garden log : rain rain rain


The front daylily bed, exploding with growth.


Aster at the end of the front bed, looking like it might actually get bushy this year.

It’s been raining! This is a good thing, both for the new shrubs and the region as a whole. Coming from farmland, I’m always appreciative of the rain, but this year more than ever after last year’s drought. The rain and other commitments have kept me from charging full speed ahead on the yard. I’ve mown the lawn, but it’s mostly been a sit-back-and-watch-things-grow sort of week. I’m glad to see the aster coming up so lushly, as it’s been quite scruffy for the past two years. It’s susceptible to pests, but it’s been hard to tell how what was a pest and what was simple lack of water; my philosophy on yard plantings has been ‘survive or die with the water that falls from the sky’ which meant that last year was hard on a lot of things. This year, though, they all seem to be recovering pretty well, so we’ll see how it goes.


The pink azalea at the side of the house coming into bloom.

Azaleas are extremely popular in this area, for reasons which no one has quite been able to explain to my satisfaction. I understand that there are native varieties, but it’s not clear to me which those are. At any rate, our yard included fewer azaleas than most when we acquired it—only two—and I’ve been trying to keep them alive. Knowing absolutely nothing about azaleas, this has been a bit of a challenge. As with everything else in the yard, they were quite scraggly when we moved in. Following the advice of one of my many ‘help me, I know nothing about flowers!’ books, I pruned them back relatively hard last year before they bloomed. They both did bloom, the white one in the front foundation bed and the pink one around the corner of the house. With last year’s drought and the warm winter that caused them to put out buds in February, which all promptly died in March’s freezing weather, they didn’t exactly fill in as much as I’d hoped. I’ve been on the verge of fertilizing the front one for weeks, as it was yellowed and half-dead looking, but the rain seems to have revived it. It’s not likely to bloom this year, but it’s putting out fresh green leaves and perking up quite a bit, so I’ll hold off on the fertilizer for now. I have no objections to fertilizer, I just haven’t cleared and mulched that bed yet, so I wasn’t relishing clearing away the leaf muck to properly apply the HollyTone. If we have a similar winter next year, I’ll get organized to treat it a bit next spring. I promise.


The self-seeding poppy bed just starting to come into bloom.

One of the areas of the yard that’s thriving from neglect is the poppy patch adjacent to our back walk. Each year I’ve let it go to seed and avoided mowing the sprouts as they come up in the spring, and each year I’ve been rewarded with a nice bright patch of poppies. I see no reason to keep them from doing their thing when there is so much else to be done in the yard. At some future point I figure that I’ll just pull them out before they set seeds if I don’t want them. In the meantime, they’re cheery and not hurting anything so there they stay. It appears likely that the bluebells, which are also in full bloom, will remain where they are at least until the autumn (note to self: mark their location with a little flag thingy so that you can dig up the bulbs and move them).


The crocus bed: humus-enriched, mulched, and edged.

In terms of my own labor in the yard this week, I did very little. I mowed the (front) lawn. I hired the tree people to spray bacteria on the Eastern tent caterpillar nest, which seems to have been successful as we’ve seen little caterpillar corpses on the back walk (not that I’ve been looking too closely). I pulled up dandelions by the dozens—some before they went to seed, even!—although still not nearly enough to keep them from cropping up again, especially given their prevalence through the whole block. And, I edged the new bulb bed with bricks to keep everything from running away down the sidewalk, added an inch or so of (store-bought) humus, and covered the whole thing with pine bark chips (my mulch of choice). I hold out absolutely no hope of getting any blooms in there this year, but instead am eagerly waiting to see what survives until next spring and what kind of flowers I might get then. To that end I’m just letting the scruffy greens do their photosynthesizing energy-storing thing.

My goals for May remain the same: weed, mulch, and remember that it doesn’t all have to get done right now.

garden log : rain rain rain

new life birds at Bombay Hook

This past weekend we took advantage of nice weather and an unscheduled day to drive to the wildlife refuge at Bombay Hook in search of new shorebirds. Shorebirds are the other glaring weak spot in my birding — warblers being the first — and I’ve vowed that this year I will improve my skills. Our trip revealed that I’m getting better, but for little brown birds running around on mudflats at a distance, I really could use a stronger pair of binoculars. The ones I have do fine for large birds at a distance and small birds in the woods, but sandpipers and waterfowl across the marsh at dusk all blur together.

Technological limitations aside, we spotted about thirty species on our trip, with seven new life birds among them. The first birds of the trip were two birds of prey along the road into the refuge: a Rough-Legged Hawk hovering over a field and a Northern Harrier taking off from a telephone wire. The harrier was also the first life bird of the day; it felt like an auspicious beginning to see something new before even reaching our destination. Just inside the gate we promptly spotted some familiar friends: Eastern Bluebirds, grackles, robins, starlings and mockingbirds. At the nesting houses outside the visitors’ centre were the first Purple Martins of the year; we got a nice good look at them as they staked out their ground against the starlings. Although shorebirds were the goal, I couldn’t make myself drive quickly past the other habitat on the way to the flats, and as a result we caught sight of the second life bird of the day, a Ring-Necked Pheasant making its merry way along the edge of the field just at the start of the driving loop. I know these are common birds, somewhat disdained for being introduced and descendants of domestic escapees to boot, but I hadn’t seen one in North America before. In the same stretch of fields I spotted a couple of Horned Larks mixed in with the hordes of Red-Winged Blackbirds, starlings and robins, and in the pond beyond we found a handful of gulls, including our old Chincoteague nemesis, the Laughing Gull.

Moving on to the first pond, we unintentionally flushed a Great Egret and a Snowy Egret from the marsh opposite and caught a Great Blue Heron flying in overhead. As luck would have it, a Black-Necked Stilt landed at the edge of the pond just as we arrived and we got a good close look at it poking around. We’d seen a couple at Chincoteague during the spring migration three years ago, but this was a great second sighting. Also in the pond were Northern Pintails, Northern Shovelers, and Green-Winged Teals, birds I’d seen on my trip up last month but which were new to my partner. Circling overhead was a tern that I would swear was a Roseate were (1) they not so rare and (2) I a more confident birder. The bird had a crisp black head and nape, a black bill, and the longest outer tail feathers I’ve ever seen on a tern. Later in the day we did see Forster’s Terns, so it’s possible that the light made the bill of this one look black. I would love to know if any Roseates have been sighted along the Northeast coast recently, though, as the tail was striking enough that I retain my doubts. Even with an inconclusive identification, the tern was exciting to see!

On our way to the mudflats, we found a pair of Blue-Winged Teals mixed in with some Green-Winged Teals dabbling around in low tide. I believe they nest at Bombay Hook, but I had failed to find any on my previous visit, so they were a good surprise. The other neat surprise, after peering after Greater Yellowlegs and Lesser Yellowlegs — new to me but not particularly challenging to find or identify — and hordes of Dunlins in various stages of breeding plumage, was an American Golden-Plover running around on the flat closest to the road. Its back and head were in full breeding plumage, with the belly still filling in, but it was glowing and sharp looking nonetheless. With its white undertail coverts and white flank stripe it most resembled its European cousin, but the fact that the vast majority of North American sightings of those birds occurred in Newfoundland (thanks again, Sibley!) — and much peering through our binoculars with our elbows propped on the roof of the car — swayed us to the belief that it simply hadn’t gotten all its summer feathers yet. It was still a good catch of a less common — and good-looking! — native bird, so we were pretty pleased with ourselves.

The rest of the trip yielded nothing new, but as we made our way around the rest of the loop we spotted a Killdeer, several Black-Crowned Night Herons roosting in the trees with the Snowy Egrets and Great Egrets, and a single Cattle Egret hanging out on the edge of the marsh with a Snowy Egret. Our very last sighting of the day was a young Bald Eagle wading around in low tide, surrounded by several shorebirds that seemed not at all concerned about being eaten. I suppose in a place with an abundance of ducks, shorebirds are a little skimpy for its taste. Either way, it was funny to see such an obvious predator landed in the midst of what I would certainly have tagged as prey.

By the time we left the sun had definitely gone down, the mosquitoes were out in force, and we had to wait for the automatic gate to release us. It was a good day, though, and if I didn’t see the teeming and varied masses of sandpipers I was hoping for, there’s always next month (or year).

new life birds at Bombay Hook

new life birds at Lake Artemesia and Patuxent

In order to try to catch sight of some of the migrating warblers coming through this area, I visited Lake Artemesia at what seemed like an unreasonably early — and cold! — hour this morning: 7:00am. When I first arrived, only the larger birds were active: Cardinals, Blue Jays, Robins, Mockingbirds, and Starlings were all making loads of noise, as well as a single male Eastern Towhee camped out at the top a tree singing its little heart out. Out on the water, a bunch of Coots, several pairs of Canada Geese, and the threesome of Wood Ducks were paddling around (there must be another male around somewhere, right?). By the time I reached the bridge to the peninsula, though, the smaller birds were starting to get going: I saw a goldfinch, loads of chickadees, and a Tufted Titmouse. Just over the bridge, I was geeked to see a Green Heron up in a tree. I know, intellectually, that they nest in trees, but it still strikes me as odd to actually see them up in the branches. I was also unduly excited to spot a Snapping Turtle in the lake near the bridge. It wasn’t as impressively large as the one I saw at the University Hills pond last year, but it was large enough to be clearly identifiable, especially with its long tail in view.

The peninsula yielded two new life birds, although not any of the warblers I was hoping to see. Near the restrooms I found a Field Sparrow, a bird I’d been told was around but had yet to spot. Nearby, along one of the ‘paths’ cut into the grass, I discovered a small group of Savannah Sparrows. They were neat, with their yellow head stripes and lovely streaky colors. The flash of yellow gave me hope that I had found a warbler, but I was just as pleased to find a type of sparrow I would never have been looking for. I did see some warblers in the trees along the bank of the peninsula, but only Yellow-Rumped ones. I spotted a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher catching gnats and the male Bluebird hovering around yet another new nesting box; I suspect that he keeps getting bullied away from the boxes by the Tree Sparrows, and I’m hoping that doesn’t mean the pair will move on completely.

I wasn’t too bent out of shape about not seeing any new warblers, as I’ve already seen two new ones at Patuxent this month: a single Pine Warbler and a few Palm Warblers; the latter were traveling with a large group of Yellow-Rumped Warblers, as I was told they likely would be. In a stroke of luck, I completely lost track of time and was sitting on a bench on the lake trail after the trails were supposed to be closed, which was exactly the point in the late afternoon when all the little insect eating birds became active again. I think I also saw a Black-Throated Green Warbler, but I wasn’t able to conclusively identify it. It wasn’t until the ranger directed me to return to the parking lot, via the bullhorn on the jeep from across the lake, did I realize how late it had gotten.

The Pine Warbler sighting was the result of sheer determination, and not a little neck-crunching. I had taken my partner up to Patuxent to show him some of the birds I’d seen there that were new to him (namely the bluebirds and the loon that had been hanging out on the lake), and we doggedly tracked the noisy little bird through the woods and then he stood patiently by while I peered at the very tops of the tallest trees following the little blur of yellow. In the end, I confirmed the identification by behavior, which seems to be the case more frequently as I move out of the most common birds into the still-pretty-common-in-the-right-habitat birds. Which is why I’ve switched to using Sibley’s as my primary guide: I find the behavior, habitat, and song descriptions to be more thorough and easier to understand than in Peterson’s.

In an effort to keep adding mostly-common birds to my lifelist, we’re planning to visit Bombay Hook this weekend to try to see the shorebirds that should have returned by now. I imagine it will be quite busy on a weekend afternoon, but I’m looking forward to it.

new life birds at Lake Artemesia and Patuxent

garden log : new foundation bed & tenacious bulbs


Grape hyacinth in the front lawn.

One of the nicer aspects of restoring order to our neglected yard has been discovering new plants as we weed and mulch parts of the garden that had been completely overgrown by liriope and ivy. I’ve spoken about the appearance of new clumps of bulbs along the side beds, but even the ones I’ve known about are doing better this year. The two grape hyacinths in the front yard have multiplied, putting up four flowers this spring. I love the perky look of them against the grass, and plan to again avoid them with the mower. Looking back over my notes from last year, I see that I recorded their location as ‘just at the border of the grass’ and the bare dirt under the maple. I’m pleased to see that the grass has made inroads into that bare area, as the hyacinths are now a good foot or more into the lawn.


New azaleas in the front foundation bed.

After talking about it for a couple of years, this week was the time for actually clearing out the neglected foundation bed and planting two new azaleas. I considered camellias for some time, but none of the ones I’ve seen in our town have been free of brown frost spots, so I decided that the climate was just a little harsh for them. To keep the front relatively consistent color-wise, I chose white azaleas; the white azalea and pieris in the other foundation bed look nice against the brick. Our neighbor helpfully adopted the two big barberries that had been plunked by the porch — we are thinking of them as burglar deterrents along her back fence — which cleared up the space for planting. I spent a couple of hours loosening the soil and clearing a good lawn bag full of roots from that area and then prepped the whole space with generous additions of humus and peat. Per the instructions I found on the internet, I created two nicely aerated mounds for the plants and then covered the whole area with enough mulch to keep the water from sitting at the foundation. To finish off that bed I added the taller of the woodland phlox varieties I’d picked up at Behnke’s and planted out the lavender near the front step, after adding more peat and mixing some garden lime into the dirt.

I’m satisfied with the outcome and look forward to seeing the shrubs grow and the phlox spread out over the next couple of years. I have more plans for the front of the house, not least of which is to mow the lawn, but they’ll wait a couple of days. I worked to get the bare ground covered before the rain that was anticipated for this weekend, and that included moving a couple of hostas from the backyard to the north side of the house. I’d cleared a strip of liriope from along the foundation there, and once I had the hostas in place I mulched the whole stretch with pine bark chips (my mulch material of choice, as it has some color but doesn’t reek like shredded hardwood mulch). I don’t love hostas, but we have a couple of them in the backyard so I’ll see if they’ll take along the north side of the house. If so, I’ll move the rest and create a narrow foundation bed the length of the house.


Tenacious lilies-of-the-valley coming up along the back of the house.

I’ve mostly left the back to itself for the time being, relying on the clearing we did last year to hold us while I get the front tidied up. The leaf mulch seems to have been good for the bulbs under the dwarf cherry, as the lilies-of-the-valley are coming up like crazy. My plan is to move them to under the holly tree, on the south fence, and encourage them to spread into a nice ground cover there; this is also my plan for the crested irises I purchased. First, though, that area needs to be cleared of liriope and soil-treated; we — and by ‘we’ I mean my partner and his friend — got the space about half cleared last summer, and I plan to tackle it over the next week. Or so.

Today, though, I’m going to enjoy the fruits of my labor and watch the bees buzz around the new flowers.

garden log : new foundation bed & tenacious bulbs

garden log : killing killing killing & buying buying buying

This week has been rainy and I’ve focused on killing unwanted yard invaders. Chickweed is sprouting like crazy all over the town, spurred on by last year’s drought, and I’ve tried to clear the larger patches of it from the front yard. I’ve also tried to catch the dandelions before they go to seed, and have been moderately successful. I am not sure that the bare, slightly muddy, patches are better than the weeds, but I’m hoping the grass and violets will fill them in with time. I know that many people consider the violets themselves a weed — not to mention a sign of poor drainage — but I find them cheery and am happy to see them return. They, too, will spread, but more slowly than the plants that fling their seeds in all directions, so I tolerate them gladly.

I’ve taken advantage of the damp weather and wet ground to dig up more of the invasive liriope as well. I’m making slow but steady progress; I’m determined not to let the weeds get stronger over the next few months. Digging them up mid-summer was possible, but not a lot of fun, and I hope to have them well in hand by that point this year. In addition to killing things in our own yard, we lent our skills to the town for the civic association’s annual stream clean-up. Our contribution was to clear the invasive tree-strangling ivy from along the stream banks of one block of the town park. Yes, two hours of labor netted us two large contractor bags of ivy and one block cleared; that’s how prevalent the ivy is around here! In some instances the ivy had been previously cut but had grown back together and was refusing to die; in those cases we pulled the roots from the trunk, even though that can be harder on the tree. From all accounts the stream clean-up was a success, as there appeared to be enough volunteers to cover the entire length of the creek this year.


Ivy-damaged tree in the town park.

As I continue to clear the ground in our yard, I’m starting to need materials to cover it up again: plants and mulch. I purchased two cold hardy white azaleas for the left foundation bed, and they’ve been sitting on our porch while I collect the peat moss and humus that I need to plant them out properly. Azaleas grow well in the soil in our town, so I expect that if I plant them as recommended they’ll do well. This will be the first time I’ve planted a shrub, though, and I didn’t think the ‘plunking them in the ground’ approach that works so well with transplanting daylilies would suffice.


Plants waiting to be planted out.

In addition to the azaleas, I purchased a range of low-growing natives — woodland stonecrop, three types of woodland phlox, two varieties of crested iris — to fill out the front bed and the cleared area under the holly tree in the back yard. I’m hoping that the phlox will anchor both the soil and the mulch in the front and that the iris will spread into a nice ground cover in the back. Of course, this means that the coming week will be full of soil treatment and ground preparation, if it ever stops raining. Not that rain is bad; I’m grateful for it, especially after last year’s drought. It just means more time inside — and more money spent at the garden store — than I’d like.

garden log : killing killing killing & buying buying buying