Early Start on the Spring Garden Plans, and Yes, We're Still Blooming in Chicagoland

Lest you think we're all Maine Coons, all the time around here, rest assured that we have been doing some work around the ol' Box House.

Last week we had some freakishly warm temperatures in Chicagoland and actually still have some things blooming--and green, yes, green! So I took on the challenge of extending the wraparound shrub border from the corner to our front walk. I had killed the grass using Roundup a while back, but didn't plan on doing any digging until March or so. But, since the weather has been sunny and springlike, and shrubs less than $5 at Home Depot, we planted up a storm. Here, I'm standing on the sidewalk that leads up to our door, looking toward the corner. Ninety-percent of what you're looking at went in this week. Some of it is perennial divided from other sections of the yard; most of it is new shrubs of the four-to-six-foot when full grown variety. What you don't see are the 100+ spring bulbs.
Let's hope the squirrels don't see them, either.

I've taken three steps closer to the public sidewalk for this pic. The dead grass at the sidewalk's edge will remain until next spring when I edge it properly. For now, it's to hold the dirt back over the course of the winter.

This picture was taken about halfway to the corner. Note the Weeping Norway Spruce at right -- my $5 Home Depot bargain. (It was originally $49.)

When full grown, it will only be 8-10 feet, and look something like this (I hope):

Looking back; there is an 8x10 foot unplanted section in the bulge. Next year, I'll plant my herb garden there and, hopefully, the neighborhood dogs won't pee on it.

View from the corner. What is hard to see unless you enlarge the pic is all the ground cover plants I added along the sidewalk; it's a mixture of ajuga, moss, and creeping myrtle meant to hold back the dirt and keep down the weeds.

In fact, it will look like this section that was planted in August. Enlarge this one and you'll see the creeping myrtle is blooming again, for the third time this year.

All in all, it's a delight to be able to actively garden in November! And because I have a few things growing, I can't believe I actually have a November submission for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.

Datura in Full Bloom

Our garden is doing really well this year, with all the rain we've had, and the moon garden is particularly enchanting, although it is also nearly impossible for me to photograph on the camera I have. Here is one of about eight clumps of datura I have in bloom around the house. They shine brightly on moonlit nights.

Twilight Honey Bees

I call them twilight bees because they only seem to show up in the yard at dusk, when the datura (angel trumpets) open. On a typical evening, several dozen flowers open, which means hundreds of bees. They are very docile, stay around for only fifteen minutes or so before it gets too dark, and let me garden around them. I'm able to snip dead flowers and prune back a plant that has a dozen or more bees circling around it, without any of us being bothered.

The camera didn't want to stay in focus, as the gals kept flying straight at me. The noise drowning out their buzzing is from the cicadas, which begin their song about three o'clock.

First Year for Plums, Peaches at the Box House

You don't need a big yard out in the country to grow fruit. There are many fine dwarf specimens out there they don't get very tall. We have several fruit trees planted round the yard: three cherries, two antique apples, a peach, a pear, and a plum. Some are self-fertile, some cross-pollinate with other trees in my yard or my neighbors'; as for my pear, I hope there is another pear tree in the area, or else I'll have to figure out how I'm going to cross-pollinate that one.

I planted the peach and plum in the summer of 2008, and both bore fruit for the first time this year. The plum has two different varieties grafted to it, the yellow one matures first. Isn't it beautiful?

They are so sweet and delicious. There are few things finer than going in the backyard on a summer's day, plucking a fruit from a tree I nursed myself, and biting into its sun-warmed goodness as I flop in the shade with a book.

Last year we had blossoms, but no fruit on the peach tree. This year, we had over 300 baby peaches. We also had a nasty case of peach rust, where 95% of the tree seemed to be affected. Apparently the only time to treat for fungus is pre-leaf emergence, so I took the state extension office's advice and stripped the tree of fruit this year so it could focus its energy on healing. I'll treat it next spring. Boy, it hurt plucking all those cute little baby peaches. I left a few on so I have an idea of when they'll ripen next year. Here's one:

This fall, I think I'll plant a berry patch.

Dumpster Diving -- Ideas for Old Windows

I drive Ted crazy with my obsessive dumpster diving, I admit that. But sometime I find really cool treasures. I've picked up antique mirrors, oak wood kitchen chairs, cast iron candlestick holders, and vintage bar glasses.

I've picked up some clunkers, too, including several dressers I meant to refinish, changed my mind about (i.e., never really got around to it), and quietly snuck back out to the alley with a "curb alert" notice on Craig's List. But at least they don't end up in a landfill.

A few months back, I saw a listing for old windows that someone removed during a remodeling project. I was in the middle of a stained glass art class, and with visions of all that wonderful, wavy old Chicago glass, I drove across the city and in the pouring rain loaded up the car with a dozen very large windows. Okay, I know it's more glass than I'll ever need for stained glass projects, but I couldn't bear them going into a landfill, either. Since then, I've been trying to figure out what to do with them.

While surfing CL today, I spotted a "free" listing for some more (don't worry, Ted, I have no plans of getting them). Accompanying the ad was this picture of how the seller has reused similar ones. He simply added a shelf for some geraniums and hung it on an exterior wall. I think I could do a similar effect for our garage, which has no side windows.

What do y'all think?

Springtime in Chicago (Finally) -- Garden Update

I'm a little early with my April submission to Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, but I have time this weekend to take a few pictures.

The neighbors' row of forsythia; we can see these from our front windows.

The Corner. Most of this was planted in November, so we're psyched to see that just about everything survived the late planting, including the spring bulbs.
We have so many rabbits and skunks around here, I had my doubts.

I'm especially pleased with how this corner turned out. We have crocus, grape hyacinth, and tulips coming in around the smoke tree; the columbine I just planted. The trellis is new; there are two of them and they form a bit of a privacy barrier with the next yard. I'll be adding flowering vines, but I'm not sure what kind yet.

The magnolia in the front yard. Last year we only had three blossoms on it.

One of the three forsythia bushes I planted this time last year. There are a lot of hostas and summer bulbs planted around its base; can't wait to see them!

Still a lot of work that needs to be done on this corner, but I wanted to get a picture of the hyacinth before they faded away.

Some tulips, creeping myrtle, and in the back are some irises from my godmother. She forgot what color they are, so it will be a surprise when they bloom.

More tulips and creeping myrtle.

A nice overview; you can see the trellises in the back. This is the first year for the crown imperials, growing at the right side of the picture. It looks like two of the three I planted here have decided to make an appearance. They should be opening soon.

One of the new flower beds in the back yard, around the base of the dwarf plum. This is our third summer for the plum, so I hope we actually get fruit this year.

Another new flower bed in the back yard.

So, that's it for the moment. Our three cherry trees, the peach, and the plum tree will blossom in the next few days. I have a couple of antique-variety apples on their way (Cox's Orange Pippin and Winter Banana) and a Seckel pear--all dwarf of semi-dwarf species. It looks like we'll have quite the orchard going on.

Here We Come A-Wassailing

Wassaile the trees, that they may beare
You many a Plum and many a Peare:
For more or lesse fruits they will bring, 
As you do give them Wassailing.

Each solstice since we've been in The Box House (this is our third) we have wassailed the garden, whereby we drink a toast to the health of the fruit-bearing trees and sing to them so that they may produce abundant harvests the next year. The tune of choice, of course, is "Here We Come A-Wassailing." We then splash a bit of whatever brew we're drinking on the trees themselves, shouting Wes hāl ("be merry" or "good health"). Some years it's actual wassail punch, a type of hot spiked cider, this year it was a bottle of pumpkin spice liquor. (I wonder what our neighbors thought of all the orange snow.) It's our twist on an old custom from the cider-producing regions of England. We have a small collection of dwarf cherry trees we planted our first spring, as well as peaches, plums, and apples, but the whole garden gets blessed. This past fall, we had planted over fifty new shrubs, so there was a lot of toasting to be done.

According to Wikipedia:

The purpose of wassailing is to awake the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the Autumn. The ceremonies of each wassail varies from village to village but they generally all have the same core elements. A wassail King and Queen to lead the proceedings, and song and/or a processional tune to be played/sung from one orchard to the next, the wassail Queen will be lifted up into the boughs of the tree where she will place toast that has been soaked in Wassail from the Clayen Cup as a gift the tree spirits and to show them the fruits of what they created the previous year. Then an incantation is usually recited such as

"Here's to thee, old apple tree,
That blooms well, bears well.
Hats full, caps full,
Three bushel bags full,
An' all under one tree. Hurrah! Hurrah!"

Then the assembled crowd will sing and shout and bang drums and pots and  pans and generally make a terrible racket until the gunsmen give a great final volley through the branches to make sure the work is done and then off to the next orchard. Perhaps unbeknown to the general public, this ancient English tradition is still very much thriving today. The West Country is the most famous and largest cider producing region of the country and some of the most important wassails are held annually in Carhampton (Somerset) and Whimple (Devon), both on 17 January (old Twelfth Night).

I added the links above so that you can see pictures from two different wassailing ceremonies.

Here are a few more traditional rhymes:


Here's to thee, old apple tree,
Whence thou mayst bud
And whence thou mayst blow!
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats full! Caps full!
Bushel—bushel—sacks full,
And my pockets full too! Huzza! — South Hams of Devon, 1871

Huzza, Huzza, in our good town
The bread shall be white, and the liquor be brown
So here my old fellow I drink to thee
And the very health of each other tree.
Well may ye blow, well may ye bear
Blossom and fruit both apple and pear.
So that every bough and every twig
May bend with a burden both fair and big
May ye bear us and yield us fruit such a stors
That the bags and chambers and house run o'er. — Cornworthy, Devon, 1805

Stand fast root, bear well top
Pray the God send us a howling good crop.
Every twig, apples big.
Every bough, apples now. — 19th century Sussex, Surrey

Apple-tree, apple-tree,
Bear good fruit,
Or down with your top
And up with your root. — 19th century S. Hams.

Bud well, bear well
God send you fare well;
Every sprig and every spray
A bushel of apples next New Year Day. — 19th century Worcestershire

Here we come a wassailing
Among the leaves so green,
Here we come a wandering
So fair to be seen.
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too,
And God bless you and send you a happy New Year.
And God send you a happy New Year. — Somerset, 1871

Gardening on the Cheap -- Fall is a Great Time for Planting and Finding Bargains

While these guys were slacking off this week, I was busy planting 46 new bushes, shrubs, and small trees...

Can you spot all three critters in this picture?
The kittens blend in with the sheepskin we have tossed at the end of the bed to keep our toes warm.

That's right. Forty-six new plants went in; this doesn't count the twenty flats of myrtle I also added, or the half dozen ferns. (Or the four shrubs I still need to put in the ground.)

Home Depot, Lowes, and Menards were clearing out their garden centers. I picked up everything from 75 to 90% off the original price.

This includes an eight-foot Japanese Maple for $15:

The flats of ground cover were $1.50 each (regular price $11); as soon as I planted them, they began to bloom. How's that for a late fall pick-me-up?

I got Mugo pines for 75 cents, and other dwarf evergreens for a buck a piece, on average. Here's the corner garden, looking out toward the street. The path is made from bits of rubble we've dug up from the yard.

A large butterfly bush, normally $24, now only $6. And enough eunymous to fill in all the empty spots—90 cents to a $1.17 each. I went back to Home Depot three times to fill up the trunk of my PT Cruiser with the eunymous, and I'm contemplating going back tomorrow to see if there is anything left.

Miscellaneous shrubs, each one was an unbelievable bargain:


But here's the absolute best part, a Celtic-inspired concrete birdbath that they were practically paying me to take:


And a cedar arbor and wisteria vine, which I still need to find a spot for. (And nail down the top bits; that's why they look wonky.)

You want to hear the grand total, don't you? Had we paid full price for all of this--including the bird bath and arbor—it would have been roughly $1250. We paid...

...drum roll, please...

only $305!

Can you believe it?

It doesn't matter if some of the shrubs don't survive. It doesn't matter if I'll need to thin out the borders in a few years as the shrubs get big (don't worry, I'll find new homes for them when necessary). For now, for very little money, we have lush, full garden beds. I'm already looking forward to spring to see everything in full bloom.

Next year--because I promised Ted "no more bushes"--we'll be focusing on garden structure, edging, trellises, and our much-anticipated fence for the back yard. The goal is to be able to recycle as much as possible for it, so if you have a lead on some free rocks, let me know...

Last Periwinkle of Summer...And a Coyote Sighting!

Home Depot is clearancing the plants in their garden center, so I picked up an entire flat of Vinca minor, aka Creeping Myrtle, aka Periwinkle. I plan on planting them beneath our River Birch that we put in last year on the corner of the lot. I adore creeping myrtle. Mom had it growing at the other house, and I almost dug it out to bring over to The Box House. However, we still hope to sell that property one day, so left it all there because it looks so nice.

Unfortunately, it's been freezing here in Chicago this week, so gardening isn't really what I'm in the mood for; but when the price is right...

Anyway, for those of you who have no interest in my gardening escapades, how about this: Ted and I spotted a coyote last night, about two blocks away from our house!!

The coyote in the photo is just a representative sample, but this is about how close we were to it. We were driving down the block in the course of our errands, and he was walking calmly into the road. He was obviously used to cars, because he dodged them all with ease and headed over to the park next to the school. We pulled over and watched him a bit as he frolicked around and marked his territory. (Now I wonder if some of that dog poop I've been finding in the yard is really coyote excrement??? I'll have to Google-search now for pics of scat.)

Now, a lot of you are like, "It's a coyote, big deal." But I'm a Chicago girl, and it's kind of magical to find him living in an urban area.

Magical for me, probably not the greatest environment for him.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - September 2009

Each month on the 15th, May Dreams Gardens hosts a Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, where you can take part by showing what's blooming in your garden that day. I'm a few days late with my pics, but oh well.

Most of our garden is getting ready for fall, and few things are blooming. But let's take a look between the buildings, shall we?

There is a very narrow gangway between our building (on the right) and the neighbors'. On the street side of the gangway, there are two big bushes planted, effectively blocking off the view. No one walking past would ever guess this is back here. You kind of have to duck and push your way past the bushes to see it at all.

We consider it a secret garden, a wild one. From early spring, when the lilies of the valley push their way out of the ground, through fall, there is an ever-changing carpet of wildflowers.

Does anyone know what these are?

One of these years, I'm going to put stepping stones back here so we can walk all the way to the back yard without having to hack our way through with a machete.

In the back yard itself, we still have a few things blooming. But the glory of it all is the Sweet Autumn Clematis. I posted a pic a few weeks back when it started to open, but here it is in full bloom, with another of our many datura plants in front.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - August 2009

Each month on the 15th, May Dreams Gardens hosts a Garden Blogger's Bloom Day, where you can take part by showing what's blooming in your garden that day. This is our first "entry."

We've barely had any rain for the last month or so. Storm clouds have rolled on through, but they always seem to miss us. I've had to go out with the hose every morning to water the newly planted shrubs to keep them alive. I know, August isn't the best time for planting because of the drought-like conditions, but there are a lot of deals at the nurseries...

We finished filling in the corner with a few Home Depot shrubs, including a lavender Rose of Sharon, a couple of low-growing Magic Carpet Spirea, a Ghost Weigela, and a charming Little Henry Sweetspire.

Remember, this is what it looked like last summer:

Our lilies have all faded away, and our gayfeathers are looking a bit worse for wear, but the gladiolas I planted in the spring have blossomed these last few days.

Of course, the gladiolas that were supposed to be deep purple and white came out a rosey-pink:
And the supposedly maroon ones came out orange:

And our orange hibiscus came out a lovely shade of bubblegum.

Still, they are very pretty, and it's my first time growing hibiscus and gladiolas, so I'm still happy with the results.

My favorite blooms right now are the daturas. I grew them all from seed, and have them planted outside my office, and in various clumps throughout the yard. You can smell them a good twenty feet away. The blooms open at dusk, and wilt away in the morning sun.

What's blooming in your garden?

Think Happy Thoughts

Well, at least one nice thing came out of the tenants trashing the condo: they left behind a couple of nifty planters. I plucked them from the pile of outgoing garbage, cleaned and sterilized them, and transplanted two brugmansia plants that were a gift from a client.

We're heading back over to the condo this afternoon to get an estimate on floor repairs. Let's hope it's not too outrageous. There is a propensity among Chicago contractors to charge more for work done at condos than for the equivalent work done on a single family home or two flat. One couple we know paid the same amount for sanding and refinishing just the living room of their condo as we did for one entire unit of our two flat. We'll see how it goes.

Pepper Spray for the Yard, Asiatic Lilies, and Our Mini Fence is Complete (Almost)

Perhaps I am getting a tad bit obsessive about the whole thing. In my spare moments, I find myself Googling search terms like "homemade dog deterrent" or "organic doggie no." I stare out the window, ready to catch neighbors in the act of letting their dogs use our flowerbed as a toilet. At three o'clock this morning you would have found me in the yard, sprinkling a mixture of black pepper, red pepper flakes, and cayenne pepper along perimeter, because I read on some gardening forum that it was guaranteed to keep dogs out. It made my eyes water, I'm sure it would tickle Fido's nose, too.

It's all meant to act as backup for the mini wrought iron fence I finished putting up. Please note that I took all pictures at a slight angle so you can't see that the fence is a bit crooked. I'll be straightening that out shortly. Here it is from the sidewalk (note the absolutely useless No Dogs sign):

And from within the yard:

I know, I know, I really need to cut the grass. Somebody last year, I won't say who, thought a push mower was the way to go. It's actually a pain to use, and won't even cut through the wheat grass or crab grass. So I've upgraded to an electric mower. I just need to get it assembled. And we haven't had any real rain in weeks, so everything is crunchy. So it's not looking its best right now.

A close up from within:

The purple shrubs are Diablo Ninebarks. They've more than doubled in size since I planted them last fall, and will get up to eight or nine feet.

Looking out toward the corner, at the river birth we planted last summer. To the left is a Centerglow Ninebark I planted a month or so ago.

In the distance, you can see the tacky black plastic I'm using on the parkway corner to kill weeds and grass. Not sure what I'm planting out there yet, maybe some more of these:

Oopsy, I forgot to rotate that photo. How about this:

The Asiatic Lilies are pretty much maintenance free, and we've had blooms going on for over a month now. It the dogs get to them, though, they're goners.

So yeah, I admit it. I'm obsessed with keeping roaming critters from destroying our investment. And even though I used the pepper combo early this morning, for good measure I just a few moments ago sprinkled the perimeter with a commerical doggie no product.

I'll let y'all know how it goes. The problem isn't the dogs, it's the people attached to the other end of the leash.