Haven't been here for awhile....

The blog, I mean.  I've been home a fair amount, but not writing in the blog.  And not really around the yard a whole lot.  We've gone from summer to late fall so quickly, I don't know what happened.  Oh Yeah, WLA happened.  And a lot of very rainy, gray days.  The last month has been almost entirely gray and wet and cold and dismal outside, which is not terrible since I've been confined to the inside for a variety of reasons.  But today was glorious!

The sun came out, and lasted for the entire day, almost completely uninterrupted.  I had to go to Rotary, and also to an event at FVTC in the late afternoon, but the morning and the mid-afternoon were wonderful.  Managed to rake the worst areas of leaf-fall on the lawn after Rotary. 

And also to take a few photos of the last remaining flowers.  They could be considered pitiful, but I think of them as eternal optimists.  Still blooming when all hope is done.  My goal is always to have blooms from early April until late October.  So I leave things that others might cut back, just to enjoy the last flowers.  Hardly any of these are native Wisconsin plants.  Those are smarter, and they have all set seed and died back by now.  I leave most of them standing, because the birds love the seeds.  The Juncos have arrived, and the yard is full of them and of Chickadees and Cardinals and all kinds of finches.  Most of what you see here are introductions, but some of them are hardy, either as perennials, or as ambitious re-seeding annuals. 

 

Not sure that I even recorded in the blog the Heron that took up residence in the neighborhood this fall.  He (she?) terrorized the fish in our pond and our neighbor's for a couple of weeks.  Hard to believe that a heron could even notice the tiny ponds we have, but we both lost fish (or parts of them.) 

A Season of Change for sure

It was only a week and a half ago that I thought (or behaved as though) summer might never end.  But it is amazing how fast things can change.  A couple of nights of frost and everything is different.  It is time to get the porch and deck plants ready to come in for the winter.  It was hard a couple of weeks ago to even think about the pruning back, cleaning up, digging out, and reluctant abandonment that is inevitable at this time of year. 

The frost on the first night last week was light, and since we covered most important things up we didn't lose much.  I was lulled into complacency, and even though we did cover most of the same things I didn't think we would lose the tomatoes, peppers, cannas, sweet potato vines etc.  But, the next morning had different tidings.  On the morning of Oct. 1st pretty much all of the tender plants in the back yard were frozen stiff, and as the day warmed up they drooped and wilted and blackened.  Ah, well.  It does have to happen. 

Once the shock of the death is over, we can move on to the beautiful season that is fall around here.  And, of course, to the preparation of the survivors to come in for the winter.  I moved the hanging begonia on the front porch into the garage, and am now trying to figure out where to put it for the winter. I took several cuttings, and if they root quickly I'll let the old plant go.  Before the first frost I dug up several geraniums, and will hang them in the coolest spot I can find inside.  (How I envy people who have a real root cellar!) 

I've been spraying hibiscus plants and bougainvilleas for a month or so, and hope to escape the whitefly infestation this year.  Brought in one bougainvillea today for the atrium, not sure where  to put the other.  Also brought in the red hibiscus, but not sure where the yellow one o n a standard is going to spend the winter.  It was way too intrusive last winter. 

At the upper level, on the front porch, I spent an hour or so yesterday digging and potting the Rex Begonia plants that were there.  I've had those for many years, and they would be way to expensive to replace.  But they do come up easily, and seem to welcome their winter comfort inside the light gardens in the basement.  They don't grow much there, but they almost all manage to come through the winter ready to welcome the spring.  I consider them an investment.  I fantasize that I could establish an ornamental plant business with the stock I have.  Probably won't happen.  But I've had the same Zebrina for more than 20 years, refreshed from cuttings each spring.  And many other long lived plants are in this house. 

Last weekend we also cut down the dogwood shrubs in the front of the house, and dug out all of the creeping juniper that was harboring hundreds of voles/moles/mice.  The entire neighborhood is complaining about the number of small rodents we have.  They are in every yard, and most of us are cleaning up the obvious places where they live.  I even found two mice in a birdhouse that was 7 feet above ground in a tree. 

There were a few late bloomers in the yard this weekend.  Some that have been blooming all along, and the the clematis on the east wall that bloomed early in the summer, seemed to nearly die with the draught, then came back and is blooming again with the new moisture we've had in the last month.

Well, that's enough for today.  Maybe it is better to write more often.

Rainy weather opportunists

Give the yard just a little rain (about an inch in the last several days) and things that have been lying in wait through the dry summer come to life.  The flying ants (not sure what they really are) that usually emerge in huge clouds in the middle of the summer were not around this year until now.  And even now, there aren’t as many of them as usual.  This is fine with me.

Also Fungi that I haven’t seen much of all year are coming up all over now.  These I tend to like, or at least find interesting and beautiful.  There is quite a variety in the yard.  Here are photos of a few that I found on my morning walk around.  

 

 

 

 

 

Turtlehead

Can you see why they call it Turtlehead?  I think this is Chelone obliqua or Red Turtlehead.  Some places it is endangered, and I don’t think it is native in Wisconsin, though it is to states all around us.  I bought my plant at a nursery.  

 

So far it has grown very well in my garden, I’ve had it at least 5 years and it gets bigger and more dependable each year.  I love the rosy color in the late summer.  

Cardinal Flower

This year I bought a young Cardinal Flower  (Lobelia cardinalis) in early spring, and just sunk the pot down into the pond in the shallow edges.  It is the first time I’ve been successful growing them, and though the flowers are coming late, they are now beginning to emerge.  I hope that I can overwinter it, and am in the process of trying to figure out the best approach to that.  

The resident hummingbirds have found the red, tubular flowers, and they visit it regularly on their way through the garden. 

Signature Plant

I consider the Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) to be the signature plant of this yard.  I brought over a few corms in the freezer the winter we came here.  The corms came from young plants I had grown from seeds given to me by our friend Tim the year before.  I had little hope that they would thrive, but I underestimated them.  I put a few in the ground here and there along the creek, a few next to the house.  In the years to follow they have spread to almost every corner of the garden.  Sun, shade, alone or in large clumps, they come up everywhere. 

When I want them to be somewhere new, I just have to wait until the fruits turn red in the early fall and then put a bundle of seeds where I want plants the next year.  It almost always works, and I have new “Jacks” the next spring.  This year I have moved some from near the bench at creekside out to the hosta garden we started under the birch tree in back.  Check back next spring to see if it works.

Harvest Bounty

Potatoes and onions reached the end of their likely growth, and so, on a cold damp day last Saturday we harvested them.  This is one of the things that we both really enjoy.  The adventure of digging potatoes, and marveling at how many we find, is great fun for small work.  Now, I suppose if we planted many more, and were really trying to grow enough to sustain us for the year, the work of digging them might become less of a party and more of a chore.  But, we only manage to harvest about 30 or 40 pounds, and this is likely to last us until just after the holiday season.  Then we will buy the rest that we need at the grocery store like most people do. 

 

 

 

I sometimes wonder what we could manage to harvest from this yard if we had to use it to sustain ourselves.  We could surely expand the growing space, and we could give up some of the ornamentals.  I could learn to grow storable vegetables, winter squash, etc.  We could can more perhaps, freeze less.  But the things like potatoes and onions that require nothing more than cool, dry storage, seem to be the most efficient.