Tangled Branches: Cultivated

happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia

Friday, May 16, 2008

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

And why I'm a day late...

The space is so large, but my dreams are bigger.

The distractions are so many.

Pretty weeds.

Exquisite flowers with alluring perfume.

Beautiful butterflies. [Imagine photo here]
Spring butterflies seem in such a hurry - no time to pose for pictures.

I had a full day in the garden yesterday, trying to get things done before it rained again.

The Bloom Day lists follow.

At Tangled Branches South (in the gardens) we have:
Dianthus 'Rainbow Loveliness'
Rue
Sage
Horehound
Thyme 'Lemon Mist'
Thyme 'Provencal'
Petunia 'Balcony'
Viola 'Historic Florist Mix'
Assorted store-bought annuals: pansies, violas, lantana

In the fields and woodland edges we have:
Salvia lyrata
Yarrow
Ox-eye Daisy
Vetch
Blue-eyed Grass
Buttercup
Deerberry
Bluets

And at Tangled Branches North, as of earlier in the week:
Sage (Salvia officinalis)
Heuchera (Yellow foliage)
Lonicera sempervirens (Coral honeysuckle)
Stephanandra incisa
Lamiastrum galeobdolon 'Herman's Pride'
Lamium 'Purple Dragon'
Dianthus 'Bath's Pink'
Dianthus 'Firewitch'
Dianthus 'Cherry Red'
Sedum (unknown, looks like S. kammschaticum only larger)
Peony 'Krinkled White'
Baptisia australis
Calycanthus floridus 'Athens'
Ilex opaca
Convallaria majalis (Lily-of-the-Valley)
Siberian Iris 'Vi Luihn'
Dicentra 'Aurora'
Cotoneaster 'Streib's Findling'
Azalea (unknown pink variety)
Aquilegia canadensis (Columbine)
Polygonatum biflorum (Solomon's Seal)
Assorted pansies and violas

It feels like the flowers are a bit sparse this time. Checking last year's list, that seems to be true - both in the flowers that haven't bloomed yet and in those that are finished already. You'd think it would be one way or the other, but not both.

Check out the amazingly lengthy list of Bloom Day participants at Carol's Bloom Day post! 102 comments and counting.

Labels: in bloom

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Wren Update

I couldn't stand the suspense.

I saw a female Brown-Headed Cowbird yesterday in the yard, and got to thinking, What if the grill-nest wrens are raising cowbird babies? So I took a quick peek with the camera in hand. Wren babies - phew! Sorry for the crummy photo (cursed autofocus thought I wanted to show you the nest not the birds) but I didn't want to disturb them too much.

According to the Cornell Ornithology web site, Carolina wrens fledge in 12-14 days. We should have our grill back soon.

Update: Never write anything in a hurry. Several hours after posting this, it dawned on me that the title Grill Babies could just possibly be misconstrued. Not at all what I intended.

New innocuous title: Wren Update

Labels: birds

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Updates, a Life Bird, and Potager's Progress

It occurs to me lately that much of the good stuff on this blog happens in the comments, and as a result, doesn't get the prominence it deserves. Also, I tend to write of mystery plants, birds, bugs, etc. and then don't update the post when I learn the ID. Soooooo.....this post is to tie up some loose ends.

Thanks to bek, I now know that the mystery oak galls are Wool Sower Oak Galls.

Thanks to the kind folks at bugguide.net, I believe my first bizzare-o insect of the year was the caterpillar of a Red-Spotted Purple butterfly.

Thanks to Squirrel, I knew that yesterday (or was it Thursday?) was International Migratory Bird Day. I celebrated it by doing some front-porch birding and saw a life bird. But Ms. Smarty-pants here was so confident of the ID that she failed to observe all the field marks and now is uncertain. When I first saw the all-blue bird in the treetops, I immediately thought Indigo Bunting, and kept right on thinking that until just before I lost sight of the bird. In those last few seconds, I thought I saw a rusty red streak on the flanks. Hmmm, well, the Blue Grosbeak has a rusty red wing bar, and furthermore, this seemed larger than a finch-sized bird. So now I'm about 70% sure that I saw a Blue Grosbeak, with a 30% chance that it really was an Indigo Bunting. Either way, it's a life bird for me.

Other birds of note yesterday were Great Crested Flycatcher very close to the house in the morning, and in the afternoon by the vegetable garden 2 Pileated Woodpeckers in some kind of altercation, with one pursuing another across an open field. They're even more awesome in flight with red crested head and bold black and white wings.

Still no ID on the big mystery seed pod, but I found another just like it while working on the vegetable garden yesterday and ta da! - it has at least one seed in it. I'm going to plant it and see what sprouts.

Wild orchid foliage? This is what I noticed last weekend, and recently found another one some distance away. I was waiting for a good sunny day to take a photo, but had to settle for using the flash.

And when I said the ditch had turned blue with Salvia lyrata? This is what I meant.

Lastly, Happy Birthday to my vegetable/herb/cutting garden and/or nursery bed. I'm going to keep calling it a potager. Early in May last year, we starting digging. One year later, we're still digging, but there's visible progress. We're messing up the symmetrical layout this year by adding a column of beds along one side and potato bins on the other. I plan to bring it back to some kind of symmetry, but probably not this year. And I've just discovered that the lower part of the garden has a drainage problem. Last year, no rain, no drainage problem. This year, lots of rain, big drainage problem. The sage, rosemary, horehound and shallots are all drowning, but the garlic doesn't seem much affected. Four rosemarys were supposed to anchor the corners of the design, but one got chewed off last fall and the drowning one looks like it's on the way out. I either need to fix the drainage problem or rethink my design, or both. (Disclosure: I cropped out the poor suffering waterlogged plants on the left side of the photo.)

A few closeups from the potager:

The Mexican mint marigold either self-sowed or lived through the winter sheltered by Provencal thyme.

We're going to have some very large garlic bulbs this year.

The rue is just starting to bloom.

The black swallowtail caterpillars are back! This year I hope they come visit when they're grown up.

Labels: birds, butterflies, oak galls, orchids, potager

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

The Inadvertant Nest Box

The old gray grill, she ain't what she used to be. In more ways than one. Now she's a nest box.

We haven't used the grill at Tangled Branches North yet this year. I opened it up this afternoon to see how big a cleaning job awaited me, and it was bigger than I thought. About half the grill surface was covered with a nest which I first took to be a mouse nest (we've had those before), but then in the center of the loose mossy nest I noticed tiny heads and open beaks. Oops, sorry, I'm not your mama, and I don't want your mama mad at me. I closed the lid. Yesterday and today, I had seen a Carolina Wren carrying food across the deck and I didn't think much about it except that there must be a nest close by. Later this afternoon, we watched the wren carrying food again, but this time we saw it enter the grill through the hole for the rotisserie.

I'll take a picture of the nest after the babies have flown.

We're going out for dinner.

Labels: birds

Monday, May 05, 2008

More Natives: Salvia and Chionanthus

Over the weekend I noticed the ditch near the road had turned blue. I don't know how I missed these last year because the entire roadside is covered with them.

A few minutes with the wildflower books told me that they're Salvia lyrata, maybe a bit weedy (but native!) and hummingbirds will sip from them. And while I was sitting on the deck looking this up, a hummingbird came by to investigate some arugula that had started to flower but soon left in search of something better. Wait, wait, I do have something better! So I dug up a few Salvia plants from the ditch and moved them to the edge of the woods - one group where I can see them from the deck and one group in front of the house.

I thought the Salvia might look good next to this - another thing I missed last year - Fringe Tree or Chionanthus virginicus.

I feel sure that it didn't bloom last year and that's how I overlooked it, because it's right at the edge of the woods very close to the house. It's only about 3 feet tall now, but through my Gardeners' Glasses I visualize it as 15 feet tall and covered in white fringe.

Here's another curiosity at the edge of the woods - fuzzy oak galls. They look like some craft project from the 1960s involving spray paint - mostly white but just tinged with pink or red.

If anybody knows what they are, please tell me. A few Google searches didn't give me an answer, but I can tell you that the first hit for "fuzzy oak gall" is this post from Ki last fall. Not the same thing, however.

I hope to keep exploring the woodland over the summer and not ignore it when I get busy with the kitchen garden (like I did last year). Purely by chance yesterday, I found some foliage that looks very like orchid foliage. No photo yet, but I have high hopes.

Labels: chionanthus, hummingbirds, oak galls, salvia

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Garden Bloggers' Hoedown

There is an embarrassing lack of hoes at Tangled Branches. Well, I do have one, but it's stashed behind some other unused tools and I didn't feel like digging (sorry) it out.

That doesn't mean the garden is total weeds though. I just like to get personal with my weeds - face-to-face sort of thing. So, to join in Carol's Garden Bloggers' Hoedown, let me introduce you to my weeding tools.

Clockwise from top-right, we have a cultivator-mattock thingy (Does this have a proper name? I don't know it.); an asparagus knife, aka dandelion digger (The catalog called it an asparagus knife, but this one is very different.); my old trusty trowel; and my new favorite, the Hori-Hori knife. My biggest weeding tool covers the background of the photo - mulch!

Now, a good gardener would have taken one of those tools in hand and dispatched that poor dandelion immediately. Me, I went in the house to see how the pictures turned out.

Labels: tools, weeds

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Last Day of April Pictures

April is one of the best months for the northern Virginia woodland garden. We began with daffodils and the little blue bulbs I love so much, and now we finish with azaleas and dogwood and more.
Azalea 'Herbert' blooms along the back of the lot.

The Spanish Bluebells have been outstanding this year.

Pink tulip-of-the-woods.
Unlike the red one, I remember planting these at one time.
I don't remember planting it in the woods, however.

This old dogwood was here
at the edge of the woods
when we bought the house.

The coral honeysuckle is finally climbing
through the viburnum as I always thought it should.

Not all our azaleas are elegant.
This screaming coral-pink-red one is in front of the house
right where the builder put it.
Most of the houses here have similar ones.
It's been with us so long now I can't think of getting rid of it.

Labels: azaleas, bluebells, dogwood, honeysuckle, tulips

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