Salad for the Baby Charlie?

I did work in the rock garden a little more today, but I'm going to wait on the report. I got sidetracked with other things that needed to be done.

Did I tell you about my baby woodchuck, er charlie? (My friend, Chuck, prefers that friends not take his name in vain.) A couple of weeks ago, there was a baby woodcharlie hiding under the edge of a blue tarp on the porch. I scared her off into the pine trees. On the way, she ran the gauntlet of all my wire cages around my plants. Not that she went around the cages which are primarily to deter deer. No, she just ran through them as if it were her own personal fun house. I have no idea if it's a girl or boy, but I'm going to call her Charlotte.

Last night she was camped in the flower bed. See her hiding?

Hiding turned out to be a big joke. I yelled at her and told her to scram. I clapped my hands and stamped my feet. Here's what she thought of all that. No, her head isn't striped. Those are shadows. I had to actually come at her with a stick in my hands to get her to run away.

Segue to today. I had to do errands. Blech. But one of them was to go to Tractor Supply and use a $10 credit before it expired. I figured I'd roam the aisles until I found something I wanted. Who knew they had plants? The remains of their inventory was on a clearance table in front, with gallon plants marked down to $1 each! Now, the selection wasn't huge, but hey.

I won't show them all today, but I got 6 perennials and 5 annuals for $1.06. (Had to spend OVER $10 to use the card.) At basically "free" I'm willing to add a little color to the front flower bed. There are 4 New Guinea Impatiens (will tolerate sun), and in the other pot there were 3 Gazanias and a surprise Coleus. None of the plants were super end-of-season stressed. There is still plenty of summer left that these should have nice blooms.

Well, that is, if I can keep Charlotte from eating them. She (or perhaps her rabbit friends) have eaten all the leaves off the wild violets. This isn't a huge problem. They will come back, but I was thinking they'd make nice foliage cover instead of bare dirt. Not if they are all stubs. Hmmm.

So, I had to deploy more wire cages to cover all the new plants. I now have so much wire draped over plants it's a little ridiculous, and I'm running out of scraps of wire. I'm considering a low fence that will keep Charlotte and her friends completely out of this bed. I have a roll of 4-foot chicken wire, but I decided I wasn't willing to have everything look quite that ugly. And it would be really difficult to get inside to weed. I've priced 2-foot wire, and it's not bad. I can still cover the hostas inside, which is the main thing the deer eat, and 2-foot should keep out the small critters.

My other big project of the day which kept me out of the garden somewhat is that I've made the final transition to the computer David gave me last year. I've really pushed my luck keeping the other computer alive. It's way past time to switch. I'd already gotten all the software updated and all my online accounts synced. Today, I did one more backup of all the files on the old computer and I'm blogging from the new one.

Whew. My usual MO is that the current computer crashes, and then I'm paying someone to try to recover things since the last backup. So I get a couple of points for doing it right this time.

See Snaky/Sneakey

Snaky/Sneaky

Some little snake left a skin in the rock garden. Probably a garter snake, judging from the size. I'm sure the rocks provided a great place to get the peeling started. We used to have a pet snake. It was very cool watching him shed. As the old skin dried, his eyes would get milky and his colors dull. After a few days he would start rubbing his jaw against a rock, and pretty soon he'd peel out of that old skin just like you pull off a dirty sock. After he shed, his skin would be smooth and his colors bright.

As for the "sneaky" part: I've been trying to sort out a few of the numbered spaces in the rock garden. You'd think it would be easy to tell which is which, but some of the rocks have gotten fairly covered with dirt. And some of the plants have moved around. I've been trying to figure out where space 13 is (interesting that it was that number) for a couple of days.

It appears that a Sempervivum (hen and chicks) that was in space 18, just above 13 has moved itself downhill just a bit, and is now occupying 13. But this sneaky behavior led to me taking on the solution of another mystery. I bought this Sempervivum in 2002 as the variety 'King George.' I no longer remember why I thought this one was of particular interest, but I did order it from a plant company.

It bloomed in 2006.

Surprise! Not only is this plant sneaky, it's just plain misidentified. This is the bloom of 'King George." (stolen from the internet)

I think even a non-plant person could easily notice that flower is not the same as this flower.

So, I spent almost an hour trying to figure out the species of the one I actually have. I am pretty sure it's a Sempervivum heuffelii. There are lots of varieties, but there's no chance I can figure that out. It may not be a cultivated variety, because those seem to be mostly interesting color variations of the leaves, and this seems ordinarily green/maroon.

Well, it's not going to get to remain sneaky for much longer. This stalk is going to bloom in just a few days and then I'll know if it's the same plant as the one that bloomed in 2006. Each rosette blooms only once. After it flowers, it will die. But there are plenty of other rosettes.

Perhaps there will be a rock garden report tomorrow. I've done a lot of work. We'll see.

I also spent a fair amount of time today working on various articles I'm supposed to be writing. The weather was nice (not too hot) which makes me more productive.

See A Related Sempervivum?

Orange We Glad?

The July hike for the Spirit of the Woods Chapter of the North Country Trail Association was from 9-Mile Bridge out and back to whatever distance people wanted. Most of us went 3 miles out, for a six-mile hike total.

The color of the day was orange. Dan led the group. His orange shirt is a nice contrast to the green woods.

There aren't nearly so many orange flowers in the wild as the other colors. My edition of Peterson's Field Guide (to flowers in Northeastern and North-Central US) has four pages of orange flowers. In contrast, there are 94 pages of white, 102 yellow, 98 red/pink, 48 blue/violet, and 26 green/brown. The orange color comes from carotinoids. Perhaps the orange color is more common in hotter climates. Wikipedia says carotinoids help protect plants from photooxidative damage. So maybe with less sun here in the north fewer plants have exploited the carotinoids. It's an interesting question, and one I could not quickly find an answer to.

But in July, here, the Butterfly Weed (a milkweed, Asclepias tuberosa) is brightening the roadsides.

Here was the best find, and I did not spot it! I was talking with someone and didn't even see it. But I was sure glad that someone else did. This is a Wood Lily, Lilium philadelphicum. It's not particularly rare in Michigan, but I've sure never seen it in Mason County before. The Michigan Herbarium reports it being found in approximately the same location in 1958.

Orange I glad I went on this hike? Yes.

See June SPW Hike See Wood Lily in Antrim County

Tiny Tears

No, I'm not crying. Not crying at all. I'm pretty sure I've identified the miniature hosta Ester gave me years ago as 'Tiny Tears.' It's one of my true garden success stories. From a tiny puddle, it has grown enough that I have a strip about 5 feet by 8" lining the edge of my front flower bed. I have a similar strip filling in on the east side of the same bed, and I gave Betty a puddle of her own this year.

The strip between the grass and the rest of the flower bed is all Tiny Tears.

It's starting to bloom this week. I love this little plant on many levels. It's subtle. It's apparently so short the deer don't want to eat it- only about 2 inches tall if you count just the leaves. The flower stalks rise up to 6-8 inches with purple flowers.

Most hosta flowers aren't worth mentioning. It's really grown as a foliage plant. However, these little guys are stunners!

Well, I'm not crying, but I may be whining a bit about the wheelbarrow wheel. What a hassle. It has been going flat, so I attempted to fix that yesterday. Blah, blah, too much time and money later, and still more time and money today, I will have a new one on Monday. The tire itself has dry rot and keeps ruining tubes. It's not even that old. Way too much work for something so simple. But if I'm going to garden, I need a wheelbarrow.

I also started working on hacking the autumn olive out of the yard down near the road so that can be mowed. I can only work on that for a short amount of time.

See Just a Spot of Color

Deb's Garden

Today I'm featuring the garden of another friend named Deb. I've known her almost as long as I've known Betty, but not as well. She's a phenomenal gardner, and she had a sedum she wanted to give me. Thanks, Deb!

In front of her house is very nice too, but I'm sharing the gardens in back, with her permission. This is the perennial bed.

She even keeps a "cutting garden," so she has flowers to cut and put into arrangements and to give to friends.

I love the old fashioned single hollyhocks, and she has a beautiful dark purple one- it's almost black.

The shade garden alone is impressive. No deer are munching on her hosta!

She even has container gardens! Her yard is like a mini-professional botanical garden.

Seriously. This is one impressive yard. I would think that all she does is garden if I didn't know better. That said, she and Betty both belong to the local garden club. I've been thinking about joining. Maybe it's time. I knew better than to commit when I had the NCT hike sizzling in my brain, but maybe I'll be at home more during garden season now.

P.S. No rain. I had to water my gardens as soon as I got up.

See Dirt Date