the bark tree

Ugly reality

This is my horrible looking post-summer garden.

Though I showed some annuals that looked ok all summer in close up photos, the big picture is rather ugly.

Drought stressed new plantings...

chlorotic foliage...

rotten flower buds...

fungal spots, rot...

more drought stress...

lawn issues...

thriving weeds...

and faded blooms.  Overall, not a pretty picture.

But there are now signs of recovery: Lantana is blooming again.

My Julia Child rose, whose blooms were faded all summer, now have a lovely rich color.

New Salvia guarantica 'Black and Blue' planted to replace the gorgeous Centaurea that croaked in that spot. After deadheading, S. Mystic Spires' is pretty once again.

The dead thang

Did I ever show you this little Cleyera (Ternstroemia gymnanthera 'Jade Tiara') I planted in early spring?  I didn't think so.  It wasn't exactly a significant planting. Being only a little one gallon plant, it barely stuck up above the iris, but I imagined it slowly growing large enough to softly fill this area with shiny evergreen simplicity and tolerating both the sun and shade which this area provides.

Well, it's dead.  Yep.  I killed it.   Not on purpose, of course.  It started looking like this and I carefully clipped off all the dead stuff in hopes of it's recovery, but it just went ahead and croaked.  I'm pretty sure it got overwatered and stayed wet and smothered from lack of oxygen in this mostly shady bed.  Sometimes we tell our customers at NHG that this type of loss is caused by an "inadvertent watering problem."

It's no fun to watch plants die and I'm always hesitant to show my failures, but it's part of gardening. Bleah.

Neighborhood musings

After picking up our fruit and egg share on Saturday, Brandon I and were walking home and heard a woman scream.  Turned out it was only because she saw this huge dragonfly dead on the ground.  Another man picked it up just as we got to it and said, 'finders keepers', but we got a photo.

Earlier, we passed by the beautiful Greendome community garden in McCarren Park and I took a couple of quick shots of their summer blooms.

In other neighborhood news...
I know I mentioned this last year, but it always baffles me how every summer the folks at White Castle think it's a good idea to spruce up with a pathetic display of annuals, transforming it from this (above) to this. Compared to this effort, last year looked downright pretty. Budget cuts, perhaps?

My weeds

 

I've only read an excerpt of Sara Stein's book, My Weeds (in the highly-recommended compilation The Writer in The Garden, shown in my book list in the right-hand column), but it's one I'm searching for in my second-hand shopping expeditions.

My own list of weeds includes this year's worst offender, purslane (Portulaca oleracea) shown above. I'm forever reading about how this weed is edible and incredibly nutritious.  I've even seen it for sale at the farmer's market.  We've eaten it raw and briefly sauteéd, but I could never eat all that comes up in our small yard.

I sort of mentally rate various weeds by how difficult they are to pull and tend to feel less hatred for the easy ones. Moderately easy-pulling hairy galinsoga (Galinsoga ciliata) is an exception to that tendency because it grows so vigorously and profusely in warm weather.  I yanked this one from the ground and left it on the pavement to die, but a light rain revived it and its stems craned up toward the light.  It is also supposedly edible, but tastes bad to me.

Prostrate Spurge (Euphorbia maculata) almost looks pretty to me, but having allowed it in one corner long ago, I learned my lesson.  It has a taproot which makes it difficult to pull out and thrives in sidewalk cracks.

Common Fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicus) is another common sight which has small daisy-like flowers (don't be tempted) that spread like wildfire, but are easy to pull.

 

Everyone has seen Oxalis, which looks like clover.  This stuff is also taprooted and hard to remove effectively.  I try and pull this when its tiny.

I must look up the name of this familiar, low growing, easy to pull weed.  A great reference book we have at work is Weeds of the Northeast, by Richard H. Uva; Joseph C. Neal; Joseph M. DiTomaso.  It features 3 photos of each plant, close-up and from a distance and as a seedling.

I could go on and on with this list.  These are just a few I photographed yesterday morning.

Update: My co-worker Charles Day informed me that this is the aptly named Carpetweed, (Mollugo verticillata) and a member of the Aizoaceae family.
Thanks Charlie!

 

Tree stump undermines garden beauty

When you look at my garden, you don't especially notice the ugly, dead stump in the upper right corner of this overview photo. 

But there it stands in plain view, undermining my efforts to distract from it. A battle scar in the sometimes ruthless process that is gardening, the stump, which straddles the fence between mine and our neighbor's gardens was brutally dead-headed several summers ago with the idea of eliminating the encroaching shade it was unhappily providing.

Without success, I have tried last year and again this year to treat the stump as a trellis for growing annual vines.  The little scraggly mess in the photo on the left, is the miserable attempt I made this spring to grow sweet peas (Lathrus sps.) in several spots at the base of the stump.  Though surprisingly still alive with a few pathetic blooms, this hardly counts as coverage.

On the right I have just planted a little brown eyed susan vine (Thunbergia 'Blushing Susie') on my neighbor's side of the fence, since my side is mostly stump.  We'll see if it manages to provide any interest.  Next year I must find a rampant clematis to smother this garden nuisance.

Flower alley experiment

While sorting through a bunch of old seeds, I found a number of packets for which I had no specific ideas. I sowed a bunch in the ugly alley behind our house to clear out my stash and see if any thing nice comes of it. I hate to get my hopes up since most of the seed was old, but it would be great to see some improvement in the view from our bedroom window.

Bird feeding bust

We tried out our new bird feeder for the first time using a seed mix for finches. It was immediately inundated with sparrows by the dozen who drained the whole thing in a day, pooping everywhere in the process.

We were hoping to attract some other species that we know are around such as cardinals, blue jays, mourning doves, house finches, mockingbirds, etc. Perhaps another type of food would be better. I've heard that sparrows won't eat Nyjer thistle seed. Like starlings, pigeons and seagulls, these birds are already so numerous in this area that they need no extra help.

At this point, I'm at a loss as to how to proceed. How to promote bird diversity in the city? I've read that sometimes sparrows will alert other species to the feeder and perhaps their poop could be nutritious in the compost.

Do we continue allowing the crazed barrage of sparrows? Try a different seed mix? Save the food until a better time for different birds? I'll have to do some more research.

Monkey Puzzle

We got a new Monkey Puzzle tree!

Brandon and I are both fascinated by this plant (Araucaria araucana). As you might've noticed, I am partial to many odd, spiky plants. Its kooky common name caught Brandon's interest when I first showed him photos in a wonderful out-of-print book I found at Larry McMurtry's amazing book store: Booked Up, in Archer City, Texas. (If you love books, you must visit this place).

When we traveled to France last October, we saw this large specimen in a garden. I argued to plant ours in the ground, but since we are renters it seemed a bit risky as we would definitely want to keep it if we ever leave this house.

Brandon took this amusing photo of the tree when we first took it out of the box.

Sad to say we actually had one before, but it weakened significantly when it dried out while we were in Texas for Christmas a few years ago and met it's demise soon after. I found it's carcass when I sifted through the compost bin. I promise we'll do better on this new one.

Fast food flowers

Walking to and from the subway, I pass this ugly White Castle "restaurant" daily. Regardless that the results are often marred by a vehicle in a matter of weeks, each summer they put forth a pitiful, yet sort of touching gardening effort to have a little color out front.

First I noticed they were trying one of those pre-seeded garden mat things, but when that failed to produce in a timely fashion they popped in their choice of standard annuals. I'm sure this is a big draw for their clientele.

Annual vines

I was getting frustrated with the progress of this Canary bird vine until I noticed that it had decided to go over to the neighbor's side of the fence where I couldn't really see its new growth. I'm hoping that it will smother our ugly old tree stump. (I also realized the stump could have holes bored to become a bee post!)

In another area, I have inadvertently arranged a dueling vine scenario. I planted one called Love in a Puff! (Cardiospermum sp.) only to find that the Cypress vine (Ipomea quamoclit) I had last year had sown itself just behind it. So far I haven't had the heart, but I will likely pull out the Ipomea since I have it in another spot uncontested.

Slacker experiment

Remember my beautiful calceolaria pocketbook plants which brightened my dismal early April landscape? I yanked them out of the ground when they started looking ratty and other things were finally going, but couldn't bring myself to toss them in the compost bin so instead they sat here in the shade next to it where I've continued to water them now and then.

Now they are forming seeds so maybe I can grow them myself next year!

Tree Murder

Showing you the placement of a little vine and my new variegated yucca reveals a small area of the garden I've sort of been avoiding photographing since it has an ugly tree stump and leads to the story of the tree's demise in the fall of 2005.

I disliked it so much that I couldn't find a photo to show you how it looked before. I kept just wishing it would disappear if I ignored it. The multi-trunked, self-sown elm of some sort was growing out of scale in between my garden and my next-door neighbors', engulfing the iron fence. Every year it got some sort of icky fungus or maybe galls (?) that formed disgusting sticky yellow balloons all over the leaves. It was beginning to shade out our gardens and I hit it's roots every time I dug.

One evening my neighbors (who thankfully shared my repugnance) and I discussed it's future, a conversation which moved quickly from joking about taking it down ourselves to breaking out the Saws-All. In short order, Douglas had purchased some liquid courage and started sawing away the top branches in the gleam of the streetlamp with help from Brandon.

His ill-advised technique was swift and effective and soon we were left with a large pile of branches and the stump. No more shade. The roots were another story and we had to resort to using a chemical to eliminate the suckers that immediately sprouted from the trunk. I suppose I still feel a little guilty killing something for the purpose of beautifying my yard, but gardening forces you to make those choices sometimes.

Rosemary failure

My poor rosemary plant croaked, of course. The harsh temperatures in March proved too much for it. I should've taken Kelly's advice and mulched around the base.