April 11, 2021- the garden day by day

After 5 days in a row of over 70 degrees it rained on Wednesday. It rained again Saturday (yesterday). It is still raining as we go to press. It should end soon. The cool air is back. There are even cool nights in the 30's for the coming week. I do not know when it will be dry enough to rototill the little garden plot.

For a while everything was on fast forward in the garden. It seems like now it will slow down. This is good. There is  more time to enjoy this wonderful time of the year.

Let me do that day by day thing again.

Sunday- Happy Easter

    Here is Julia's lamb cake, along with some of our Easter eggs.

It was anther lovely day, actually approaching being too warm outside. We could use some rain.

Plant lesson #32 - deer like pansies

The pansies planted by Katie and Christopher in the hanging baskets are doing fine. Of course, as I think about it, if they are 4-5 feet above the ground the deer would not even have to bend over. The pansies in pots on the ground are either pulled out of the pot entirely or just plain munched. The very apparent answer is don't leave the pots on the ground.

I have potted up much monkshood. Now I have to worry about a poison disclaimer for the food bank sale that has started. So many plants are "poisonous."  I remember a nursery in Springfield, Missouri that would not sell Castor Bean seeds, because they were poisonous and terrorists might use them.

Sometimes the same plants that are toxic are herbal remedy. 

Poisonous plants include lilies of the valley and rhubarb leaves. 

Here is a list from Good Housekeeping

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/gardening/advice/g1174/deadly-poisonous-plants/

I have noticed that the little  Siberian iris are emerging. They show up as tiny sprouts. They should really put on a show in a month.

It seems like if a plant is not up yet you begin to worry. The coneflowers have just started. 

Here are a few pictures

This picture is another variety of bloodroot. You might notice that it has many more petals than the wild variety. It is called Snow Cone.

This is an anemone blanda.

It was blooming at the same time as the many petaled bloodroot. 

Here is a picture of a regular bloodroot from the week before trip to Ryerson Woods. You can see there are fewer petals.

Here is the hibiscus blooming uptairs. It has been blooming all winter.

Monday

The ten day forecast is still above 40 at night. That does not mean I should plant peppers yet. Certainly not. I planted them early last year and they died.

But it is time to start some house plants moving outside. It is important to watch for sunburn. Yesterday, it was 80 and sunny. Some plants got a little bleached.

Anticipation is part of having a garden. Right now we are waiting for the crown imperial fritillaria to bloom. They are one of the Dr. Seuss plants in the garden.

They are  right there are the shelf by the house driveway. There are 5 of them, planted last fall. There were suppose to be 6. One did not come up. Two came up in what would have been one hole. Could I have really planted one on top of another? That is certainly one explanation.

These plants actually smell bad. I had thought I might grow a lot of them and form a smell barrier. That will not happen as the bulbs are pricey. 

I am growing them on that shelf, in about as much sun as I can give them. I have found them not to be repeat bloomers. They will come back after the first year, but will not bloom. I should perhaps treat them like some tulips, as annuals.

The hellebores continue to put on a show.

These daffodils came from Maine. Katie was a little enthusiastic in her bulb purchasing a few years ago. I do not know where that could have come from. We brought back some that fall and planted them. It does take a few years get to be a nice show.

The tree peonies are getting close. However if it stays at 55 and under all week it could be a while.

Wednesday- Rain

We had over an inch of rain. But...

The ducks are back. I forgot that part of last year. I guess it is not enough to worry about deer. 

Remember our little pond? Well, every so often, at the beginning of the season,  a pair of ducks will think it would be pleasant to nest in the area. They can then enjoy the quiet of a little pond, equipped with some fish and plants for grazing.

So I have to get out my Farmer McGregor rake or other accessory and chase them away. I need one of those motion detector water spray gadgets. Somehow I do not think it would be so easy. I would probably wind up spraying garden visitors, or myself.

The rain makes everything look  good.

Pulmonaria is one thing that is particularly nice in the rain. 

This first picture is Rasberry Splash. It is the one whose name I remember. I think it is perhaps the nicest one I have.

They come in several colors, being mostly reddish, blue and white.

They spread over time hitting some tipping point when there are a sufficient number. They tranplant easily. I pot some up for the backyard sale that has started again. I sell plants to raise money for two local food banks. 

There is that wonderful point in the garden when the spring flowers have started and the weeds have not yet arrived. Maybe they go south for the winter.

We are past that point.

Weeding dandilions has become part of the rotation.

Don't get me started on campanula, aka 'evil weed'.

Thursday-slowing down- and a discovery.

Gardening is full of life lessons. Sometimes you have ducks show up.  That was not the lesson I wanted to mention. Of course it is one lesson out there. 

What I was thinking about was this.  It is  important to look in all the corners of the garden. Sometimes it is important to just wander all the paths and see what might be going on.

When you do sometimes you will be surprised.

I believe these are tree peony seedlings. One of the accomplishments of the garden over the decades has been the successful growing of several tree peonies from seed. I planted some seeds 10-12 years ago. I now have 3 wonderful plants that have been blooming for  5 years. I had brought the seed back from my sister's garden in Maryland. 

Tree peonies make such wonderful seed pods.

With several plants with 5-10 flowers each year I can harvest perhaps 150 seeds each year. 

I give some away and plant the rest. I know better than to try to grow them in pots. I mass plant them in areas and then try to remember where those areas would be.

Every once in a while I get a seedling.

I got one seedling 2 springs ago. None last year. I found two Thursday.

Now I just have to wait maybe 5 years for them to be big enough to bloom.

The secret is to just throw them in the ground and then forget about them. No pressure.

But you do have to watch the area where they were planted in the spring. You have to know what you are looking for. In addition you have to be careful in your weeding. 

Thursday was also the day the dog toothed violets bloomed in the back yard. They are also called Trout lilies. 

They are called dog tooth violet because of the shape of...the bulb. What? They are called "trout lilies" because the patten on the leaves resembles the brown or brook trout. 

I got some of this native wildflower probably 20 years ago. It spread. When I have to get someone to appreciate how big "many" is, I show them this area in April. The plants will get out of the way in a month. There are hosta and lilies planted in with them. I will just pull out the oid foliage when I am ready to give those other plants some room. They stay small, perhaps only 3-4 inches. That contrasts with the winter aconite foliage which is closer to 10 inches. That foliage can crowd out some other smaller plants. When you have thousands of something you can weed up a few hunread without making a dent.

Here is a closer look at the flower. When it faces down and is only 3 inches tall this is the best picture I can get you.

This picture is also a dog tooth violet, a cousin of the white one we have by the thousands. It is Erythronium ameericanum. It has a yellow flower. I purchases these maybe 15 years ago. There are only a few of these so I am careful to mark it. I do not want to plant something right on the spot where was, after it disappears. You can see the leaf pattern in this picture.

The white variety is sometimes called Erythronium albidon.

For more about dog tooth violets see

https://ozarkedgewildflowers.com/spring-wildflowers/trout-lily-or-dogtooth-violet-erythronium-albidum/

Friday- Cooler weather ahead- 

It is still early April. A year ago we were still having the occasional snow event. Now temperatures in the 30's appear with some frequency next week. 33 degrees is the magic number when a bunch of plants have to come inside.

One plant that is just arriving is the toad lilies. They are those little guys in amoung the bluebells.

This got the award for the cutest flower of the day. It is a little anemonella. The flower is only about 1/2 ich wide.

This is fritallaria meleagris. Actually in this picture there is a anemone blanda, several scilla and the spent foliage of the winter aconite. I think the srouts are Korean fairy bells. Every square foot of the garden can be so interesting.

Saturday

More rain. I was able to get in about 2-3 hours of potting things up before the drizzle became more like rain. At about 48 degrees you think you could put anything into new dirt and it would never wilt.

I do have a supply of dry dirt, having gotten compost from the landfill last weekend. I will probably have to go back next weekend. It takes a lot of dry dirt to pot up hosta.

Today I potted Louisiana Iris, Siberian Iris, fall blooming clematis, pulmonaria, and Japanese anemones. I just wander the backyard path looking for something to dig.

I actually learned something this week. Apparently the time to transplant winter aconite can be right after it flowers. That would be now. Snowdrops are the same way. They can be transplanted right after blooming. They will then grow a little before they die back.

The first celandine poppy bloomed today. I had divided two clumps a few weeks ago. I got about 20 little plants out of those clumps. 

The first hosta are pushing up, with several starting to unfurl.

This is Chinese Sunrise. It is usually the first hosta to open its leaves.

Julia's recipe

Spinach salad 

It was warm last week, and so we thought about salads for dinner. I made chicken salad and rice salad (recipes for both of which appear on the blog website) and spinach salad. It is especially spring-ish, as it includes hardboiled eggs, which we had left over from Easter egg dyeing. I do not think a person is ever too old or too jaded to dye Easter eggs. This recipe is from the America's Test Kitchen 20th anniversary cookbook.

The ingredients:

1 5-oz box of baby spinach

3 hardboiled eggs

6-8 slices of bacon

3 tablespoons cider vinegar (nothing         fancy)

1/2 cup diced red onion (pretty, but             yellow or white onion would be             fine)

1 teaspoon smushed garlic

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

a little bit of salt

First, I put 6 or maybe 7 slices of bacon on a rimmed baking sheet into a 350 degree oven. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes to get bacon crisp in the oven, but it is pretty much hands-off. I checked after about 10 minutes and turned the pieces over. 

While the bacon was cooking, I peeled the eggs, still carrying traces of their festive colorings; smushed the garlic; and diced the onion. I also mixed the vinegar, sugar, pepper and pinch of salt in a little bowl.

When the bacon came out of the oven, I drained it on a paper-towel-lined plate and poured the bacon grease into a pyrex measuring cup (actually anything that will handle hot bacon grease is fine). Then I measured 3 tablespoons of the bacon grease into a skillet.

The bacon grease was already hot, so I set the stove on medium and added the onions. I let the onions cook gently (stirring occasionally) and cut the eggs into quarters. 

After a few (maybe 5) minutes, I added the garlic and let that cook for just about 30 seconds. 

Then I added the vinegar mixture and after maybe 30 seconds, I turned the skillet off.

I quickly chopped the bacon up into little pieces and I put the spinach, triple washed when it came to me, into a big bowl. 

I poured the dressing from the skillet over the spinach and tossed it up. Then I sprinkled the bacon over all and tossed some more. 

Lastly, I scattered the egg pieces around, and it was ready

What is nice about this recipe is that the spinach wilts a little under the dressing but does not wilt entirely. This is just the right amount of dressing - no pooling in the bottom of the bowl. The eggs being in quarters do not disintegrate and muddy up the texture. 

It's a very satisfying salad. The ratios of spinach to bacon to eggs to dressing are just right. 

We had a little left over which I had for lunch the next day: a little more wilted but still very good after a spell in the refrigerator. 

Odds and Ends

I thought I would end on a  positive note.

Here are several things in the garden that I look forward to with pleasant anticipation.

1- Crown Imperial Fritillaria

        these should bloom in the next week or so.

2-  Tree peonies blooming- the buds are getting fat

      Last year they did not bloom until about May 10. Spring last year was about on the same scheduloe with this year, at least on April 1. We then had 2 mild snow events which sort of slowed us down. I think without those snows the peonies will bloom about May 1.

3-   The big Gisela slipper orchid bloom. Without looking I would again guess May 1.

4-   Pink dogwood tree blooming- it is covered with buds.

Be safe.

I do appreciate hearing from you.

Philip