First Real Snow

Good thing I finally got those seedling ferns and wildflowers tucked away for the winter! It's been quite cold the last couple of days and today it is snowing. Real snow, the kind that spreads its tailfeathers and stays.

What I did, which worked very well the last couple of years, is put the pots down on the ground between a row of rocks at the base of the Daylily Wall and some large cedar logs. Then I piled all the fallen leaves within rake reach on top.Sort of an above-ground cold frame.

Rooted cuttings such as Trailing Arbutus (Epigea repens) went there too. I've had good success with them, and some other things like Partridge Berry (Mitchella repens) by leaving them in their rooting pots over winter and planting them out once they show new growth in the spring. Planting them in the fall never seemed to work before.

I'm quite enjoying the feeling of the garden being put away for the winter! I'm looking out at my Hillside, where the Yucca leaves are sticking up bright green in front of the brown-gold grasses, looking quite picturesque, and the best part of it is, I don't have to go out there and do anything!

As Harvey here says:
 
'Tis the Season!

Hope yours is a Merry One!

The Fun Continues

Pretty much as expected.

The wheel on my wheelbarrow quit because I put too many rocks in at once. My trusty rubber boots developed a worn-out-boots hole in the heels. I can't find the pry bar anywhere. I have poison ivy rash on both arms, and my chin.And my dog, Kip, rolls his eyes when he sees we are headed for the rock-digging area.

But! I do have a large pile of rocks ready for further building, and two sides of the mini-grotto done. Whoo hoo!

Starting the Mini-Grotto

I'm having so much fun this week!

Last Sunday was a gorgeous cool sunny fall day, just right for starting a project that has been on my mind for a while. I knew the project would involve a good deal of hard digging, heavy lifting, and searching through rocky areas in the woods, all of it in mosquito-happy locations, so I was waiting for just the right time to start it.

When I started my Sampler Garden I didn't know what to do with a spot which was basically a hole. The entire Sampler is not very big, maybe about 60' by 100', in an egg-shape, and it is slightly sloped to the West. It has some large trees (too many large trees) and some smaller ones (which are getting to being large trees, see 'too many' above), an exposed rock ledge along the East side, and this strange Hole. At the time, the hole was about 12' across and about 6' deep in the deepest spot.

My first attempt to deal with the hole was to make an artificial bog in it. I filled in the deepest part by scraping the rather sparse topsoil from the higher bits down into it, then lined the depression with some 6-mil plastic, and filled it with a mixture of peat and sand. I had plenty of sand because I knew where there was a large sand deposit nearby at the edge of the marsh, but I had to buy the peat. Lots of peat! It took many wheelbarrows of mixture to fill the hole. I planted some boggish plants such as Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia purpurea) and Yellow Ladyslippers (Cypripedium parviflorum sp. pubescens) and it looked not too bad. Trouble was, it didn't get enough sun. The weeds, particularly several kinds of reeds, moved in with a vengeance, and the plants I wanted sulked and whined. After a couple of years I gave up on the bog idea, moved the remaining plants to better spots, and tried to ignore the hole. And it was back to being a hole, because the peat in the mixture had all disappeared and the sand had settled.

A year or so later I took a whim and dug a little pond. I had an old pond liner in the garage, never used, and a new spade and away I went. In two hours of easy digging in a sandy spot, ironically just above the Hole, I had a nice pond shape. It was rather too easy, actually. And, except for one problem, which I'll get to, it has been very easy indeed. The pond has stayed clear, I've seldom had to add water, the frogs love it, and it is very nice to sit beside it, look out over the Sampler Garden, and contemplate Life.

But Life did continue to have that Hole in it.

Then, in the winter, looking through an old book, I came upon a garden scene which included a tiny waterfall, just a trickle of water dripping over a flat stone into a tiny, tiny pool. Dreaming over this picture I imagined looking at just such a tiny waterfall. I saw ferns arching gracefully over the stream.... a few Ladyslippers in a sunny spot along it....stepping stones up to the stream edge.... Almost unconsciously I connected the little stream to my little pond. The water would gently overflow the edge of the pond, trickle down a narrow channel, eddy out into a wide but very shallow sunny pool, then seep over a flat rock to drip into a deep black pool below. A deep black pool surrounded by damp and mossy rock walls. The mossy rocks made me think of the Hole....

Which could be a mini-grotto!

 Like all Brilliant Ideas, it seemed perfectly feasible and I could hardly wait for Spring to get started on it. Unfortunately, when Spring came there was so much to do I never got to it except for standing beside the Hole with a bemused expression on my face trying to figure out how to actually do it. The hard part would be digging out the former bog and building the rock walls. The clouds of mosquitoes this summer didn't help, either.

Anyway, long story short, I decided to wait for Fall, and this week I started. My plan is to dig the soil out along one side of the rock-wall-to-be, build a section of wall, backfill with the dug-out soil, and do the next section. I've got an area along my Fern Trail which is actually tricky walking because it goes over a pile of broken rocks, which I figure will be just right for the grotto and using them will improve the path. Not easy to get them out because they are down a steep bit, too steep for me to push the wheelbarrow up with a load of rocks (I tried it, my feet kept slipping out from under me!), but I can carry them a few at a time. All the easy rocks near the garden are already in use, and anyway they are mostly roundish and I want flatish stone for the grotto. I can build up the rock wall on the lower side of the Hole and make a couple of steps down into it, a flat bottom lined with the flat rocks I dug up near the truck's parking spot, and sink the tiny pool for the water to drip into in the corner below the new stream.

In two afternoons so far, I've completed about a quarter of the new mini-grotto's walls, and the project is looking really possible! In fact, when I cajoled Husband into coming and looking at it, he actually looked semi-impressed. The 'what the heck is she up to now' look was almost entirely replaced with a 'this might be cool' look.

The problem with the pond? It got a tiny leak this summer, just a wee rip about half an inch long, and I can't seem to fix it. I went to the Pond Clinic (www.pondclinic.com) and they sold me a circle of pond patching stuff with the instructions to 'peel off the backing and stick it over the hole'. Fine, but it didn't stick. So I went back and this time the instructions included leaving it for 24 hours before re-filling the pond. Worked for one night, then it came unstuck again. The third time I went back they said to clean the liner with rubbing alcohol, let it dry completely, then stick the patch on and wait 24 hours. They seemed to think I should have known this but how could I? I went back and checked my books on ponds but all any of them said was that liners could be patched. I certainly cleaned and dried carefully around the rip before sticking on the patch but didn't think of cleaning it with alcohol. Frankly, I'm not convinced that it will help, but I'll try it. If it doesn't work I'll get new liner for the pond and use the old for the stream I'm planning. I need to get the mini-pool for in the grotto and the pump, too. Any why doesn't the Pond Clinic carry solar systems to power pumps? Should be an easy thing to do. I'll figure it myself, but it seems to me an obvious thing for them to offer. Must be plenty of gardeners who would like a small pond but don't want to get into major electrical work. And I'm convinced ponds don't need constantly moving water so a solar system should be fine.

Goldenrod Research

I've been trying to collect all the locally native Goldenrods. Some are quite easy, such as Solidago graminifolia, the Grass-leaved Goldenrod, but others are totally confusing.

In some cases the plants are so affected by growing conditions that I simply can't tell them apart. Solidago nemorosa, Grey-leaved Goldenrod, is usually quite easy to spot: short, one-sided wand-like flower spikes which nod over to one side, only a few small leaves along the stem, and no rosette of leaves at ground level at the time it blooms. So what the heck came up in the rock garden? The flower stalk was about 20" high, well-branched, with flowers all around each branch, and a healthy rosette of leaves on the ground.The individual flowers matched the description of S. nemorosa in J.C. Semple's Goldenrods of  Ontario, but the form of the flower stalk did not. It was in no way wand-like, much more what I'd call a plume. The rosette leaves matched, but should not have been there at the time the plant bloomed. Then there is a plant I brought back from an alvar I visited, which in fact looked exactly like this one except for being 4" high. It was growing in a huge field of Grey-leaved Goldenrods, all of which looked 'normal'. So is it a dwarf Grey-leaved or is it a regular one that got stepped on or chewed by a deer? Does S. nemorosa, when cut back early in the season, produce a plume instead of a wand?

I have a similar problem with a Goldie from Shaw Woods. When I try to key it out I get lost every time. It's not quite S. hispida, Hairy Goldenrod, yet it's not quite S. nemorosa either. It also bloomed very late so is not likely to be a form of S. juncea, Early Goldenrod, although the rosette leaves look a lot like it.

The answer: try to grow them all together in a test bed, so they all get the same conditions, and see how they do. Put a regular Grey-leaved, the dwarfish one, and the one from the rock garden all together and see if they are still different next year.

 So I dug a couple of beds for a Goldenrod Research Garden. Doesn't that sound grand? There is a spot below my rock garden which I have been planning to incorporate as a sort of transition between the rockery and the start of one of my woods trails and which I hadn't really done anything with yet. Full of weeds of course and I'll have to deal with them next year, but for now I just lifted the top six inches, dug up the six inches below that, added topsoil from the conveniently nearby pile, and called it a flowerbed. I'll put down some dark landscape fabric to make paths for now. One bed is for Goldenrods and the other for Asters. On the left you see the end of the two beds, looking a little like dog graves, and on the right you see the rosettes of some of the unknown Goldies. I've had them in pots for several months, so they should do fine. The smaller rosettes are some that might be Downy Goldenrod, S. puberula, a rare Ontario Goldenrod. They came from Constance Bay, growing on the trail and getting stomped by the horses that people like to ride through there. The two medium sized ones are the possible S. nemorosas, and the large one is goodness-knows-what from a marshy area. It's not S. uliginosa, Bog Goldenrod, but what it is I don't know. It didn't bloom this year but maybe next year. Gardeners are nothing if not hopeful!

Phlox Phacts

One more person says to me 'Oh, no good growing Phlox, they always run out and turn purple' and there might be an explosion!

Someone said that to me again yesterday, as we stood looking at my Hillside which still has quite a few phlox showing a few last flowers. There were white ones, pale pink ones, bluish-mauve ones and a dark almost red pink. Earlier, there had been the almost purple 'Nikki' and a variegated-leaf one with medium pink flowers as well. The Phlox did very well this year - they seemed to like the heat! If she had said only the 'run out' bit, I would have tried to explain about Phlox being hybrids and their seeds not necessarily giving plants like the parent, but once she threw in the other bit about them coming back 'purple' I gave it up as a bad case. One thinking error I can handle, but two are beyond me.

The original Phlox paniculata, what you might call your Natural Phlox, was magenta. Perhaps a washy magenta, but magenta. Not purple! Purple is darker, bluer, much closer to indigo than to red. Campanulas are sometimes purple, as are some grapes and some plums. The hybridizers have done their magic tricks and given us Phlox in a range of colours, all of them charming, but none of them really purple.

Just for fun, here's a picture of a late Harebell, Campanula rotundifolia, in the rain. All pictures lately have been 'in the rain' because I'm convinced it hasn't stopped raining since middle August. Ok, and a picture of Geranium sanguineum just to have a true magenta to look at.

A Very Fine Day

Had the most excellent day! Packed my larger backpack with essentials such as camera and lunch, and headed down to Marlborough Forest. This is a huge natural area, something like 45 by 60 kilometres, completely inside the City boundary. It's a mosaic of City-owned, Province-owned and privately-owned properties, more or less administered by the City according to Provincial regulations, with the co-operation of a number of groups like Ducks Unlimited, the Ontario Snowmobile Association, the Rideau Trail Association and others. In practice the deer hunters and the ATV enthusiasts do what they want. This means you stay out during hunting season!

But it's a great place to explore an alvar. The area I went to, off Paden Road near Burritts Rapids, is an enormous alvar. It took a bit of a walk to get in to it, and walking on the chunks of rock they put down to make the trails is no joke, but once I got there it was great fun. Completely flat as far as I could see, with clumps of junipers interspersed with open grassy areas and the occasional low willow or alder clump. What I was looking for was Solidago asteroides, the White Upland Aster or White Goldenrod. It has had a number of names, but the botanists now put it firmly in with the Goldenrods. I have one plant in my garden, grown from seed, but I really wanted to see it growing 'in the wild'.

There were thousands! The picture on the left shows a typical plant, about 16 - 18" high, growing in with the sparse grassy alvar plants.

White Goldenrod, Solidao asteroides

There were also a great many Fringed Gentians, Gentianopsis crinita, Slender Gerardias, Gerardia tenuifolia, Grey Goldenrods, Solidago nemorosa, a tiny purple flower I can't find in my field guide, and few just-opening Nodding Ladies Tresses, Spiranthes cernua.

Fringed Gentians - several colour forms

Slender Gerardia

Nodding Ladies Tresses

An almost white Fringed Gentian

A mystery! The plant is only 4" high.

OK, I'm having trouble arranging these images! But the captions should explain them. If you know what the tiny purple thing with the startling blue stamens is, please tell me!

The pale Fringed Gentian was a real find, too. I didn't get good pictures but enough to prove that I saw it. Most blue flowers have the occasional white clone. I'd love to have this in my garden, but I'm not having any success growing Fringies, so far. I've had the seed germinate but lost the seedlings to damping off, I've have little seedlings which I forgot to check on and which died (I assume) in the first dry week, and seed sprinkled in a wet area down along the driveway has so far not resulted in sheets of blue. Maybe next year? They are biennials so maybe I'm just not seeing the new plants. I searced the Paden alvar area for next year's Fringies, but couldn't find anything that looked like a gentian rosette. Do they only start to grow late in the season?

It was getting late by the time I hobbled back to the truck. And I did hobble. Those miserable rocks on the trail were so hard to walk on my feet were so sore I could hardly get my hiking boots off.
Then, just as I was ready to drive off, I happened to look over my shoulder behind me, and saw something I've been looking for for years. At first glance I wasn't sure it was what I thought it was, but I had to stop and take a look. Yes! A white (almost white, anyway) form of New England Aster!

It was growing on a mound of rubble obviously pushed back by a bulldozer or some such machine, and right beside the trail the dirt bikers had made to get around the 'no vehicles allowed' gate across the trail. I admit it, a small piece of the plant came home with me. A research sample! I potted it up, and so far so good. These asters are really easy to grow so I am hopeful.. It may be a purchased plant discarded there or it may be a lucky accident, but whatever it is, I'm delighted to have it.

What a day!

An Icy Job

Trimmed 'Iceberg' yesterday.

That is to say, I was the one with the secateurs, and 'Iceberg' was the rose bush that got smaller.

I can't really say I pruned it. The darn thing was sprawled across both of the paths that meet at its corner, lying in wait for any ankles that might be going, or trying to go, by. It is much too big and too sprawly for that spot, but is so healthy, and blooms so exuberantly for nearly a month every summer, that I just can't remove it. I didn't intend to have a monster rose in that corner but there it is, sort of like an Uncle Fred who has to be invited to family events but whose behavior than causes eyes to roll and voices to sharpen. I actually wanted 'Seafoam', but the nursery man told me 'Iceberg' was just the same. Right.

I thought at first maybe I could get in underneath and remove some of the longer canes, but that wasn't possible. It was a tangle of canes, most of them over 6 feet long, and there was no way I could get a hand or arm underneath without serious injury. Iceberg is one of those bushes that has stiff curved thorns, which catch and grab whatever gets close. The many canes all criss-cross into a dense tangle. Reaching in and cutting out canes at ground level is nerve-wracking. You work your hand in very carefully, secateurs at the ready, and a twig springs back and embeds itself in your wrist, you jerk your arm back and three more twigs catch hold. Since you're holding several canes back with your other hand, you now need a third hand to work the first one free....  I had heavy leather gloves on, and a long-sleeved shirt, but even so I got half a dozen long scratches and any number of pokes before I was done. After that I wasn't about to  carefully cut back each spent flower cluster, so just cut everything that extended beyond an imaginary circle about 6 feet across or higher up than about 3 feet. Now it looks like a turned-out pudding, but at least you can get past it without bloodshed. Usually.

I wonder if it was 'Iceberg' that gave someone the idea of the 'pavement rose'? Or is mine the only 'Iceberg' in the world that wants to be a ground cover?