After the Rain in a Dry Garden

by Kelly

There are about eight billion songs titled 'After the Rain' on YouTube. Queue up your favorite and take a walk in the garden with me.

Chokecherry? Black Cherry?

Soloman's Seal

Chicory

After the rain, the birds came out of hiding. I hadn't realized that they weren't singing anymore until they started again.

Speaking of wildlife, we have some seriously strange squirrels around here. There are about six or seven of them that seem to run in a pack. This pack makes a regular morning trip, a few times a week, from one bank of trees to another, at about eight in the morning when I'm hanging laundry on the line. The weird part is, they run across the yard together to do this, looking a lot like a bunch of Meerkats. They could easily travel through the tree branches to get where they're going, but they don't. I have tried a few times to get a picture of this behavior, but they're way too fast and blend perfectly into the dry, brown grass.

Their destination is a line of trees that contains a few oaks and one huge, old walnut tree. Since there is already a squirrel's nest in that walnut tree, I can only imagine that these guys are poaching in someone else's territory. And that could be why they travel together, so they can get away with this. But why do they run across the lawn? That has to be dangerous for them. Then again, the previous owners of this house never, ever had pets, so generations of squirrels have grown up here without being chased by dogs.

Things might get interesting in the fall, when all those acorns and walnuts are finally ripe. I'm hoping for a massive squirrel battle that I can record and post on YouTube to earn my fifteen minutes of Internet fame.

Anyway, enough David Attenborough type stuff. Let's hope that this little bit of rain saved some of the plants. Especially the local farmer's corn and beans. The crops have failed in the rest of Illinois, but our county still has a chance.

Pictures From a Dry Garden

by Kelly

That title sounds like some puzzling existential film that would be shown on IFC or Sundance, but really it's just a statement of fact.

I tried to wait for one of the fledgling baby wrens to poke his head out of this birdhouse, because I thought it would be a nice contrast, the weathered old paint and a very young, very small bird. But Mama wren was scolding me from above, so I decided to move on. Besides, even though it was only nine in the morning, it was 92 degrees outside and humid as only the Midwest can be.

 Is this good weather for grapes? We'll see...

 

I've never been that in love with Hostas, but these were actually quite pretty until they shrivelled up in the heat and drought. 

In fact, it's so dry that it's starting to look more like autumn around here, just because so many trees are dropping their leaves. But there are some tough survivors around here that aren't giving up...

Whatever this Mulberry tree has been through has left it scarred and ugly, but it's leaves are green and it was covered with berries a few weeks ago.

And one last spot of beauty, struggling along in a hot, white desert that it landed in by chance.

I'm going to go back out to give this guy a drink of water. I admire anything that stubbornly gives the finger to the uncaring universe and all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Sometimes my efforts to help the small creatures in the world backfire, but sometimes they work out. Fingers crossed.

The Rented Garden, Continued

by Kelly

More pictures from the rented garden:

I saw a Baltimore Oriole (the bird, not the baseball player) for the first time, but didn't have my camera, so I used a picture I found at the Cornell University Bird Identifier site.  Pretty, isn't he?
 

CornellLab Ornithology

grape vines

Apparently grape vines have to be fertilized with fruit rinds and the like, because around the roots of these plants are little piles of fruit scraps, left by the owners of the property. Who knew?

Let's take a walk down this beautiful lane of trees and see what we can find...

Did I mention that the backyard looks onto the river?

I'd better keep my distance, since I can't swim. Luckily, there's a life preserver nearby...

And, to go with the enormous old oak in the front yard, a whole group of enormous old cedars in the back yard.

Such an amazing place.

Meanwhile, more roses are blooming back at our own house and my husband was sweet enough to brave the thorns and bring me a sampling.

This is officially called a 'Seven Sisters' rose, because the tiny blooms appear in bunches of seven. My husband renamed ours 'The Bi***', because it always turns its thorns against him if he gets too close. So although the Seven Sisters doesn't smell as sweet as our yellow roses, it does have attitude, which I find just as appealing. And yes, the rose has bitten me, too. I have special leather gloves gauntlets that I use for pruning it.

The Rented Garden

by Kelly

As promised, some pictures of the garden at the house we are renting.

Sweet William

Spiderwort

enormous oak tree

dragonfly - there were an awful lot of these, all identical

Dame's Rocket

Yes, that's our cat on a leash. He was an indoor/outdoor cat at our old house, and doesn't understand why he can't go outside now. I've tried to explain that he might get lost so far from his old digs, and there's this dangerous highway practically in the front yard, but he just looked more sad and pitiful. It's almost like he doesn't understand English or something.

So we taught him how to walk on a lead. Luckily there aren't any other cats around here to laugh at him for acting like a dog. I, on the other hand, have been on the receiving end of a lot of curious looks from the neighbors, who are no doubt wondering what kind of weirdos have moved in next door to them.

And even though he's an older cat, he took to learning a new trick surprisingly well, (except for the first few attempts, where he flattened himself on the ground and was as hard to move as an Occupy Wall Street protester) and he seems reasonably happy about the whole thing.

That's his happy face. Honestly.

Square Foot Gardening in Action

                                               Peas, Shallots, Spinach and Sprouting Basil

                                                                        The Tomatoes

                                                                   Up Close Spinach

                                                                     The Long View

The Square Foot Garden is up and producing. We've already harvested radishes, lettuce and spinach and just planted the hot weather crops last week - tomatoes, basil and peppers. I have to admit I am a farm girl at heart, despite my big city roots. I keep trying to convince my husband that we need to buy a small hobby farm - just enough to sustain the two of us and a house full of assorted animals. I figure having a farm is one way to wrangle that cat I've always wanted out of him. I suspect Dan is a farmer deep down as well - if anything it's in the genes as his Mom (Donna) and Dad are expert gardeners and he does seem to enjoy it once we commit to it. This year we also have two 6x15 foot plots where I work to garden as we like. Saturday we planted 12 tomato plants and Monday we got in the second bed of assorted other stuff - more basil (I truly believe you can never have enough basil or tomatoes), the world's hottest pepper, zucchini, cukes and butternut squash. And I also hope to plant about 30 gladiola bulbs. It's been a blazing week here in the northern midwest - my tomatoes are smiling :) Happy gardening!

Project BudBurst Needs YOU

by Kelly

We're renting, and while I miss the garden I actually made with my own two hands, there are any number of flowering plants here for me to look at. And, since I'm not completely sure what some of them are, I spend a lot of time on the computer, using this plant identifier site.

That's why, when I saw an article about Project BudBurst in my local paper, I signed up right away. After all, it combines science and gardening - how could I refuse?

Project BudBurst is an online project which is tracking climate change and how that is affecting plants across the U.S. Basically, they want to know when certain plants leaf out, flower, seed, and drop their leaves in the fall. The official  word for this is Phenology (not to be confused with Phrenology, which is reading the bumps on someone's head - but if you want to find out if you have the bumps which denote spirituality or marvelousness, click here).

The list of plants they're tracking ranges from common ones like dandelion and lilac to things like Black Locust and Henbit deadnettle (which sounds like a goth band, but is actually quite a girly pink flower). I've signed up to track a few plants, which I would actually be doing anyway every time I walk outside.

Henbit via Wikipedia

Signing up is kind of a chore, since this is science, after all, and they need all sorts of specific information like latitude and longitude and your elevation. The site helps you figure out all this information though, and that can be interesting too, especially when you discover that your particular town is basically located in a great big mud puddle (something you might have suspected for years, but now you will be able to prove that scientifically). And they have an app (yes, there's an app for that) for Android, so it's easy to enter the information.

But if signing up isn't your thing, you can make a 'one time observation'. For example, if the lilacs just bloomed in your front yard, you can visit the BudBurst website and let them know.

Cherry blossoms via The Quilting Sword

This whole idea isn't new, though - the Japanese have been tracking cherry blossom bloom times for years, and they even have a special forecast for this event. For some absolutely stunning cherry blossom pictures, like the one above, pay The Quilting Sword a visit. And by the way, that is the coolest blog name ever. I wish I had thought of it.

So if you've got a bit of a garden, and you've noticed that your flowers are coming up early, why not visit Project BudBurst and let them know? Maybe the planting zones are changing for good, and those of us up here in chilly zone 5 will one day be able to plant all those pretty warm climate flowers. If that's true, it would be nice to know.

 Meanwhile, I'm going out to take pictures of what's blooming today. Flower pictures will be coming soon.

Surprisingly Edible Plants

by Kelly

In honor of the heavy-duty gardening that I suspect is going on  outside Dawn and Donna's homes today, i thought I'd share something surprising that I found on Modish.

Everyone knows some of the standard edible flowers - dandelions, clover, violets, nasturtiums, roses and the like. Here's a list I found at Wikipedia.

I was surprised to see Lilacs and Sunflowers (yes, the flower, not just the seeds) on the list. However, I was even more surprised to find out that this common garden plant is also edible - Hostas!


Here's the article, if you're interested. In one recipe, you boil the leaves for one and a half minutes, rinse them, and serve them with salad dressing.

I would imagine you would have to be very careful as to exactly which Hostas you decide to eat, and probably the young leaves would taste the best.

Also. no one volunteers exactly what the leaves taste like. It might be an acquired taste, like spinach, or so bland that you can't describe it, like iceberg lettuce. So it might be best to sample them (carefully) first, before you dish some up for your next garden party.

I always found Hostas pretty boring compared to ferns or actual flowering garden plants, but maybe I'll have some in my garden in the future.

St. Louis Botanical Gardens

 

In the park there is a little machine, near a bridge, that dispenses fish pellets so that you can feed the koi. There is also a little note that says 'Please do not feed the ducks'. I imagine that this is because if those fish aren't satisfied with the amount of food they are given, the ducks will start disappearing, one by one.