more attractive -- less bitter. And, they are the size of brassica greens, not fiddly like picking violet greens. Perennial greens, yippee!

( Greening up, fruit trees, plants, etc )

[1] I do hope more don't die of whatever it is that is killing them here. I suppose it could be old age, but i suspect anthracnose. Appalachian Spring is resistant - and it looks like it's going to be a challenge to track it down.

Friday morning, Saturday morning (25°F), and Sunday morning had frosts or more. Some things seem no worse for wear. The saucer magnolia's open flowers all turned a rust red and will fall over the next few days, but new buds and leaves will quickly take the place of the frozen flowers.

The mulberry leaves crumble at the touch. Little bits of chestnut and fig leaves that stick out from the buds do too. Stilt grass is unfazed.

The good of the past three days was taking the time off and being outside. Also a brief gather with parents, L, her husband and daughter. (Sister and parents fully vaccinated, brother-in-law and myself one shot of Moderna). Her son is off on a vacation with a friend's family on a catamaran in the Caribbean. This is life like my brother's family, not familiar to me, but i'm glad for both him and my sister for weighing the risks and letting him go. Christine stayed home knowing she was in no place to see people.

Invasive plants here:( an interstitial where i distract myself )

I am surprised that no where in the threats is Duchesnea indica, a strawberry-like plant from India that sprawls EVERY where. It is, i have found out, an edible green. A little fuzzier than i prefer, but i tossed it in with my salad last night - violets, garden sorrel, radiccio, the celery that is looking like celery!, lemon balm and anise hyssop, an onion leaf. It was fine! There's no way i can eat it out of existence, but it's nice to know.

Christine's blues have gotten to me off and on, triggering my own tears; i'm trying to let it pass through me and move on.

I hope that i can return to work with a crisp focus. I did spend some time on the Meeting this weekend -- over an hour on a memo about the previous weekends meeting. I did get a somewhat manipulative email from C hoping i would stay until the new structure is in place. I indicated i hoped we'd be done before my deadline too.

I do feel i have such high maintenance needs.

Saturday: finished distributing manure (fie, mainly water, they ripped my sister off). This does not look like a layer of manure on top of the beds but little dollops raked around with the other amendments. I dunno, maybe i should have just picked a few beds to add it to. I have saved out a few bags for the pepper bed.

I moved some tussocks of my favorite grass and hopefully some Elephantopus tomentosus, a fascinating native wildflower that has great seedpods. I hope that the temporary relocation was sufficient to keep them alive until the installation in the garden bed: their stems will be pretty in the winter if they can make it through the weedy summer.

Then i walked through the woods with a pocket knife and poison and tried to kill the stands of Tree of Heaven i could find. Apparently, it's the wrong time of year. Walking through the woods -- think jungle -- thick canopy, the stilt grass knee high so you can't see your feet and the deep holes made by rotten pine stumps, the thorny autumn olive, the ticks, the copperheads.... MEH. I would love to make progress back into there, but the front is a little less thick and forbidding. Plenty of work to choose from.

Christine and i then walked Carrie over at Fearrington, and i could observe all the plantings around the little homes. Plenty of hellebore planted up close to Acanthus spinosus (Bear's Breeches) -- non-natives that thrive in this climate. It's tempting. The blooming periwinkle is not.

Sunday i very much missed the hour lost to the coming fall weekend. We had a gap in the overcast weather, bright blue skies to highlight how some cherry tree leaves have burst forth and the lilacs leaf buds have broken. So has the autumn olive -- a haze of green in the woods.

I did not do the Quaker work i really needed to then, so i must do it today. I hosted Meeting then after lunch i assembled the cross pieces for the king bed spring trellis. Christine came out to help with holding things up and level, and it looks OK: not like garbage in the yard. That was my fear given the reuse of "trash." Assuming i can reinforce the support posts as needed, it is a success.

I mowed, hitting the annoying clumps of wild onions that the deer and rabbits leave alone and hopefully getting most of the bittercress before it sets too much seed. I think i am making peace with the bitter cress, though -- a non native with tiny white flowers. The patch of yard that was the fenced area when we bought the house was covered with chickweed and tiny tiny little white flowers. I suppose it will all be Indian strawberry this summer. At least neither of those are currently a threat to wild areas. I ponder the futility of trying to choose which wildflowers grow.

I did not get to sleep well. I'm sure some of it is time change, then anxiety about insomnia.

The weather is crazy dry, despite the blanket of clouds that came in midday yesterday. Rain is forecast, which is needed. I don't understand rain when it's in the 50s with a dewpoint of 13°F, but hey, OK.

Off to buy lumber (i hope as the carpenter is free this weekend), do the Quaker work i've put off, and maybe get more gardening in before going back to work tomorrow. Very productive time off: i hope i can keep the momentum in the coming long evenings.

Here we are, as Christine and i tell each other, in the future. I am on out screened in back porch, essentially unchanged since we bought the house, other than some electrical outlet work, removal sof some of the many many wind chimes, and the addition of some furniture to the furniture left by the previous owners. I'm on the lounge they left. It is about 60°F damp, and overcast. I hear trucks and cars as they pass on the road, and airplane over head, a very loud chorus of frogs from the creek branches north and south of our house, crows in the distance, chickadees and other songbirds up close.

I've not seen any bluets this year, and worry that in the area they were most numerous i have changed too much for them to have lived (trampling some parts and burying, mulching others). I check the glade, where i hope they would thrive, to no effect.

No sign of spring beauties, not where the bricks were stacked by the masons, nor in the back porch moss area, nor where i've seen them wild. No sprouts on the peonies.

The star of Bethlehem continue to sprout everywhere along with the daffodils. I see a few buds on the daffodils. The Lenten rose, transplanted to the garden plot to protect it from the masons, has bloomed. An elm and a red maple that have great southern exposure are budding. There's no hint that the saucer magnolia is going to bloom. It's seemed such a mild winter, i would have thought plants would be rushing along, but -- while we haven't had the cold snap that other places had last month -- it has been pretty consistently frosty in the mornings.

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I keep getting sucked into plant searching. I will not buy more bulbs for the berm: i need a place to plant the seedlings i am growing. I will not buy more trees: i will wait for next fall. (I so want Chickasaw plums, varieties selected for larger fruit and better flavor. The few places i know have them out of stock. And i want some selected elderberries. But i have Chinqapins -- a shrubby cousin of chestnuts -- and native crabapple seeds sitting in moist soil outside, waiting to sprout this spring.)

Yesterday i lugged branches from near the glade, where the arborist had left them after cutting down the sweet gums that were too close to the back porch. At the drive circle i chipped them and added them to the growing pile. Yes - -i did get the chipper running again!

But now i can't start the wheeled string trimmer.

On Saturday i walked through the woods (since i couldn't start the string trimmer. There are two colonies of Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima). I think two of the large trees i had noticed a couple of winters ago are dying from the scrape bark-apply glyphosphate technique. I have found a few other large trees (smaller than the big ones, but still mature) which i can treat, and i think i'll give the same treatment in a more select manner to some of the saplings or sprouts. The American linden i planted with my nephew back there seems to be OK.

Anyhow, all morning puttering here. I don't know where my time goes (well, some goes to looking at plants.)

A week ago i was double guessing my choice to not go to Ohio. I think the stress as the news changed day to day would have been intense: i'm glad i stayed home. It was Friday the 6th North Carolina had its second reported case, in my county. There were five more identified Monday a week ago. Thursday morning i made decisions about Meeting for Business and Meeting for Worship. It's felt like since Thursday i am continually surprised by news. "Wait, what?" i respond as the cases go up and up in state. It's 32 cases as i write. Christine notes how quiet it is with the absence of distant traffic: i agree.

As i drove across the lake yesterday, i thought, go fishing - perfect for social distancing.

Meanwhile, where did the promised rain go? I planted a bit in the garden yesterday after a long morning of Meeting and then a visit with Mom and Dad. The clay was cracked across the hard crusted top. Below that baked surface, an inch, the clay was moist and still able to sustain. That's one thing about the clay, it holds moisture longer than a sandy soil would. Once seedlings have roots down past the crust, it's good. It is, however, a challenge for getting seeds started.

The stilt grass seedlings have sprouted.

Just like the news, the weather of last week changed dramatically with a low of 28°F last Sunday, and now last night's low in the high 40s felt cool. Two of the three varieties of yellow daffodils burst into bloom Thursday -- the late blooming variety is taking its time. The dogwood sheltered by the house had broken flower bud, redbuds are blooming, the cherry tree at the south east corner of the house towers over with a spring green haze to its branches. The saucer magnolia is a riot of pink. The bright red-pink azalea has started blooming. The small clump of bluets in the herb garden have bloomed. Perennial flowers that died back over the winter have rosettes forming. The creeping phlox that have not been overrun -- a several year old planting of candy stripe phlox near the copse and last year's planting at the base of the "twins" - the multi trunk tulip poplar - have bloomed. My pansies from seed are actually blooming! The rapeseed plants that survived over last summer on the perms have sent up their yellow flowers (think fields of mustard). The miniature roses and the two rescue roses from the sale racks are looking vital. Mints -- especially where i have cut back the dead growth -- are green and growing. My horseradish didn't make it, but the wormwood i transplanted out of the garden area is thriving (deer don't eat it so i'm not wasting fenced space on it.)

If the weather is right (feh, where'd my half an inch of rain go?!) there will be cloud cover this week so the seedlings i set out yesterday and Saturday won't bake.

Fast food for breakfast and lunch yesterday. The Impossible whopper wowed me with the lovely tomato, lettuce, onions and pickle! I don't "build out" burgers when i have them at home, because i'm usually rushing food not making a meal when i have one. I was delighted to have plant based food available - i was expecting to have french fries - but i find the Impossible burger a little creepy, personally. I didn't dwell on it so that i could enjoy what i could of my meal on the run.

I'm exhausted: work last week was emotionally and intellectually exhausting, Saturday's yard work - breaking ground with the mattock in the bright sun - was physically exhausting, planning and running Meeting for Business and Worship - including offering telepresence - was socially exhausting ... I feel tears as i look at the week ahead and think of my energy.

Spring: salad with the tips of young pea vines, violets and dandelion, sorrel and miner's lettuce, and a bit of my cultivated lettuces.

Aphids and cabbage moth eggs are on the turnip greens. The turnips seem pretty tough, the yellow flowers are waving above them.

At 3 am, Carrie nudged me awake, and i passed letting her out duty to Christine. It was hard enough for me to get back asleep, but i must have managed.

We had a power blink long enough to reset the appliance clocks such that power came back at 5 am. I don't know if the blink or Christine turned on some "smart" lights. It looks like fewer of the households just off our road are without power, so the blink could have been the results of repair work. I have grown to assume many of our blinks and surges are due to breaks that leave others without power or repairs that bring them back. It's hard to know why we luck out with our power line that zig-zags above the road leading to our house when my parents in their proximate to more suburbia with a buried power line in their neighborhood spend so many storm events without power. Such as yesterday. From the maps, my sister probably lost power but has it back to day. My parents might have power back -- the polygon near their home is ambiguous and i think the people who manage the maps get sloppy during storms.

Snow still covers the ground, bright in the predawn gloam, despite the (barely) above freezing temperature last night. I think it's sleeting. The low tunnels i have covering lettuce and winter greens (in hopes of getting a kick start in the spring) have collapsed. While the snow is there, it's fine -- an insulating blanket. But i fear the snow will melt to day, then the temperature drop into the twenties tonight. I suppose i'll go out in the muck and try to get the tunnels back up.

And maybe tonight i'll work on the tea towels.