Earth Day

Burrillville had its Earth Day Clean-up yesterday.  Paul and I volunteered to pick up garbage on a long road we use every day that goes through Black Hut Management Area.  It is a very beautiful place filled with all kinds of plants, rocks and water.

Fiddleheads are coming up all along the road.  In Summer, the ground will be completely hidden by the ferns' lacy fronds.

The seasonal creeks still have some water running through them.

Unfortunately not everyone who passes along this road appreciates the beauty and the importance of this area.  Paul and I have been saddened to see all the garbage tossed from passing cars or left from hunters entering the woods at points along the road.  So we signed up, received our Official T-shirts and garbage bags, and got to work. 

A beautiful day, warm and sunny.  I found it hard to focus on the garbage!  Unfortunately the May flies decided it was the perfect day to make their somewhat early debut so I spent a lot of time swatting as Paul irritatingly commented "They don't bother me!"

We found lots of beer cans.

Didn't they know Earth Day was coming?  Click to enlarge and see the date!

Paul saw clouds of frog eggs attached to submerged tree branches in this vernal pool.  PEEPERS!  We often hear them when we drive past this spot in the evening.

We collected 3 bags of garbage and left them by the side of the road for same-day town pick-up.  Dunkin Donuts coffee cups were the most numerous, followed by an array of alcohol containers, soda cans and water bottles.  We were appalled to see that several of the water bottles were full,  apparently unopened.  What a waste!  Would it be such a bother for those using these wonderful woods to keep a garbage bag in their vehicles for those coffee cups?

I had to get back to work in the garden.  I had put off pulling back last season's mulch to avoid disturbing the thirsty soil.  Now I need every drop of the coming rain to reach the plant roots.  Paul, not satisfied with the amount of garbage we had temporarily eliminated, headed over to another place by Spring Lake in need of a little TLC.  Kudos Paul!

Here are a few more photos of Magnificent Black Hut Management Area.

                              Happy Earth Day Everyone!

Spring Close-ups

Just a mini-post today.  I've been so busy transplanting seedlings and digging, dividing and potting up perennials to sell. So I've had little time for anything else except helping a buddy with a new garden bed and some extra watering because of this terrible dry spell.  (I am getting very worried about that.  When we finally get a real (3 inches please!) rainfall you'll hear my cheering from Burrillville to Newport!)

So just a few pics, close-ups of things we may ignore because we're looking at our tulips, magnolias, azaleas, etc. or too busy WORKING to notice these fleeting stages in the lives of our plants...

May Apples emerging from the ground.  Later on I must not forget to check for the flowers hidden under the leaves.

Funny-looking, but cute!

I never noticed this male holly's flowers before.

Bridalveil Spirea in the morning sun.

I love lacy cimicifuga foliage at any stage.

And I love how fresh newly- opening Hosta leaves look.

This Spring has been my very first serious seed-starting experience.  Taking care of seedlings is really hard work! 

Let's not forget to savor the little wonders happening all around us this season.  Close your eyes too long and they'll be gone, not to return for a Whole Year! 

             Happy Gardening Everyone!

Rocks & Quotes

*Don't forget to click on photos to view full-size!

" But each Spring...a gardening instinct, sure as the sap rising in the trees, stirs within us.  We look about and decide to tame another little bit of ground..."  Lewis Gantt

I LOVE ROCKS!  They are such a cool garden feature.  Like hostas they come in an array of sizes, shapes, colors and textures.  Rocks add substance to vignettes of plants, water, sky and man-made objects.  People are sometimes called "rocks" meaning they are strong and have integrity, can always be counted on.  So I LOVE ROCKS!

The problem is we live in Burrillville (or Boulderville as I sometimes (affectionately?) call it.  Every time that instinct to tame a bit of ground stirs in me, my shovel hits a rock.  I'm working on an area of garden at the back where Black Hut Management Area borders our property.  Tree roots, wild blackberry thorns, and trash, dumped back in the pre-garbage-pick-up days, make gardening difficult. (We've actually found some interesting stuff buried back there ...a topic for another day.)  Nothing is more challenging than the rocks.  Often after struggling for 1/2 an hour to remove a rock of indeterminate size, I'll give Paul a "hey! can you see if this rock is movable?"  Sometimes he wiggles it with a shovel and says "yeah, you can get that out",  more often he rises to the challenge and pits himself against that giant rock (or several dozen smaller rocks apparently glued together by time) and eventually (usually) makes room for some soil. 

A work in progress...

Then the question is, What do we do with the rock?  "I'm not moving that!" he'll sigh as we look at the behemoth from beneath, now sitting on top of the ground.  We've ended up with piles of rocks scattered among our garden rooms owing to my reply, "Let's just roll it over here, that looks perfect!"

In short, we've used rocks as borders, focal points, textural elements or mulch in every part of our garden, and about 90% of those rocks we dug up so we could tame a little bit more ground.

Rocks around the pond garden.

Rocks around the shed garden.

 

Piles of rocks are interesting.

I had laid out the area I wanted for a new bed, uncovered this gorgeous granite gargantuan buried right under the surface, and quickly decided to work around it.

Note:  It's so hard to photograph a garden in Spring!  Buckets and tools here and there, piles of compost, manure, and mulch!  No sense in cleaning up, you'll just make another mess tomorrow.  I put  the cardboard you see in the photos down in the paths last Fall. It's probably a good thing because I'm sure a lot of weed seeds survived our Winter-That-Wasn't.  The paths will be covered with mulch....soon I hope!

& Quotes 

Years ago I was reading one of my many favorite garden magazines and came across a quote that touched me and stuck:  The very best fertilizer is the gardener's own footprints.  To me it meant simply that the most important thing you can do for your garden is Be In It and Pay Attention...a daily walk through your garden, noting potential problems, discovering little successes and surprises, bending over and pulling a weed here and there as you go, will achieve more than anything money can buy.  When I decided to start my business  (Green Sneakers Garden) I did a little research and found that the quote is probably a paraphrase of The best fertilizer for a piece of land is the footprints of its owner..(Lyndon B. Johnson American President).  We heard Roger Swain (our garden guru) speak at the Flower Show and he, too, had a variation:  The best fertilizer is the shadow of the gardener.

So you'll have to excuse me til next week.  Sun's almost up and I need to cast a shadow and leave some footprints in my garden.   Happy Gardening!

Coming next week:  The root that ate the front yard!  Just kidding!

Note:  It's estimated that there are more than 250,000 miles of stone wall in the northeast.  The rocks used to make these walls were produced between 150,000 and 15,000 years ago and deposited (mostly in New England it seems) when the last ice sheets melted.  Recently many of these historic stone walls have been pulled apart and shipped to make new walls in other parts of the country.  The destruction of these walls is lamentable.  They are a part of our history and culture. The wildlife habitat provided by these walls for hundreds of years is also being lost.  To learn more go to:  www.stonewall.uconn.edu 

Bring on the Bugs!

Well it's officially Spring, so of course, Winter Weather has arrived...that's New England.  We know we only have to wait, Spring will return.  The upside is I  saved some money on sunscreen and dealt with less hat hair this week.  My first group of seedlings all have 2 sets of leaves.  I've thinned them down to 1 per cell and have started fertilizing with an organic  2-4-1 fish fertilizer, half strength.  Getting ready to sow my 6 weeks before last frost date(!) seeds next week.  Last Fall, in hopeful anticipation of all the beautiful plants I'll grow from seed, I started some new beds.  I turned over the sod and layered newspaper, leaves, compost and pine boughs over the area.  This week I cleaned out the grass roots, took out anything that didn't break down over the Winter-That-Wasn't, and added more compost.  These beds will be ready when the seeds are.
 
Last week's post attracted some interest in wildlife habitats and beneficial bugs.  As luck would have it the latest issue of Mother Earth News (April/May 2012) has a great article on attracting beneficial insects (predators is what they are, but that sounds gruesome) to your garden.   Did you know that some plants have the ability to produce and release a chemical signal when they are being munched on by the bad bugs?  This lets the good guys know where to find a meal.  I never cease to be amazed by how smart plants are...like the weeds that choose to grow right around cultivated plants that look an awful lot like them.  The article describes the Top 10  Beneficial Bugs (from Braconid Wasps to Trichogramma Mini-Wasps), tells what the larvae and adults eat, and the best plants to attract them.  You can't see it in the photo above, but when I took this picture, there were hover flies on the daisies and the alliums were covered in beneficial wasps.  (I know they were the non-stinging beneficial wasps because I've been stung by the other kind... Very Mean Bugs. These ones were only interested in nectar.)  Plants in the daisy family (cosmos, aster and yarrow are the number one good bug favorites.  The carrot family (parsley, dill, fennel and cilantro) come in second.  Alyssum made the list to my delight.  I had read years ago that alyssum is one of the best plants to attract beneficial insects because the leaves contain nectar as well as the flowers. I plant them every year.  It flowers from Spring to frost, is very easy to grow from seed and will often reseed.  (Free Plants!)  It's a lovely low border plant for around your vegetable or herb garden.

Purple coneflowers (members of the daisy family) attract a variety of benefical insects.  Many of the insects you want to attract are predators in the larval stage and pollinators, in search of nectar and pollen, as adults.

A note about butterflies.  Yes, butterfly larvae do eat your plants.  But the adults also pollinate and both serve as very important parts of the food chain, feeding birds, reptiles and amphibians.  Many species are endangered and many are not as plentiful as they were just years ago.  It would be a crime to lose such beautiful creatures.  So let some wild violets grow in your lawn to feed the fritillary larvae.  Plant a little extra dill, parsley, or fennel.  You won't miss it and you can have swallowtails in your garden. 

One bit of information surprised me.  I have read many times that in order to encourage diversity and provide a habitat for beneficial wildlife, the back of your garden should be left a little wild, (ie. let some weeds grow).  But it has been found that these areas are habitats for insect pests as well.  Well-tended areas, called hedgerows, of flowers, grasses, shrubs and trees (with a healthy dose of natives in the mix) attract fewer pests and more beneficials to your nearby crops and vegetable gardens.  Something to think about.

A word of caution about organic pesticides.  Even all natural, plant-based insecticides can kill beneficial insects.  Use only as a last resort and never spray when bees are present.  Or don't use them at all...leave those pests to  the Good Guys!

 HAPPY GARDENING! 

For more information:  www.MotherEarthNews.com/Beneficial-Bugs
                                      www.nativeplants.msu.edu