Pull, Plant, Move, Weed, Shear, Lop…it’s May

SO TODAY I’M OUT IN THE GARDEN, following a nice morning rain, yanking out white-flowering, foot-tall garlic mustard before it seeds, and I uncover this fellow, above, with the pretty yellow markings. I’m not much for wildlife photography — deer and wild turkeys tend to move off by the time I get my camera focused — but in this case, I was able to run all the way into the house for the camera and find him right where I left him.

The warm weather has brought out tons of weeds, most of whose names I don’t know. Wisteria, bane of last year, is in evidence, but much reduced. There’s going to be some intensive hand-labor around here in the weed department.

If anybody can identify the weedy groundcover, below, please tell me. And how to get rid of it.

Last night, I made a list of garden chores for the week:

• Pull garlic mustard.
• Plant grasses from Steph (my friend brought over three hefty miscanthus clumps, which went in today).
• Plant four nandina ‘Gulfstream’ (heavenly bamboo) and two ilex glabra (a type of holly) from Costco; they were $13 each and very healthy-looking. Which I did – but before doing it, I had to move 5 rhamnus frangula (alder buckthorn) bought last year from White Flower Farm at great expense and still only a few inches tall. Bah. They’re not going to serve as screening between myself and my next-door neighbors, so I put them in a sunny spot in the far reaches of the backyard, where I can forget about them instead of being aggravated every time I open the front door and see how pitifully small they are.
• Plant remaining things from upstate — threadleaf coreopsis, 1 kerria japonica, 1 viburnum. All done this afternoon. Check!

But the list went on, with things un-done.

• Move chelone (turtlehead) and Japanese silver ferns up front.
• Pull crabgrass and other weeds from “lawn” area.
• Shear grass in “lawn” area. I use the term advisedly — it’s increasingly more weeds and less turfgrass. Notice I don’t say “mow.” I don’t have a mower.
• Cut down browning, unattractive juniper.
• Lop Rose of Sharon scattered about the property (that which I didn’t get around to earlier in the season).
• Pick up branches and winter storm damage throughout.
• Plant more flowering trees.
• Get a handle on nameless invasive weedy groundcover.
• Collect more rocks for path edging.
• Mulch.

Suddenly I sat up in bed with my list and scribbled one last item:

• “Call help?!?”

I’ve got a flyer here for “Spring Yard Clean-Up Specials.” That’s what I need: a spring clean-up special.

My garden labors today were eased by the example of a woman my friend Caren and I met last night on our evening constitutional down to Maidstone Beach. We were admiring the plantings in front of a tidy cottage — they reminded me of my own baby beds, with many of the same things I’ve planted, edged with similar rocks — when a woman came forth with a watering can. We complimented her handiwork and got a tour. She’s fully exploited everything deer-proof — irises, peonies, weigela, ferns, grasses, and on and on; set things on pedestals made of found stone; positioned everything in the right place so all is thriving and green; made the yard welcoming to birds with a bird bath and feeders.

Her name is Lois, and she must be well into her 70’s. Lois has something I don’t have, but am trying to cultivate: patience. She’s planted a wisp of red barberry here, a tiny fern there, and she’s clearly OK with waiting for it all to happen in its own good time. Whereas I want the lush, billowing effect immediately, if not sooner. Here’s Lois, not worrying that the garden better happen quickly because she may not have that much time left to enjoy it, but enjoying it as it is right now.

With Lois as inspiration, my four hours in the garden today were more relaxed than usual. I’m doing it. It’s happening. In its own time.

Approved! The Latest on Springs

BACK IN DECEMBER, I started this blog with a post about my search for the ‘perfect’ beach (or country) cottage, and took you along on some of my house-hunting forays to the North Fork and Hudson Valley.

In January, I saw a 1950s cedar-shingled cottage on half an acre in Springs, a hamlet a few miles north of East Hampton on Long Island’s South Fork. I went to contract on it in early March, applied for a mortgage, and while I was waiting, shared my doubts and what-ifs in another blog post.  (There are a few pics of the interior on that one, and also a couple here.) I finally got mortgage approval Friday  — it took more than a month — and I expect to close soon, perhaps within the week.

Now I’m told that someone is waiting in the wings to pay more if I back out for any reason, and it’s been implied (by my lawyer, no less) that the seller would like me to.

Over the winter, while the house was unoccupied, the plumbing pipes, which had not been properly drained by the owner (who is elderly and lives upstate), froze and burst. The plumber, whom the seller’s broker hired to repair them, stole the only furnishings of value from the house — an antique gate-leg table, a filigreed metal mirror, and a Victorian etched glass lighting fixture. The contract of sale stipulated that all furnishings be left in the house.

The broker called the police. The plumber confessed to having taken the items; he said he thought “everything was going in a dumpster.” The items have been returned, but the antique table is now broken.

Below: My new garage, oy

Anyway, I’m going through with it. I still love the place. When I was there on Friday with the boiler inspector and then an arborist (there are several huge dead trees that need to come down), it felt good to be there. It felt right. It felt me.

I can see myself painting there (walls, not art), decorating, gardening, listening to music. I met my next door neighbor, and he’s nice. I seem to be surrounded by middle-aged couples from Manhattan, weekenders, who bought their places 30 years ago (and are still there, a good sign). I’ll feel safe.

It was quiet. Quieter than it has been on my previous visits, maybe because it was Good Friday. Very little traffic on the road.

Best of all, the arborist pointed out all the trees and flowering shrubs on the property. It’s very early spring there; the forsythia are not even blooming, and it’s hard to tell what’s what. I have five enormous rhododendrons that my neighbor says bloom magnificently; a rose of sharon hedge; a ginormous burning bush (I always wanted a burning bush!), stands of ferns and juniper; several specimen conifers with twisty trunks and droopy needles.

Everything is heavily browsed by deer, so many trees and shrubs are bare below the four-foot mark. On the plus side, that’s because the property backs up to town land; it’s very woodsy.

I wanted a project, and now I have one.

My Rented Garden: Nil to Abundance in 2 Seasons

WELL, THAT WASN’T SO BAD, WAS IT? Unless we get some late snowstorms (which have been known to happen), spring is just weeks away. My thoughts are turning to my backyard in Boerum Hill, going into its third season.

I’m a renter here, which means:

• I don’t want to spend much money
• I can’t do anything too invasive (my landlady doesn’t like it, and I’m scared of her)

But as my pictures show, you can do a lot with a little, and fast.

 

 

When I arrived in November 2006, I found a scraggly rectangle of lawn about 22’x40′. Along the back was a raised bed held back by a stacked stone wall. All totally devoid of plants, except for one glorious dogwood tree in a far corner. (The photo below shows the garden in April of ’07, by which time I had dug perimeter beds and stuck a few things in them.)

The grass was bordered on one side by some phenomenal hydrangea bushes that belong to my next-door neighbors but topple into my yard, and on the other side, by a hideous, depressing, 7-foot-tall chain-link fence.

My first thought was to disguise the prison fence by lashing rolled twig fencing (useful stuff; you can buy it online) to it with cable ties.  That didn’t fool anyone, plus it blocked light.

Then I asked my next-door neighbor on the chain-link side whether he’d ever thought of removing the fence. I went out for a few hours, and when I returned, the hideous, depressing fence was GONE! My dear neighbor (who also mows my lawn of his own volition) had done a masterful job of fence-removal in a single afternoon.

That first tentative, unimaginative step in the spring of ’07  — digging three-foot-wide planting beds around the perimeter of the rectangle — was followed by outreach to friends and neighbors. I filled the beds with with catch-as-catch-can plants from a variety of sources.

These included buttercups, irises, lilies from garden-mad neighbors in Boerum Hill who were dividing their excess, as well as:

• plants imported from my own country casa (including catmint and lady’s mantle, my favorite combination, and ferns transplanted from the woods)
• Lowes and Home Depot specials: gallon pots of euonymous, juniper, and other small shrubs for a few bucks
• annuals from the neighborhood plant sales – the Hoyt Street Association and Cobble Hill Tree Fund both have great ones in early May
• birthday gifts (I had the nerve to send party invitations reading “No gifts – unless it’s a plant!”)
• vegetable starters from the Borough Hall Greenmarket

The first season was good; by the second season, I had color that lasted from early spring through October (someone gave me asters!) You know what they say about perennials: “The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap.” These seemed to be leaping pretty good by Year 2.

Summer 08

The color show is aided by containers of coleus and other annuals, and I cheat by placing large containers of annuals right in the beds. By mid-summer you don’t even see the pots.

It’s a north-facing garden, so it has challenges, but the sky is open. This past summer, I decided to try tomatoes for the first time. I bought two simple 4’x8′ raised-bed kits from a company in Massachusetts that makes them Colonial-style (they’re planks of cedar attached at the corners with pegs).

Then I made the classic newbie error of planting too much — 16 tomato plants, when four would have been sufficient. By August, it was out of control and an eyesore. I kept trimming and staking, trimming and staking; more trouble than it was worth. This year I’ll leave one raised bed in the sunnier position with herbs, lettuce, and a few tomatoes, and probably dismantle the other.

I’m raring to go with spring garden-cleaning. The next warmish weekend, I’m on it!