JUNE BLOOMS

The humid days of summer have arrived so sitting out in the thick air of evening pleasurable scent is abundant. The closeness of the air holds the smell of the phlox, sweet bay magnolias, and whatever redolent bloom wafts into and lingers in the ether.


The real reason to have a garden is the fresh cut flowers you can bring in almost every day. "If I was a rich man" I would have fresh flowers all over the house, and clean, pressed sheets every night. I will have to settle for fresh cut flowers in the months of bloom. Today it was a big bunch of white phlox, I also could not resist mixing some of the blue and white mop head Hydrangias together. So now as I sit in front of the window wall looking over the garden watching an array of birds coming and going from the feeder and the birdbath, I am surrounded by the sweet scent and beautiful display of these vases.
There is an abundance of blooms open in the garden now.

Janet’s Garden

Ab Fab. That’s what my fellow blogger Janet’s garden is: absolutely fabulous. There is a stone meditation pool that looks like something out of Chanticleer (A Pleasure Garden as it’s billed) in Wayne PA, a stream bed that deals with runoff in a productive, water-wise, and beautiful way, fruit trees and veg patch and xeriscape section with strategically-dripped drip irrigation. And much much more. I had joined Master Gardener, Vida Morley, and a clutch of other curious (no, no, interested, supportive) MG’s to inspect the place while Vida vetted the garden for the Bay Wise program. But as soon as we got there, it was obvious that the careful use of water, bio controls, native interplantings, beneficial bugs, birds, incredibly healthy peas and herbs, water features with natural filters and water re-use, and virtually no lawn let alone chemically-fortified (lawn fertilize? HA!) yadda , yadda, yadda, made the vetting part superfluous. She passed. She got her much-deserved sign.



What put me to shame was the fact that Janet’s garden looks like she has a troop of energetic elves perpetually running around, it’s so beautifully kept. (Well yes, I’m envious.).Vida ran down the long points-based list of Bay Wise specifics as per the vetting process, but mainly we wandered around, snatched snow peas off Janet’s prolific vines, and gawped. I tried to solace myself with the thought that she had nearly killed herself prepping the place for inspection, but the truth is it probably always looks like that. No wonder she gets such great bird and nature pictures from her living room!

Grow it, pick it, eat it

The raspberries are here! And, in part thanks to the advice I got in MG class to add some iron via blood meal before they started, and in part due to the rainy weather, they're gorgeous. I have both summer-bearing, which started about a week ago, and fall-bearing aka primocanes, which are actually twice-bearing if left to their own devices. If you don't mow them down at that end of the season, as some recommend, the fall-bearers offer an early-summer crop on last year's canes. It's not as bountiful as the fall one, which starts in mid-late August and goes til frost. But it's perhaps more welcome being that it's first. The thoroughly rambunctious black raspberries are coming, too. The are incredibly prickered, and almost invasive they're so determined to spread and root -- through both root shoots and tip rooting -- but they add lovely depth of flavor to summer red jam and make great mousse. I've picked about a quart of berries every other day, and made the first raspberry tart (what my daughter calls 'Nature's nearly perfect food) so we ate it for dinner (without anything else) and then again for breakfast. (Ditto). Next is raspberry ice cream.

FOR THE BIRDS

Taking up residence in the garden, because of all the work that needs to be done, has many rewards, not the least of them being bird watching. Many of the young have hatched. All these immature but almost adult sized birds running around the yard begging for the food their parents are still providing. They flap their wings and make cute little calls to the parent, and if the other young spot a parent headed for one of their siblings, they run as fast as they can to see if they can snatch the snack away. I know I saw a Mockingbird parent providing lessons to an adolescent on how to catch his own prey, and that the pupil was sure that if mom or dad would just catch one more worm for him now, he would be able to learn for the next time.
The hummingbirds have arrive. I turned on a mister that I have in the garden, to watch a lovely little Ruby Throat fly in to get sprayed, and to dip his beak into a pool of water being held in a leaf. He would leave the mist, sit on a branch, flap his wings, and then dart back into the shower.
The bug population is under immense pressure right now, as all of these young are being fed the high protein diet that their parents give them at this stage in life. That is the best part of attracting so many birds to the garden, the help they give to keeping bugs under control.

Next Generation Ecology

As part of our first year’s 40 volunteer hours, new master gardeners are required to participate in a series of prescribed projects and tasks. These are meant to whet our gardening appetites as well as learn firsthand what volunteer options are available to contribute the annual 20 hours (or more) to the overall mission required of the Master Gardeners. So last Wednesday, I trundled down to Kennard Elementary in Centreville to help several MG’s help a battalion of fourth graders plant a ditch with Lobelia cardinalis, Asclepias and Rudbeckia. I was fairly clueless when I first got there, trowel in hand, and almost as frustrated as the kids by the thatch of wiregrass they had to hack through to plug in the plants. But as I watched the kids, I was encouraged not only by the general enthusiasm (with only a couple of exceptions) for the grubby hands-on work, but by how many of the group of about 50 kids got both the concept –ecosystem interactions – and the specifics – native plants simultaneously help contain and filter runoff to prevent it polluting the Bay, and they encourage the 3B’s (or 4 depending on how you count) Beneficial Bugs, Birds, and Bullfrogs. The kids knew there was a concrete reason for the effort and could see how the first part of the little swale, planted several years ago, was sustaining wildlife -- the 3 (or 4) B’s already in evidence and noisily swooping, chattering, buzzing, and garrumphing. I was reminded of the old adage: As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. Those elementary school twigs clomping around in the muddy ditch shoving plants in willy-nilly seem to be growing well.

Growing it and eating it

It's amazing how fast things go ( and grow) this time of year. Two weeks ago, the multicolored peas (bottom left) from Cook's Garden were barely through the ground. Now they're like a botanical version of Janis Joplin's coif. All unruly and refusing to be tamed. But lovely. I can hardly keep up with the bindweed (Convolvulus). Little sprouts appear everywhere, climb up a fork left for a day against the pergola, sneak up the stalks of the trumpet lilies and grab hold of the bee balm (Monarda didyma) in an often-successful attempt to wrestle them back down to the dirt as though they resent the Monarda's sturdy character. It's a perpetual battle, not helped by the guilt produced by those glossy pictures of perfect gardens you see in magazines. But I've had lettuce and herbs out of the garden so far, enjoyed the iris and peonies immensely, and have just last night cut my first bok choy, a real beauty. Next week, I'll probably have peas.

Reptile time

I wish I had a picture of our last three snakes, but they caught us unaware. By the time the neighbor had killed one it was too mangled to photo, and when my husband, Gary, caught the second, it was a little too immediate a problem to photo, so you'll just have to take my word for it. The first, we saw slithering under a car headed for the house (one of the dogs, all of whom hate snakes, saw it first). We managed to semi-deter it, shoving it off into the lilies by the well cap, much to the consternation of a chipmunk who blasted out of the lilies as soon as the snake arrived. The following day, Gary found an interesting striped snake who lives in the woodpile. Still no camera and by the time he had one in hand the snake had disappeared. Then later that afternoon our next door neighbor, who is terrified of snakes, was startled in her garden by the one Gary had ushered into the lilies. She killed it, then asked Gary to take it away. Nature may be savage, ( it's a snake-eat-chipmunk world out there) but She cleans up her messes over time, so he pitched it into the back brush where it will gradually feed other things as it decomposes.

An hour later a screech from next door alerted us to the third snake. Our neighbor's daughter-in-law wouldn't let her kill this one and the pair were tracking it in anticipation of the Robson Relocation Unit arriving in answer to t he screech. The snake turned out to be big --5 feet long and as thick as a Kielbasa though as with all the indigenous snakes here on the Eastern Shore, not poisonous. We went over with gloves and a squitch. ( For those of you who remember Horton and Dr. Seuss, you'll need no explanation, for those who don't, it's a kind of extension grabber tool). I ran off to collect The Snake Whisperer, a young friend who LOVES snakes and whom snakes LOVE. But by the time I returned, Gary had the snake in gloved mitts,so we climbed back into the car and drove out to a friend's farm to release him. I only hope the snake doesn't have the homing instincts of a snapping turtle, which houses some kind of internal GPS (which is another story). Life in the country is never dull. I only wish I had pictures.

Norfolk Botanical Garden

From top to bottom: Robinson Crusoe's house in the World of Wonder (WOW) children's garden, path to the NATO Tower, a lovely shaded eagle (and garden) observation tower, and Japanese garden.

Norfolk Botanical Garden

I’d done a bleary-eyed wee-hours drive to Norfolk, VA, so my husband could do his radar recertification on Friday and was looking for something to occupy me for what I thought was going to be 8 hours. Fortunately, the Norfolk Botanical Gardens, smacked up beside Norfolk Airport, was close. And what a surprise! 180+ acres of gardens, including a long statuary allee, acres of rhododendron-and camellia-filled woods, Japanese garden, 3 acres of rose garden, and a wonderfully creative children’s garden that the kids I saw running around obviously loved. The place was, while not packed, surprisingly full. And there's a boat ride available that wends through the gardens. As it turned out, my husband finished his re-cert in 2 hours, not the usual 8 (clever man) and I was out of there before lunch, but could have happily stayed all day exploring then having lunch in their shady picnic grounds by the lake.