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garden : planning, weeding, and more planning

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Now that spring has truly arrived, I’m assessing what needs to be done in the garden and making plans. Plans for this spring, that is. There are multi-year plans in the works — replace fences, redo walks, eradicate invasive weeds, move roses — but those aren’t what I’m focusing on. In the short-term, there are beds that I’ve already created that need some work, and that’s where this spring’s energy is going.

First up is the foundation bed on southeast front wall of the house. For reasons that are no longer clear to me, I believed that bed was shady and planted azaleas and a native phlox there. It is, however, one of the sunniest beds around the base of the house. Which means that the azaleas and phlox are, shall we say, cooking in their current spots; I’ll be moving them around the corner to the south side of the house which is quite shady due to the shadows cast there by trees and the neighbor’s house. Once they’re out of the way, the entire bed will be (1) properly edged and weeded, (2) soil-treated, and then (3) planted to within an inch of its life with sun-loving and part-shade flowering perennials. This last bit is made possible by Springhill Nurseries in Ohio, whose sales — double your plants for 1 penny! half off your entire order before April 22nd! — were just too good to resist. I spent a few hours poring over the catalogue, moving little post-it notes (with such information as color, sun requirements, and flowering time) around on a map of the foundation bed, and cutting out little pictures of the flowers themselves. In the end I had a visual guide to the future garden and an order placed for 70 plants (at an average cost of $2 each). Not too shabby.

Not all of those 70 plants will be for the front foundation bed: one of the hydrangea bushes will be a thank-you gift for friends who helped us haul our belongings up to the attic (nothing like a ha’penny outlay to show you appreciate someone) and some are destined for other parts of the yard. Namely, the bed at the front of the house along the walk that desperately needs some help to keep all the mulch and topsoil from perpetually running down the bank onto the sidewalk. To that end, I’ll be planting a row of white carpet phlox under the daylilies as an anchor, as well as a row of basket-of-gold up the short edge of the bed along the front steps. But wait, you are now thinking, isn’t that where the aster and coneflowers are? Yes, indeed: those will be migrating into the foundation bed and forming part of the autumn-flowering contingent there. To create a bit more winter structure, I’m going to finally plant the Summersweet that I received at the Migratory Bird Festival last year (and hope that it’s actually still alive) in the corner of the bed opposite the light post and add the iceplant from the rear fence (dividing it into two clumps). I imagine it will still look rather — what’s the technical term? — scraggly this summer, but I’m hopeful that by next spring everything will have established itself. The lavender-colored phlox I planted there last year is happy as a clam, so that bodes well for the carpet phlox, which is really my main concern. The last bit of this grand plan is to add some summer flowers to the spot to the right of the porch steps that currently only contains daffodils. The parallel spot on the other side of the steps is where I’ve planted the lavender, which continues to grow and bush out and I expect (hope) will shoot out plenty of lovely flowers this year. The flowers will be globe thistle, shasta daisy, and some low-growing daisies in the black-eyed susan family.

All of this planting and replanting will be taking place in May, which is when the plants are able to be dug up from the field and shipped, and I look forward to a long leisurely summer of sitting back and watching my garden grow once I’ve gotten everything in place. There may be a push for the killing of more liriope or ivy, or the digging up of sapling stumps, and there’s also the issue of the bluebells I plan to move to the side of the house. But after that, after that it’s all sitting around and enjoying the view. Once I get the all the chickweed pulled from the backyard, that is.

garden : planning, weeding, and more planning

garden log : long slow spring

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Maybe it’s because I’m watching my spring bulb transplants like a hawk, but spring this year seems to be arriving ever so slowly. I’ve had only three crocuses bloom in the transplant bed, although six crocuses that I missed last year popped up in various places around the yard. The daffodils are just now opening, but only the plain yellow ones in the clumps that I didn’t actually move; the double-bloomed jonquils that surprised me last spring are nowhere to be seen. I’m hopeful that they’ll still make an appearance, as none of the neighbors have any blooms beyond basic daffodils and crocuses.

In other parts of the yard I’m starting to see signs of life. The forsythia is in full bloom, the flowering quince is covered with lovely salmon buds, and the peonies are being to poke their red shoots up from the dirt. The irises that I planted under the dogwood last year are also showing signs of sending up shoots; I’m sure the squirrels got to a few of the tubers, so we’ll see what’s left to bloom. I’ve gotten out and pruned the roses, although a couple of the bushes could use a second sweep since it’s been so cold. The large white azalea in the front of the house appears to have set buds, so I’m looking forward to that blooming.

From that list of happenings, it’s clear that I’m resting on last year’s laurels with the garden work this spring. By this time last year I had weeded and transplanted and dug and mulched. This year it’s been cold and I haven’t been motivated to get out and start digging up weeds. When I do get out there, one priority will be treating the foundation bed on left side of the porch as the sunny spot it truly is and rescuing the shade-loving azalea from the spot where it’s bound to be scorched through the summer. My neighbor’s removal of a thirty-foot magnolia from her backyard made our front yard quite sunny, and I am still tracking what that will mean for the plants. In the longer term, it probably means that we’ll have lovely raised beds of vegetables in our front yard, complete with bean and squash teepees.

garden log : long slow spring

garden log : let it snow!

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The impressively happy lavender plant by the front step.


Snow-topped garlic chives and ice plant, with aster in the background.

It doesn’t snow that frequently here; last year it only snowed once, at about this point in winter. Last year’s winter was hardly cold enough to be called winter, and I fretted that the bacteria and fungus pests weren’t getting enough nights of killing cold. This year, though, winter’s been satisfyingly cold (more satisfying for the garden plants than the inauguration spectators, I’d venture). Today’s snow is the first of the year, and will likely be gone in a few days, washed away by the rains that are coming tomorrow. Before that happens, I seized my chance to document the winter structure of the yard, something gardeners tell me is just as important as the summer blooms. Taking a closer look at the stalks I’ve left to do their own thing over the winter, for plant health as much as for aesthetics, I can appreciate the beauty of the beiges, browns, and reds, holding up the snow and staking out their places. The lavender is not even properly ‘stalks’; it’s thrived in its new spot and appears to be weathering the cold without any negative effects. Last year I cut back the aster, chives, and ice plants by now, as well as pruning the roses. I’m glad I let them be this year; the stalks are perky and heartening to see, and the roses are looking healthier than I’ve seen them since we moved in.

Just this weekend I noticed the first shoots of daffodils, star plant, crocuses, and hyacinths poking their way up through the earth and cleared the leaf cover away. I’m hoping the coming cold rain is just what they need water-wise and the snow doesn’t stunt their growth. There’s not much else to do this time of year except cut back the winter stalks and deadwood on the shrubs, both of which I’ll do just as soon as the snow melts and the buds become more visible.


Ice plant along the south fence, with the pink rose in the background.

garden log : let it snow!

food : all things quince

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Quinces from our backyard.

One of the best surprises we’ve had as we’ve gotten to know our house and yard was the discovery of quince trees in the rear corner of our neighbor’s yard, along the border between our two properties. Because we are the neighbor to the south, and there are other trees to the north in our neighbor’s yard, the trees grow toward the sun, overhanging our rear sidewalk and garage. During the first year we were here, we saw one or two yellow things on the ground by the back fence, and commented to each other that an animal must have dragged an apple or something into the yard and left it there. That was the sum total of the interest we paid in the situation and the energy we expended in addressing it: very little. We were busy with other parts of the yard, and a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work it would take to clean up the property; the last thing we wanted to do was investigate mysterious happenings out by the garage.

The second year we were here, we spent more time in the yard during the autumn clearing the ivy, pruning the trees, and covering the weed-laden garden beds with a thick leaf mulch. During all that time in close proximity to the rear yard, we noticed that the yellow fruits were actually growing on the trees, and were littering our rear sidewalk by early November. This piqued our curiosity, and we consulted one of my partner’s colleagues who grows quite a lot of his own fruits and vegetables on a lovely piece of land that used to be part of a dairy farm. He told us we had quinces, a fruit of which I had only heard vague and mysterious references to before that point. Nonetheless, I gathered them up and set them on the back steps to cure while I figured out what to do with them.


Quince jelly.


Quince paste.

There are, it appears, two things to do with quinces. You can make jelly or you can make membrillo, a thick paste that is a favorite dessert in Spain that’s served with manchego cheese. You can also bake and poach them, mixing them in with apple desserts for additional flavor, which we tried as well. With two dozen enormous yellow fruits having literally dropped from the sky into our yard and folks all over the internet raving about the glory of the flavor of the quince, I decided there was nothing for it but to make jelly…and membrillo, since it would be a shame to have all the pulp just go to waste. This was my first foray into canning, and I had to improvise somewhat. I used a stockpot for the boiling water bath (which, by the way, I don’t recommend) and set to work chopping and boiling and draining and boiling and skimming and stirring and pouring, ending up with about a dozen half-pints of jelly and about 20 pieces of membrillo. Happily, everybody I know seems to love membrillo, a delicacy I had never heard of before embarking on this new culinary path. We were able to give away the membrillo, in addition to serving it to guests at every opportunity, and enjoyed the jelly for much of the year. I also learned that canning is actually not that hard — although quince jelly is arguably the easiest product to start with, containing just the right amount of natural pectin to gel on its own and turning a lovely deep rose color to let you know when it’s done.

Following this roaring success, we made a concerted effort to help the trees this year. We cut back the ivy that surrounds them and pruned all the not-inconsiderable deadwood. Once we knew what to look for, the trees became incredibly easy to identify, and we were pleased to discover two small saplings at the sides of the main grove, no doubt sprung up from fruits left to lie under the thick ivy ground cover. Later in the spring we were rewarded first by flowers and then by little green fruits. Little green fruits which soon littered the ground when the gale-force winds of the early summer storms blew through. This autumn, there was not a single yellow fruit on any of the trees, much to our disappointment. We are hopeful that quinces are like some varieties of pears, with large and small production years, and that next year will be a banner year. In the meantime, I have been combing the internet for a mail-order source of quince fruits, to no avail, having learned the hard way that their floral flavor is truly as addictive as quince fans claimed!


Tarte tatin, with a layer of quince slices — magnifique!

food : all things quince

garden log : cleaning up for winter

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The lavender bush, blooming in autumn.


The lavender bush, newly planted in spring.

This weekend we engaged in a superhuman final push to get the yard cleaned up for the winter. ‘Cleaned up’ is, of course, a relative term. We did not, as I’d hoped, prepare any beds for the transfer of rose bushes in the spring. Nor did we plant anything, move any bulbs, or cut the ivy back off of our neighbor’s trees. We didn’t even mow the lawn one last time before the cold rain of November descended for real (oops).

Even without meeting any of those goals, we accomplished a lot in the yard this year. Much of that work took place in the spring and early summer: digging up the liriope, relocating plants that were being suffocated, planting new azaleas in the front, putting in a new bed in the back, cutting back the ivy, and pruning the quince trees. Nonetheless, we pushed on and were able to find more to do. We dug up (even) more liriope, filling about three contractor bags with the stuff. I cut back the holly trees, to allow us to walk under them and to give the recovering crape myrtle (ours) and magnolia (our neighbor’s) some breathing room. We pulled oodles of dead vines down from the back trees and cut the mulberry back from the garage. I raked all the leaves, and we transferred them via the tarp method to the back beds where the great multi-year weed-smothering process continues. I was extremely glad to see that a decent layer of leaves remained from last year in many places, such that the leaves from our own yard should be sufficient for this year’s efforts. The tarp method, in contrast to last year’s wheelbarrow method, also went quickly and allowed us to move larger piles of leaves at once.

All in all, it was a satisfying clean up and I’m pleased with how our yard is looking. It’s conceivable that what remains to be done — ivy, liriope, and sapling stump removal — can be accomplished in the spring without much effort. Okay, with a lot of effort, but in plenty of time to allow me to actually plant things throughout the summer. Imagine: gardening that involves futzing around moving things here and there rather than mass killing.

garden log : cleaning up for winter