Please, do not adjust your set...

You may have noticed that I haven't been posting lately. Here's why.

I was sitting at my computer one evening and something inside went 'ping'. Then I had a nice black screen.... not quite the Blue Screen Of Death, but still bad. Turned out my video card had failed. I was able to attach a smaller screen that works for text, but it has the wrong aspect ratio and thus images are s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d, making circles look like Saturn's rings, all dogs look like short-legged Corgis and so on. Pictures of humans are particularly amusing, not.

Anyway, I will be back, just as soon as I get a new video card.

Or a new computer....

The scary thing is, w-i-d-e letters are starting to look normal!

A Few Things....

 Well, only two.

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You've heard me talk about the Shaw Woods. It's a very special place, with an old-growth maple/beech/hemlock grove, huge glacial erratics, a pine plantation, a steep rock ridge, nesting Eagles..... and now, trails and interpretive signage for visitors.

On October 6th, a week this Sunday, the Woods will host a series of guided public tours. One hike will concentrate on nature photography, with an experienced photographer sharing his tips to improve your photography, another will be specially geared for families with children, and others will offer short or long hikes to suit every interest and fitness level.

Shaw Woods is less than 90 minutes west of downtown Ottawa, near Cobden. Getting there is simple - just take the 417 (which becomes Hwy. 17) West to Cobden, turn left at the traffic lights on to Eganville Road/County Road 8, turn right at the stop sign 12.3km later onto Bulger Road, and look for the parking lot at 2065 Bulger Road. There will be signs!

You do have to pre-register and it does cost $10 per person, but the money is for a good cause, building a shelter for school programs to use when they visit Shaw Woods.

You can get more information, and register, at Shaw Woods.

I'm looking forward to it - signed up for the Long Hike - hope I can walk that far.....

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 I'm getting some feedback about my little quiz about Fall Fruits. Not all of it good! So I'm giving you the answers here, but I warn you now, next year I'm going to make it hard!

In order:  1. Hairy Solomon's Seal, Polygonatum pubescens. There are two very similar wild Solomon's Seals; you can tell this one by the short hairs along the veins on the undersides of the leaves. OK, maybe I can see why nobody got this one.
                2. Cedar cones. A bumper crop this year! The squirrels love them and the ground under some of the cedars (Eastern White Cedar, Thuja occidentalis) is a carpet of short fans of foliage with cones attached.
                 3. Cranberry, Viburnum triloba. My bushes are so filled with berries that the branches are bent down to the ground.
                  4. Aha, gotcha. Maybe that was tricky of me, sorry. These are the fruits of the elegantly named (not) Horsemint or Wild Coffee, Triosteum aurantiacum. The flowers aren't much, small and dingy purple, but the fruits are quite showy and the bush itself has presence. It gets about 3' tall and has large yellowish-green leaves. Easy to grow, but will flop if it is growing in easy conditions. Neglect is the answer.
                   5. Riverbank Grape, Vitis riparia. There are other species of wild grapes, but we only have this one. The others grow south of here. The berries are too sour to eat, but make great jelly. 
                   6. Doll's Eyes, or White Baneberry, Actaea pachypody. Sorry, I know it has been re-named but I can't find it's new name just now. The berries look spooky and can cause serious stomach upsets but taste so bad nobody is ever going to eat a second one.
                   7. Spikenard, Aralia racemosa. These have been huge this summer! One in my Sampler Garden is about 6' tall and 8' across. I have to salute and click my heels together before it will let me by on the path. It's sort of neat how the berries ripen - one cluster at a time in a random sequence.
                    8. False Solomon's Seal, Smilacina racemosa. It doesn't seem quite fair to call something after what it is not, but there we are. The flowers are pretty in the spring, and have a strong lemon scent. The berries stay long after the leaves turn yellow and give a welcome touch of colour in the woodland.
                    9. A Red Trillium berry. T. erectum is the only one with a dark purple-red berry. This particular berry has a hole in the top and somebody (wasp? ant?) has removed all the seeds.
                    10. The beautiful laquered red berries of Jack-in-the-pulpit, Arisaema triphyllum. These are so acrid nobody will eat even one. If you plant the whole berries the seeds germinate in the spring. If you clean the seeds off it seems they have trouble germinating, so just plant the whole shebang and step back.
                      11. Blue Cohosh, Caulophyllum thalictroides. The flowers come very early and are nearly black, small, but black, but the berries are beauties. The foliage isn't bad either, a neat clean shrubby thing about 2' high all summer.
                        12. This is the trickiest one, but the one most of you knew! Virginia creeper, Parthenocissus quinquefolia. The leaves are a deep wine-red in the fall. The fruits, so oddly arranged on their stalks, have that sort of ugliness which is cute.

Sadly, nobody dared try to win the mug. We'll do it again next fall, and you have all winter to study!

So long, summer. Hello, fall.

Not that I'm exactly happy about it being fall. I'm sorry summer is over, and there is so much to do in the garden right now that I don't know whether to go out and work like a mad fiend or become a hibernating animal. Almost as bad as spring fever! Still, there are compensations.

One of the best is the Asters. I know they are not really called 'aster' any more - most have been re-classified into Symphyotrichum, Oclemena, Eurybia and Doellingeria - but we can get away with using the name in its friendlier, gardeners',  fashion. The New England Asters, in particular, are at their superb best right now. I just took a jog around the garden and photographed some.

Photographing them is a matter of taking one picture, then seeing a better one, then another better one, then one even better, then..... then you had better calm down because every stem has its bees, wasps and hover flies, and you don't want to get them all upset!

My pure white New England Aster was swarming with bees.

I found this aster growing in a pile of road scrapings a few years ago. I figured the pile was due to be moved to some sort of dump, so I felt no guilt in winkling out a small piece. It has done well, having dozens of stems this year, and next year I'll have some to share. Notice that even the stems lack any kind of pink or blue pigment. In all the others the stems are reddish.

Another one I lucked into, this time growing under a friend's fence inches away from his hungry sheep, has pale purple petals that fade to white. It too is getting large and ready to divide.

Still in scavenging mode, I found a very pale pink this year, I won't say where. If the tiny piece I dug out grows, I'll share when there is enough.

 

 The basic New England Aster, the one found in every ditch and every neglected field, providing food for so many insects, seems to mainly come in a dark pink/rose colour and a darker, bluer purple.


There is a lot of variation in the petals, too. Most are flat (strap-like, the botanists say), but some are quilled and many are twisted and give a charming shaggy effect.

Just so you don't think I've cheated on the colours, here is a shot of a small piece of my Hillside Garden showing both the pinkish and the bluish Asters.

Don't admire the Rudbeckia behind them too much. That is R. fulgida 'Goldsturm' and it is not one of the compensations of autumn. Even the bees don't care for it, that should tell you something. Another digging session..... just as soon as I finish this (yawn....) nap.....

Fall Planting Sale, Fern Walk, and Quiz

Friday was one of those super-busy days; you know, must do this, must do that, go here, do that, all day. All I had time for in the garden was a quick walk around with the camera.

It struck me that I have a lot of native plants in little pots waiting to either be adopted or planted out. I really need to pot them up into larger pots if I want to keep them over the winter, but every time I think I'll do some, I can't find my darn trowel. And every time I look at them all, I think, 'I really should have a Fall Planting sale'. Don't know why, but the thought just kept coming into my head every time I went near the pots area.....

 Fall is a wonderful time to plant things. There is still two good months of cool damp growing weather ahead so new plants can get well established before winter. Also, you know exactly where you need to add something to your garden! August, the great leveler, will have made any gaps, holes or weak spots quite evident. Not to mention that working in the garden in September is very pleasant - we gardeners like the cool weather too!

So, Sept. 8, from 10am to about 2pm, all my small potted plants will be $1 each. There are ferns, different kinds, Bloodroot, Ginger, Trilliums and much more. Also some non-natives such as a few (very cute) miniature hostas and so on. There are not many of any, but some treasures. The address is 6114 Carp Road. (email me if you need directions.)

After 2pm, I'll take anyone who wants to come, on a Fern Walk, either around the garden, or in the woods. Where we go will depend on the weather and our fancy. Some of the ferns, such as the Botrychiums. are dormant right now, but others are looking particularly good with the cooler weather we have been having. The Walk should take about 2 hours, give or take a digression or two.

It also struck me  how many fruits I saw, and how beautiful some of them are. I've put together a collage of 12 of them, numbered, and I challenge you to identify them! The first person to send me an email with all 12 correct, genus, species and common name, will win..... let's see, how about a genuine, hand-made, stoneware, one-of-a-kind, custom-made (have I belaboured this enough?) Pine Ridge mug? I'll even paint the native plant of your choice on it! So get out your favourite field guide, dust off the braincells, and have some fun!

(PS. Looks like I talked her into it, heh, heh! Signed, The Trowel....  )

An Excursion - Eagles' Nest

They say that leaving something behind means that you intend to return. For sure, I always intend to return to the Eagles' Nest area near Calabogie. It is one of my favourite places. But I didn't leave my hand lens there on purpose.

I went there a week ago Sunday, looking for Fragrant Fern spores. I approached the area where they grow from below because, while I can scramble up the steep slope, I can't climb down! The lookout, Eagles' Nest Lookout, is the top of a sharp escarpment. The rock face is at least 200 feet high and cantilevered out over the ground below. There is a secondary trail, unnamed, at the base, which gets quite close. It ends, more or less, in an area of rockfall, and the Ferns grow in the face of the escarpment a hundred or more feet above. Here you can see some of the boulders that make up the rockfall. Can you imagine the noise when these broke off the rockface and fell and rolled? And the  forces that must have been involved?

Unfortunately for me, the area was over-run with young people on some sort of rock-climbing exercise. At least some of them were. The pair busy at the bottom of the area I wanted to climb up where not practicing rock-climbing....

So I went on by, pushing my way through quite dense undergrowth, and scrambled up beyond where they were and then bush-whacked my way back. Needless to say, by the time I got to where I wanted to be, I was hot and scratched and not a little peeved. But I found the ferns and they had ripe spores, so then I was happy again. Only when I got back to the truck did I realize that I had left my hand lens where I had inspected the ferns. Since it is a $90 Bausch & Lomb 14x lens which I gave myself for my birthday, I wanted it back!

So last Friday I went back.

The lens was right where I thought it would be, whew.

I was there early and the day was lovely and cool so I decided to explore. Since I had the escarpment on my left and a shallow meandering pond on my right, I wasn't too worried about getting lost. It was dense going but I eventually came out on an open hillside, overlooking the top of the pond, where it becomes more of a swamp or marsh. The perfect place for lunch! (Note to self - next time pack two sandwiches!)

First thing I saw on the hillside (you always see the interesting things when you stop for lunch), was the leaves of Spiranthes lacera, spp. lacera, or Slender Ladies'-tresses. I was sitting there, feet braced against a rock so I wouldn't slide down into the marsh, munching my (boring) sandwich and thought to myself, 'those look like the leaves of Slender Ladies'-tresses'. Now these leaves are not the least bit distinctive, so I suspect part of this was just wishful thinking, but this time I was right. I soon saw a lot of stems with well-developed seedpods on them. The clearing must have been a great sight a month ago!

The next thing I saw, which I found when I was trying to make a quick count of the Ladies'-tresses, was Blue Ground Cedar, Diphasiastrum tristachyum.

I have lots of Southern Ground Cedar, D. digitatum, and a few Northern Ground Cedar, D. complanatum, at home, but no D. tristachyum. If there had been more than one group of fruiting cones, I would have taken some home and sprinkled the spores in a likely place with a small appeal to magic, but I could only find one. Maybe next year.

In the marsh, I was impressed by the Joe-Pye Weed and the Boneset. Both used to be Eupatorium, now they are, I think, Eutrochium, but I'll have to leave sorting them out for a January project. I used to think there were three native Joe-Pyes, now I believe they are all grouped. Anyway, they were a lovely sight and I'm glad I planted some in my garden. I never paid any attention to the them before, but now I think they can be a great addition to the 'things that bloom in August'.

After all this excitement, I climbed back to the main trail, Manitou Mountain Trail, exchanged greetings with several people enjoying the view from the Lookout, and headed back to the road. But luck wasn't done with me yet! First I got buzzed by one of the Eagles - I heard the whoosh of his (her?) wings and saw the shadow, but didn't really see him. A young couple walking the other way got a picture on his cellphone and he told me the Eagle was no more than 25 feet above me. We watched him circle for a while, tight circles right above us. Maybe a nest was near?

Walking back to the truck I was surprised by one more thing - a pair of stems of Pinedrops, Pterospora andromedea, sticking up out of the small scrub beside the ditch.

Already only seedpods. I've never yet managed to see this plant in bloom, only in seed!

I had some seeds of this a couple of years ago, and I sprinkled them under the tall White Pines beside my driveway. So maybe that was the right place, and maybe, who knows, they might yet appear. It is supposed to take years for them to show above ground.

All in all, an exciting day!

Will I return?

 Of course!

Giant Swallowtail

I was thrilled to see the Giant Swallowtail visiting my garden again. It was here, briefly, last summer. I tried to get a picture, but this thing moves very fast! I guess with wings 6" across you can really motor! Also, it needs to keep its wings moving while it feeds because otherwise it would bend the flower down. Just think of all the energy that must take.

Still not a great picture, but at least you can see the butterfly. I understand it doesn't live here, it is just passin' through.... it is established in Southern Ontario, but considered a bit rare in the Ottawa Valley. I'm honoured that it likes my garden!

Beloved of Bees

There are some plants in my garden that just seem to appeal to bees. Lavender is one - when it blooms the whole Herb Garden is alive with buzzing.  Sometimes there are several bees on one spike, every one of them concentrating madly on getting that nectar and not noticing that their spike is tipping right over. Another one they love is Lamb's-ears or Stachys. I like it too and have lots of it in my Hillside Garden. It looks so good with gravel that I can hardly pull out the seedlings that come up in the path.... But I have learned to cut the flowering stems down before they go to seed. The challenge is to do it without annoying too many bees!

Later in the season, the bees love the Coneflowers. I suspect they come for the pollen. If Echinacea flowers have nectar, and I don't know if they do, it seems to me it would be out of reach for any but the largest bees. But I'm not a bee, and don't speak 'bee', so I don't know.

I have six species of Coneflower in my garden. Of course the main one is E. purpurea, of which I have several cultivars. The original plants I grew from seed. They germinated easily and bloomed a year later. What surprised me though was that the next generation of seedlings (and there were many of them) included quite a lot of white ones. By this time, I had purchased a plant of 'White Swan' and was able to compare it with my white seedlings. On the whole, the seedlings are more attractive. They have yellow cones instead of White Swan's orange ones, and the petals are longer and more graceful.

A closer view of a white Coneflower, with bee

Both in the closeup to the right and in the larger image above, you can see that the cones on the white flowers are more yellow than the ones on the pink flowers.

I do find Coneflowers hard to place in the garden. They are an unusual sort of pink, pink with brown undertones, if you can imagine such a thing. August is the month of Phlox and Yarrow, and both of these clash dreadfully. I did once think an orange Daylily would be good with the Coneflowers, but not so. Together, they both looked dingy. Then I tried a yellow Daylily, and that was worse! The Coneflowers are rather muted colours, and are not enhanced by brighter flowers nearby.  Really, the best combination I have come up with so far is with the Ninebark 'Diablo'. It's leaves are a dark maroon-purple, but with brown undertones. These two are very good together. And because the shrub is always there, you have the bonus of not having to worry about it blooming at the same time as the Coneflowers. Actually, Echinaceas look their best with grasses, ornamental and otherwise.

Grasslands are in fact their natural habitat. There are nine species of Echinacea, all from the prairies or drylands of the middle of the North American continent.
 
Three of the species, E. atrorubens, E. laevigata and E. sanguinea, are native far to the South of us, and do not survive our cold winters.

E. tennessiensis, which is considered 'endangered' in its native state, will survive here, although I have only managed to get blooms on it once and the plants eventually dwindled to nothing. I must try them again, if I can get seeds. 

 A big difference between E. purpurea and its cousins is that it has a spreading root system while the cousins have taproots. The taproots make the plants very drought-tolerant, but also mean that nurseries find it hard to produce the plants in pots for the home market and that the gardener can't move the plants around easily. You have to put tap-rooted things where you want them and leave them there! That's a problem in a garden like mine, where the smart plants carry their passports at all times.

The difference between E. pallida and E. simulata is apparently in the colour of the pollen. E. pallida has white pollen (good match with the name!) and E. simulata has yellow pollen. I haven't been able to see this, as to me to pollen on both seemed a sort of pale yellowish-whitish grey..... maybe I need a bee to help me with this.

E. angustifolia is much like E. purpurea, but smaller, tap-rooted, and maybe a bit pinker in flower.

Of course, every family has one oddball, and the Echinaceas have E. paradoxa. It is yellow!

Probably, E. paradoxa has the genes that allowed the plant breeders to develop so many yellow, orange and red cultivars!

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