Monday’s Muse

A very few of my garden books

“Now, thank God, everything is finished; perhaps there are still things to be done; there at the back the soil is like lead, and I rather wanted to transplant this centaurea, but peace be with you; the snow has already fallen. . . . Well then make a fire in my room; let the garden sleep under its iderdown of snow. It is good to think of other things as well; the table is full of books which we have not read, let’s do that; . . .”

Karel Capek in The Gardener’s Year: The Gardener’s December.

I am so late with my Monday Report that I have decided to be a little early for my Muse Day post.  On the actual December 1 you can visit Sweet Home and Garden Chicago where Carolyn gail hosts Muse Day and see which of the other muses are abroad.

I’ve shown only a few of my garden books in my husband’s and my shared office. Needless to say there are many others, in the Great Room and piled next to my bed. I am ready for this reading season. Now that I am ‘retired’ I don’t have to rush out in the morning and I treasure my early morning reading, especially when I have lit the fire, and the wind cannot chill me.

Helping me celebrate my second blogoversary on December 6, Storey Publishing and Liquid Fence are offering gifts to the winner of my lottery.  Leave a comment about a favorite book, or seed starting tip, and I might choose your name to win Nan Ondra’s book, The Perennial Care Manual which will become a favorite read, as well as two packages of CowPots, made of composted cow manure. 24 in all. The lottery will close at midnight on December 5, and I hope I will have many names entered.  Good luck to all.

Wildlife – There and Here

It was wild on the field in Ashburnam when our grandson, Ryan, and his team, the undefeated North Middlesex Wranglers, played for the state Pop Warner championship title.

And they won! The Wranglers are State Champs. Next weekend they go to the regional playoffs. Ryan has a pretty good grip on that amazing trophy. Great team and a great game. Ryan’s mom went wild cheering – and can barely speak today!  Yay Wranglers!  Good luck next weekend.

This porcupine has been lurking around the End of the Road for some time now. Our neighbor is careful when she walks her dog, and the UPS man stopped his truck to watch the porcupine, while the porcupine sat on a tree stump by the side of the road and watched him.

Porcupines are the second largest North American rodent. They can have 30,000 or more 3 inch quills which detach easily from their body, and easily into any attacker, or curious dog. Though they go in easily, porcupine quills are difficult and painful to remove because they are barbed. They cannot throw their quills, but Don’t Touch! Even if you should get that close to this slow moving animal.

 Fall is prime breeding season, but we have only seen this solitary porcupine. They are supposed to spend a lot of time in trees, but we have only seen porcupines on the ground, in the field, in the Sunken Garden, and this morning, underneath the Cottage Ornee. This has me nervous because porcupines like to eat green branches, twigs, and bark – and they just like to chew wood.  The Cottage is made of wood! They like canoe paddles, too.

Quotidian Pleasures

There were frosts and snows here in Heath, but in between we have been having the most delightful weather. Sun and warmth are such blessings at this time of the year that every ordinary (quotidian) task brings an awareness of the pleasures of the earth.  I have my morning routine, beginning with feeding and watering the chickens who are enjoying this weather even though it does not prompt them to lay eggs. I’m down to two or three a day, from the whole flock.

It is such a pleasure to be able to use the clothesline and have all the laundry smell so fresh and sweet after a day in the sun and breezes. A pleasure to hang out and bring in. Pretty soon it will not be so pleasureable. I’ll just use the dryer which is a whole different experience, but still, a pleasure when I consider the alternative of trudging out in snow and ice to let the laundry freeze on the line.

The harvest is over, and the vegetable garden is pretty well prepared for winter, but I’ve only just started on cleaning up the ‘herb bed’ in front of the house. The bed was enlarged this year to accompany the new paved entry leading to the Welcome Platform. The herb bed actually includes Black Beauty lilies, and a new Thomas Affleck Rose, as well as chives, parsley, thyme, bee balm, lemon balm, sage, black stem mint, tarragon and horseradish. This year it also included a couple of tomato plants which ultimately suffered the Late Blight.  The clean up has been such a pleasure in this warm weather.  The weed roots don’t seem to hold as tight, and there are no bugs. I’m not quite done and I hope the weather holds for a few more days.

And at the end of a day filled with ordinary pleasures, there was one of our extraordinary sunsets.  But I still had to look forward to a comfortable and pleasurable dinner with my husband, and being able to slip between those sweet smelling sheets at bedtime. A perfectly ordinary day.

Seeing the Details

My weeping birch 11-2

The week of rain and wind have blown all the trees nearly bare, but the rain was much needed, and mild weather in between allowed the garden clean up to continue. Now that so much is bare I can notice and admire details. The few leaves left on my weeping birch can be seen individually, the color and form better admired. I also have to wonder about the brain of this birch. Surely it has a brain, or why else would there hardly be any branches on the northwest side of the trunk. The tree was only about a foot tall when I planted it and I  would have thought that the branches would be more evenly distributed, but perhaps after a couple of years of feeling the those northwest winds, bitter in the winter, the tree decided it had to protect itself. It weeps to the south and east. Not what I expected.

Rosa glauca hips

The rose bushes are bare as well. Several have pretty hips. The attractiveness of the Rosa glauca hips which will turn nearly black were mentioned in the catlog from which I ordered this bush.

Mount Blanc Rose Hips

The rugosa Mount Blanc has large fat rose hips. Rugosa rose hips can be used for making a Vitamin C rich tea, or ground and cooked into a jam. A young neighbor and I once spent an afternoon stewing up a pot of rose hip jam.  Once was enough.

Hips of the Mystery Rose

I thought this rose was Trigintepetala, but a perusal of an illustrated rose book this spring said it is not.  It is vigorous and has spread by runners on the rose walk. I am barely keeping it in control. 

Hips of the multiflora pasture rose

The multiflora rose is the scourge of our fields.  The birds eat the hips and spread the bushes. Everywhere.

The Fairy 11-2

And look! The Fairy is still blooming. All alone.

Cleaning Up and Digging In

Old House Gardens delivery

When I called Old House Gardens to order some bulbs last week I feared I might have missed their shipping season, but they reassured me  and on this perfect morning I found my order in the mailbox. It took only a few minutes before I  was out in the garden. I knew just where to plant the ivory Beersheba daffodils – right under the Miss Willmott, a white flowered lilac Jerry Sternstein gave me last year. To say under the bush is a slight mis-statement. The bush has come through one winter, but it is still so small that is hardly any under there. It will come in time, though.

Miss Willmott lilac underplanted with daffodils

I had already planted some bulbs under Miss Willmott and I think this whole area will be quite lovely in the spring. You can see there is a mammoth clump of purple Siberian irises (they could definitley use some dividing) and on the other side of the irises is a pink Miss Canada lilac that blooms later than my other lilacs.

Foxy Lady Dahlias

The dahlias gave a good show this year. Since I had such good luck overwintering them last year I went out to dig them up to keep for next spring.

The main trick to digging dahlias is to avoid cutting the tubers. With just a little luck the one tuber planted will have turned into a substantial bunch. I dug a least a foot away from the stem and loosened the soil and dug around with my hand to  get a sense of where the tubers were before actually lifting them.

After lifting the tubers and shaking off what dirt I can, I do clip off the stems. According to my Wyman’s Encyclopedia you can divide the tubers in fall or spring. I opted for spring and I will store these in a clump. I left the trimmed clumps of tubers outside to dry off, but brought them in before evening. I’ll let them dry out in the house for just a day or two before  storing them in barely damp peat moss in our basement, which  worked well last winter.

I am so grateful for these few mild days. We needed last week’s rain, more than 2 inches, but I also needed some mild days to try and catch up on the fall cleaning. There is less time than you might think because I have other delightful chores to do, like helping to make a gingerbread house for Holiday Village at the Charlemont Federated Church on November 14. There will be many other beautiful gifts, gift certificates, Treasures, crafts and food on offer – along with the gingerbread house, and kits to make your own.

My To-Do List

The Monday Record was intended to show what I had accomplished in the preceeding week, possibly including Monday itself. However, this week I spent a lot of time looking out the window at rain, and wind, and even snow muttering that if I were a Real Gardener I wouldn’t let poor weather stop me from attending to all the chores that needed attending to!

After five days of below freezing tempeatures, the low temperature today was 27 degrees. After the first two hard frost the dahlia foliage was killed, but I haven’t yet made it out to dig up the tubers and let them dry. Last year I packed my increased number of tubers away in barely damp peat moss and left them in the basement (a fairly constant 50 degrees. I used an unclosed plastic bag and a defunct picnic cooler as the storage unit.  I checked them a couple of times over the course of the winter and they remained firm. By the time I thought about potting them up to get a head start on the season, they were already sending out shoots. The weather this week is supposed to be fine, even warm. I hope the tubers will be sound when I dig them up. This year I am planning to mark the dug tubers with an ID, variety, or at least color name. That will make next year’s garden less haphazard.  Add ID tags to the to-do list.

The freezes that killed the dahlias made the gingko trees lose all their leaves at once. Add raking to the list.

I thought I had ripped out all the annuals, but here is whats left of the red zinnias, behind the puple asters. All dead. All needing to be ripped out or cut back for the winter.  Alma Potschke along with various other perennials, needs cutting back, too.

The peonies are dead, too. My to-do list for the past two weeks has noted the necessity to cut them back. This week for sure. My list is growing.

I haven’t been totally idle. I’ve been weeding and digging vegetable beds, adding compost and lime. I’m not done yet. Add that to the list.

The vegetable garden isn’t quite done. The deer snacked on the Brussels sprouts foliage, but most of the sprouts are intact. Some years we have picked the last sprouts for Thanksgiving dinner.

Even in the rain I could pick up bagged leaves from a neighbor for my compost piles. I put three of these huge bags in the black plastic composter, used earlier for a blighted potato planter, The other bags are on and around my regular compost piles. I have a separate compost pile for rough green struff, heavy stems, and questionalbe weed roots.  I do try not to put any weeds with dangerous roots, like quack grass or mint, or tansy, in the regular compost pile. I am looking forward to a spring with lots of available compost.

Anything else on the list?  Well, just a few things. Plant some bulbs, spread more wood chips, put away the hoses, empty, clean and put away flower pots?  What’s on your to-do list?

The Fairy 10-19-2009

Bloom is gone, EXCEPT for The Fairy. Both bushes are still blooming. A testament to their hardiness, as well as their loveliness.

I

A Busy Season

This Columbus Day weekend the dawns were beautiful, if only briefly, but it was a nice change after a cold, dreary, damp week. This is the view from our bedroom window.

The long weekend means a short but intense Bake Sale Season. There were bake sales everywhere. Henry took my apple pie down to the Shelburne Falls Area Women’s Club Pie Sale, and dodged 6th graders in the parking lot at Avery’s. They weren’t quite ready to sell, but when he got to the Heath Library sales were brisk.  I baked cookies and brownies and bread yesterday and spent Saturday morning here. I’m happy to say that we made a lot of eaters happy, as well as our librarian who can now buy some extra books.  Young Hazel had baked for the sale early in the  morning, but she got her reward – once she made up her mind.

Once home from the Bake Sale Henry and I had a lot to do outside, especially since last week was so cold and wet. We felt the season rushing past, in the fields and in the garden. I had beds to dig and weed, squash and lettuce to harvest in the vegetable garden.  I made  a good start, but there is more to do. My big priority was planting the garlic that I bought at  The Garlic and Arts Festival. Garlic is almost the last thing to be planted during the last planting season of the year. First I dug and weeded the  3 x 6 foot bed where 4 tomato plants grew – and had to be removed because of Late Blight. This bed is at the end of the raspberry patch, just on the other side of my post-modern orange snowfence.

Liming the soil

The soil in this spot is pretty good, but I thought it really needed some lime. Garlic will grow almost anywhere – in the sun – but a pH between 6.2 and 6.8 is idea.  I think my soil is nowhere near 6.8. I promise I will get a soil test.

I incorporated the lime and was ready to plant, following the directions on the Seeds of Solidarity package. I split my five garlic bulbs and arranged the 37 cloves in three rows about 6 inches apart in every direction. I planted them in alphabetical order beginning with the row nearest the fence, Belarus, German White, Music (2 bulbs) and Purple Glazer. I pushed each clove 2 to 3 inches into the soil.  Just like planting seeds, except that I’m doing this in October.

Having made such a nice neat garlic bed, all mulched with straw, I felt I should finish making this area neater.  I had already gotten new cardboard, so I made a quick trip to the public wood chip pile in the old station wagon.

Two nights of  heavy frost killed the sweet peas, dahlias and the cosmos, but not the broccoli, parsley or Brussels sprouts, you’ll notice.  I cleaned the flowers out of the garden, laid  out cardboard over the sections of the path around the new garlic bed and covered it with 4 wheelbarrow loads of woodchips.  We don’t have a truck, or a way to the garden with a vehicle, so this is a terrific way to get exercise. Hah!

And a way to get tired.  Henry returned from the fields and it was time to make supper, Pasta!  Then to the easy chair, and the fire to sit down and finish reading the Sunday paper. The temperature is dropping again, and there is even the possibility of snow tonight.  Surely not!

Worm Manure Harvest

A few of my worms

It might be more genteel to say a harvest of worm castings, but no one ever knows what I’m talking about when I use that term. Castings or manure, I took advantage of the warm day to bring my worm farm out of the basement and begin the harvest

I dumped the whole bin full of worms, bedding and manure out onto a plastic sheet, and let that rest and give the worms time to dive deep into the bedding away from the bright sun while I rinsed out the bin and put in a layer of damp shredded newspaper.

Worms always move away from the sun which means it is pretty easy to remove the top layer of bedding and castings without getting too many worms. That layer goes immediately into the wheelbarrow. Then I go through the rest of the bedding to separate out the worms, throwing them back into the bin, and throwing the bedding and castings into the wheelbarrow.  Sometimes I’d come across a whole nest of worms in the matted wet newspaper so I’d throw all that into the worm bin. Throwing some of the old bedding and castings into the new bin is fine. It is even good for the new bin. 

I was very happy to see that I have a good population of worms including tiny baby worms. If they are reproducing I must have a good system going. I moved the bin into my basement at the end of August when night time temperatures routinely went below 50 degrees which is the lowest temperature these red wigglers can stand.  The basement temperatures remain a fairly constant 50 degrees through the winter. The worms did survive their first winter, but they do not thrive at those temperatures so manure production goes down, but with luck there will be another good harvest in the early spring.

Some of my blogging friends are collecting a harvest of award nominations and all of you, not only bloggers, can go to www.Blotanical.com and vote for your favorite blog in a whole array of categories. Some of my favorite blogs have been nominated for Best U.S. Blog – namely: Faire Garden, A Garden in Progress, My Secret Garden, Garden Rant, and Hoe and Shovel.

Other favorites have been nominated at Best Educational Garden Blog – namely: May Dreams Gardens, In the Garden, Little Green Fingers and Hayefield.

Nomination season at Blotanical is an especially good time to discover  some of the best and most beautiful blogs, blogs from other countries, and blogs that might fit your own special interests.  Be sure and check them out.

Falling – Gently

After a chilly, even cold, week we are now enjoying a sunny warm spell.  Autumn begins tomorrow but the fall into the golden season is now a gentle one. I am looking forward to a mild week because there is a lot to do in the garden.

In spite of the chill, I did get to observe the eradication of the Mile-a-Minute vine in Greenfield, and visit some other gardens last week.

Mile-a-Minute vine

Dahlia - giant

While I was visiting the Purington family at Woodslawn Farm I got to admire  some maginificent flowers like this giant pink dahlia. It’s about 6 feet tall and the blossom is more than 8 inches across.

Balsam

I know about balsam evergreens, of course, but this balsam flower was new to me. It was just one of the many flowers in a garden that allows Barbara Purington to keep the house filled with gorgeous bouquets.

Katsura

There is always a lot to admire at Tony Palumbo and Mike Collins’ garden. The Greenfield Garden Club visited and were in high admiration mode. Tony showed us his long tall zinnia border which I loved, hibiscus, an exulting hydrangea and a secret garden with a splashing fountain.  Tony and Mike have planted  wonderful trees over the years. My favorite is the Katsura with its heart shaped leaves.

Magnolia

Of course, there was this stunning magnolia tree that looked so exotic and tropical, but Tony said it is a native variety he bought at Nasami farm.

After visiting gorgeous gardens it is time to come back to earth.

Lasagne garden

Under the warm Sunday sun it was a joy to work in the garden.  My husband mowed and cleared the tansy, goldenrod and mint filled area between two of my ‘new’ wood chip paths.  (You can see the wood chips on either side of the cardboard.)  I don’t know quite why we never got that area covered. Once Henry cleared the space I put down some unfinished compost and covered that with lots of cardboard, two and three layers deep.  Then more chips.  Last year, when I was making the Potager, I put compost on top of the cardboard, but right now I don’t have enough to cover such a large area. My plan for this year is to let chips cover the cardboard until it is spring planting time.  Then I will push aside the chips to make winter squash hills. I’ll break through the rotting cardboard, pile on some compost and rotted manure and plant the squash seed.  Over the summer the squash vines will cover the wood chips which will continue to cover this area. My theory is that this will be a weed control and in the spring of 2011 I”ll be ble to put in vegetables that need more attention.  Remember, worms love living under cardboard so they’ll be adding their castings to the soil this fall, and in the spring as soon as it begins to warm up. 

sweetpeas

Before we leave the Potager I have to show off my Zinfandel sweet peas from Renee’s Garden. Because of the poor soil in this spot, and the bad spring weather they got off to a slow start. They also had to fight the tansy that kept coming through the cardboard. In spite of all my weeding they are still fighting the tansy, but they have won.  They are climbing on the metal crib ends I found at the Transfer Station, part of my White Things strategy for keeping away the deer, and my desire to do as much Reusing before I got to Recycling.

Meet Me at the Roundhouse!

2nd Avenue Bakery, Turners Falls

Replicas of The Roundhouse, built in 1899 were everywhere at this year’s Franklin County Fair which celebrated its 161st anniversary.  This edible version was a prize in the raffle supporting a major renovation of the roundhouse. It is a beautiful icon of the Fair which has shown off the handiwork and skills of farmers  and residents of the county for 110 years. Nowadays there is a midway with games and rides, but for me, the heart of the Fair is the Roundhouse, the cattle and sheep barns, the Youth Building – and the fundraising booths set up by various civic institutions to sell raffle tickets or sell pie or hot dogs.

I don’t can much anymore, but I think there is nothing more beautiful than a pantry full of home canned jams, jellies, pickles, fruits and vegetables.

Joanne Glier

And where do all the fruits and veggies in those jars come from?  From the labor and skill of gardeners like the one in this quilt made by Joanne Glier.  I don’t look quite so picturesque when I’m working in my garden, but when I look at this quilt I think about the ways I am connected to women, and men, in their gardens, and even when one of them puts aside the spade and rake to sit and puts artistic and needle skills to work.

Some gardeners just want to have fun!  They couldn’t even get these giant pumpkins into The Roundhouse. Earlier this year I got lots of advice about growing giant pumpkins.

Energy Efficient House Model

There is a lot of history at the Fair, and proof that timeless skills endure. But there is also proof that we are looking forward.  This handsome model of an energy efficient house is the work of a 12 year old. The energy saving technologies are all documented in the accompanying paper.

At the same time, traditional skills are being passed down to the young generation who are learning care and patience, as in this prize winning quilt in the Youth Building.  Last week I attended the first meeting of the season of the Shelburne Falls Area Women’s Club where the display was of needlework projects, historic and current.  We got to hear stories about  girls working with their grandmothers. learning to knit and quilt, all the while maintaining strong family and community connections.

The Franklin Count Fair celebrated its 110th anniversary. Closer to home we celebrated another anniversary.

The Heath Gourmet Club celebrated its anniversary. 28 years of serving ourselves.  I tried to get an official portrait, but the crowd was already on their way to the dining room at Paul and Wendy’s and weren’t willing to waste much more time.  Pulled Pork, heirloom tomatoes with Sheila’s goat mozzerella, and Cowboy Salad were waiting. Two desserts. Heavenly lemon meringue pie and pound cake with local berries. The theme this time was generally ‘favorite summer dishes.’