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.