GREAT ARTICLE

A New York Times article this morning on Pollinating in the Garden by Anne Raver, was so interesting I thought I should share it with you. Click on the name below to go to the page.

COME HITHER, BUMBLEBEE, AND POLLINATE

5000 WORDS

There doesn't seem to be a happy balance for the weather this year. I decided I had better capture the spring blooms with a camera, before they faded in the extreme heat. Later this week we should get a break returning to more normal spring temperatures. Tulipa 'Angelique', Prunus Serrulata 'Kwanzan', Espalier Malus x Domestica 'Gala' , Tulipa, Tulipa 'flair'

Bindweed wrapped around daf bloom

And Now It's Summer

We've gone from jackets and woodstoves to sleeveless shirts in a week. Welcome to gardening in Maryland. No wonder only the strong survive, including the invasives we seem to have cropping up everywhere (thanks in part to increased CO2). Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) is my particular nemesis. It looks like a white morning glory, but it's no Ipomoea ( and whatever you do. don't let it bloom!). It can grow overtop the lilies and drag them down inside two or three days and can smother a vegetable patch in a week if not checked. The non-chemical recommendations for this misery are first prevention (well duh) persistent hand-pulling, flame-throwers (!),and gall mites, an ostensible beneficial. But I'm leery of introducing a non-native 'cure' into the mix, mindful that we don't really know enough, usually, before we plonk for the cure-all solution. The perfect pill for everything. Japanese Kudzu, originally an ornamental, was introduced as an erosion control in the 1930's or so, while gypsy moths were to be a cure for the flagging silk industry. We know how they both turned out.
My current frustrated approach to bindweed is to pull the earliest stuff, plant what I want in the semi-cleared spaces, yank more, plant some more, and Roundup what I can once the bindweed leaves grow large enough to hit effectively with Roundup ( since it's a systemic and the leaves need to be large enough to take in a goodly dose). That's how I 'cured' the Canada thistle, introduced through some straw mulch, that took over my garden about a decade ago. The thistle is under control enough now that I can dig every little plant that pops up. I've been at the bindweed, which is not officially a noxious weed (meaning the law requires you to eradicate it) for several years now not terribly effectively -- partly since the campaign has been interrupted by sailing and other more pleasurable pursuits. Meanwhile I'm yanking and planting.

FAST FORWARD

Spring is in fast forward. Cercis, Arisaema, tulipa, Cornus, and viburnums are bursting out in flower. None of them seem to have slowed down during the rain and cold of the past few days.
The Robin that has taken up residence on my teak dinning chair and the Killdeer on the gravel path in the garden, I am sure, have noted that at least for today they will not have to sit for hours in the pouring rain protecting their little unborn chicks.
I ordered plants, most likely too many, as I was longing to get into the garden this past January. As the boxes of plants start to arrive I am walking through the garden marking the location of their eventual homes. Since I have not finished weeding, I will have to nurse them in the cold frames for a while. Will I ever finish weeding?
So with northwest winds, cool temperatures(frost advisory for tonight), and sun, I think I will find a protected spot to weed and mulch for the day and hope for warmer weather to come.

New Gardening Eyes

The thing about going through the Master Gardener course is it makes you look at the same old things with new eyes. I find myself not only passing trees and shrubs on my own bit of earth with a new sense of curiosity – what the dickens is that dark spot on the trunk? Why is the woodpecker in the middle of the ancient Yew? –but the trees and plants and critters I’m blasting past along the highway. These new eyes, coupled with learning, make the whole experience of walking through the landscape denser, more in-depth. Instead of it being a Gainesborough painting, all soft edges and pastoral blends, it looks more like a panoramic three-D movie shot with plots and subplots in dialed-up multichrome as though the scales have fallen from my eyes. A richer life at a time when a lot of us are feeling a little poor. Not a bad investment.

Greenhouse cramming

April fools us sometimes

T.S. Eliot contended in The Wasteland that April is the cruelest month. He knew what he was talking about even though he was across the Atlantic from our more challenging meteorological mood swings here in Maryland. Tantalizingly warm one day, cruel frost the next, which makes hardening off plants a bit of a hort-test. The little greenhouse was getting crowded with tomatoes and peppers and herbs so I had taken out the hollyhocks (Alcea ‘Nigra’ and Alcea ‘Cabernet’), a promisingly purple-black bloom and wine-dark red I intend to frame against a south-facing white wall. They needed to be planted anyway and I had the encouragement of a volunteer hollyhock that’s up about 6 inches beside the greenhouse foundation. The plants are going into the garden between office and kitchen along with some cerulean blue sweet peas (Clitoria) that I assumed had the same kind of stamina. But after two chilly nights in a protected spot beside the hollyhock flats the poor Clitoria, whose seed I got from Thompson Morgan, was looking like it had made a trek across the frozen tundra. It’s not been touched by frost. Even so, the edges of its top leaves are threatening yellow; others are pale green and limp. Not happy. We'll see. I hope to stick half of them in the ground this afternoon in front of the hollyhocks, say a little benediction (as I do for all the plants when they make a transition from one place to another) and hope for the best.

I appreciate the change of seasons, but this spring, chilly and grey and only desultorily trying to make up for our current 4-inch shortfall in annual rain, is a bit depressing. A bright spot is the Klehm’s Song Sparrow Nursery Magnolia, that for the first time since I planted it two years ago on the east side of the outbuilding is opening creamy yellow blooms that offer up a lilting fragrance. A hopeful sign that if winter comes, true spring can’t be THAT far behind. This ain’t Russia after all.

Life and Death

I have decided this is a Sharp-shinned or Coopers Hawk that has been chasing birds close to the house, causing them to flying into the window wall and netting the hawk its prey. Any help in identification would be welcome. We have witnessed this happen several times now, this time I just happened to have my camera close by and the victim was a starling, not a dove.
The Podophyllum peltatum(Mayapple) is everywhere on the edges of the hedgerow next to the stream that meanders to the Chester River. On closer inspection there are the basal leaves of the Clatonia lanceolata (spring beauty) coming up as well as the mottled leaves of the Erythronium(Dog tooth Violet or Trout lily). I did find one flower bud in the vast swath of mayapple, so I expect that it will be open by tomorrow. Hope I can remember where it is. The Amelanchier canadensis are in full bloom, with the leaves starting to unfold, along the eastern woods.
Those rains yesterday have slowed the progress of finishing the plowing of the corn field, but if the predicted winds stir up, it will dry quickly.

This is Spring?

Wednesday, second week in April, and although it's sunny, it's more like first week in March. Second round of dafs blooming but slowly -- if it doesn't get too cold, they'll go for ages -- but the Ice Stick tulips, lovely slim rose cups with white edges, are clamped shut.  Can't even think about taking the Bergamo Bergamot ( a new thing from Burpee) that I've started in the greenhouse out to stuff it in the ground today. I'm too busy scouting firewood.

NEW BEGINNINGS

Today is the beginning of a blog site for the Master Gardener's Program of Queen Anne County, Maryland. There will be posts from the volunteers in the program about the adventures of gardening education on the eastern shore of Maryland. The authors of these posts will talk about their own gardens, as well as the interactions they have with gardeners they have helped in the comunity. Check here for updates on what is happening.