Ride with Me

Lately I've been meeting my sister in law to walk her dogs at Lillie Park. The beauty is, whether I walk Butch (left) or Brandy, I'm never on poo patrol! I ride my bike to the park and then take a longer ride after walking the dogs. I thought you might like to come along. Relax, you don't have to worry about mosquitoes or humidity, and I'm doing all the pedaling.

I ride through Mary Beth Doyle Park on the way to meet my SIL. I talked about this retention basin last time, and you can see the water level has gone down.

After leaving Lillie, I take the new bike path as far south as it goes. I'm heading out of town, so I see pastoral scenes like this with corn as far as... the next subdivision.

Having an odometer is a mixed blessing. It's cool to know how far I've gone, how fast I'm going, and what time it is, but it also kind of pushes you to do more miles to round up (13.56 miles is for wusses! Gotta do at least 15). I often add miles on side streets, which is how I discovered Freedom Drive. It's a ridiculously short dead-end street off another mostly-forgotten dead-end street with light industrial buildings, many abandoned. I guess it makes sense that freedom hides in a dilapidated place many of us never choose to go. And biking is freedom for me. One of the few ways an otherwise inelegant person can fly.

Sometimes I also ride through subdivisions. Caution: I brake for free plants.

I didn't need any lilies, oops, irises, but I loved the sign.

Heading west, I generally take this dirt road though it can be bumpy, which reverberates through your whole body in a disconcerting way. The tall plants on either side are invasive, non-native reed grasses, Phragmites australis. A horticulturist once described the ID process this way: "If you're in a wet area overgrown with a single kind of really tall grass, and you're not sure if it's Phragmites... It's Phragmites."

A boardwalk view of the marsh at Marsh View Meadows Park.

I always get excited when I see burdock because my first thought is always prairie dock! Burdock is a biennial thistle whose seed pods stick to your clothes. The mosquitoes were wicked in this spot.

Ann Arborites know you can forget about the summer when the sumac is on fire.

"In harmony?" Yeah, I'm not buyin' it either...

Just because they kept the silos, doesn't mean the farm's not gone. Not harmony.

But, look, here's a working farm, just down the road from said bid'ness park.

And here's the best location for listening to frogs in southern Ann Arbor, Morgan Woods Nature Area, northwest corner of Morgan and Stone School Roads. Can you see the jewelweed at the bottom left?

I was hoping some of the alpacas would be out at the local alpaca farm, but they weren't. You'll have to make due with this trumpet vine. I know it's not the same, but it's what was there.

A killdeer!

Heading back into suburbia now.

I love the contrast of this working farm and south Ann Arbor's two tall buildings to the west.

The same farm, looking south, contrasts with a small light industrial complex.

Directly across from the farm to the east is a strip mall, which includes my high-end soil supplier, the Grow Show. The two duuuudes who run it are awesome.

The last time I passed that farm, they had an 1800s buggy (minus the horse) for sale.

This tractor is way cooler.

This sign is in a friend's neighborhood, not on my normal route, but it could just as easily be. It's so quintessentially Ann Arbor.

OK, fess up. Did the title get you humming Nelly or John Mellencamp? I went both ways!

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Sundries Sunday

Fasten your seatbelts, my friends. We've got a lot to cover!

Volunteering at Kempf House
I was excited to discover that Deborah Burling was looking for garden volunteers at Ann Arbor's Kempf House. Deb created a Master Garden Plan and Guidelines, which we are following to restore and repair the garden to the 1890s-1920s period. (After having researched, planted, and maintained an 1860s fountain garden at Cobblestone Farm for five years, I was ready to move on to a non-leading role volunteering in another historic garden.)

Kempf House was built in 1853 in Greek Revival style, but interprets life in the late 1800s. I'd been inside a few times, with my friend Carole, to help decorate for Christmas.

My assignment today was digging soil out of the beds between the fence and sidewalk, moving the soil to other parts of the garden, leveling the area, and adding mulch.

At my first volunteer session on May 9, I weeded around the base of this gorgeous saucer magnolia (Magnolia x soulangeana). It's over 100 years old, and I was sorry to have missed its pink blooms.

Update: Deb just emailed me a photo of the tree in bloom in April!

I also pulled a ton of goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria) out of various beds--those suckers have crazy roots. I was so glad I had my Fiskars hori-hori with me, because it sure helped. (Thanks again, Gen!)

I swear, the German connection is incidental! Ne, wirklich!

One of the "grilles" mentioned in the sign.

I took this photo last time. I love how the bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) intermingles with the hosta. The bloodroot flowers early, before the hosta is fully unfurled, and will die back later, letting hosta steal the summer show.

Star-of-Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum) was blooming today...

...as was this NOID lemon yellow day lily. It had a nice scent. The plan is to plant more lilies.

This large NOID rose caught my eye. I liked how the leaves are backlit by the sun so you can see the leaf veins.

I'm warming to roses... I love how the rugged calyx and the serrated, darker leaf margins.

Touring My Garden
Lots going on; too much to write about.

I haven't seen the groundhog all season, but someone has eaten my beet foliage. I'm pretty sure it was raccoons, a species I haven't had trouble with before. Someone also ate most of my marrowfat peas, but (knock wood) two remain.

The turnips remain intact...

...as do the radishes, which are almost ready to harvest. (All these veggies were winter-sown.)

Even though columbine are notorious self-seeders, I've always had trouble growing them in the garden. I have a few plants, but they only get maybe two to five blooms each. Then I find this columbine growing in extreme shade in the brick pathway next to my deck. I get it, Mother Nature, and appreciate your sense of irony.

Speaking of which, for the first time ever I had trouble getting nasturtium seedlings to sprout... and look what I found growing in the bin with my potatoes! I ask you!

Tooling around North Campus
Last week I was meeting my friend Mary Helen for lunch, and decided to ride my bike the 5 or so miles. I was huffing and puffing, but I didn't have a heart attack. I could even pedal up all the inclines, even those I used to have to walk up. And I made amazingly good time. I was just starting to feel the tiniest bit smug when the Universe humbled me: a 60ish-year-old gentleman (a regular guy in street clothes, not a super-aerodynamic bike racer) passed me at a clip that made me feel like I was standing still. Heh.

I had my camera with me and used the extra time before lunch to take some photos of the University of Michigan's North Campus. Allium, with no yellowing leaves!

I almost fell over, I was so shocked to see this Alexander Liberman sculpture. Not just because I oohed and aahed about his work at Meijer Gardens, and totally have a thing for orange, but because I'd never noticed this piece before, despite having been to this part of campus dozens of times over the eight years I worked nearby. Let's just say my job left me preoccupied!

I also like the Wave Field, which reminds me of Native American mounds.

The mounds are only maybe 3-feet tall, but I went ahead and rolled down one anyway. You kind of have to. Well, OK, you might not, but I did.

"Dude, some lady in a bike helmet just totally rolled down the mound!"

Lots more to catch up on, but I'm heading into the garden now. Happy Sundries Sunday, everyone!

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The first eggplant in the neglected garden

Working for the census bureau has been taking up my mornings which is the best time to work on the garden because by afternoon it is so unbelievably hot that it is hard to be in the sun for to long. People that came before me must have been a lot tougher because if I had to live here without air conditioning I would loose my mind.  After a just a second in the humidity it feels like shower time. It was hot in Las Vegas, but now I know what people meant when they said at least it is a dry heat.  That is my best advice for moving to the country and gardening, do it somewhere with nice weather.

 The garden is full of weeds and tomatoes.  One of the gardeners I know told me that as soon as I am done with the tomatoes I should use some roundup to cut down on the amount of grass growing in the garden, but I just bring myself to go with the roundup.  I would imagine that the tomatoes might grow better if they were not competing with the grass for water and nutrients, since there are growing anyway I don't plan on changing my weeding habits.  Normally I go around with sharpened hoe and hack down the grass in the rows and then attempt to hand pull what is growing directly at the base on the plants, but with the heat I haven't done as much weed control as possible.  We also have been having a hard time keeping up with processing the tomatoes into sauce  in time.  Next year I think we need to go down to 40 plants.

Among the weeds I found the first eggplant.  About time, I have had my fill of squash so it will be nice to give something else a try.  Last year we didn't grow eggplant so I am not sure what to expect as far as how fast it grows. According to Wikipedia 20 pounds of eggplant has the same amount of nicotine as a cigarette so I need to build a huge drying rack if I am ever gonna a get a smoke out of these things.

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Fall Chores

The unbearable heat has finally lifted in East Texas and we will hopefully have nice fall days for at least a month or two before it starts to be freezing all day long.  The weather here is unpredictable and last year all of December was cold with a very small amount of snow. Since that was the first winter I spent here since we moved out here five years ago I thought it would be warmer.  Sometimes is it 72 degrees on Christmas day.  During this short time of pleasant weather I have a big list of things I want to get done.  I have another couple of weeks before rifle hunting season starts, but my shooting lane is pretty well cleared out.

In the next four weeks I need to:
Clear all the down limbs from around the pump house:
        These have been down since Huricane Ike and this will make the third time I have cleared this area                 because both times before were followed by Huricanes that knocked down a bunch more tree limbs.

Clean out the cistern and the pump house.
      The concrete cistern  holds about three hundred gallons and gets  a layer of silt that comes up out of the         ground with the water and needs to be cleaned out from time to time.

Clear the area next to the old garage for a goat area.
      Around Easter it looks like we are going to be adding a rabbit because our youngest is not gonna let up,          but I want to get a couple goats in the early spring.  It should cost around three to four hundred bucks and       I need a good spot to put them in.

Build some type of green house.
     This will probably be a 4x4's framing out a base, a metal canopy that we already have and some plastic           sheeting.  Hopefully, it will be enough to let us have tomatoes in the winter.

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Amy's Musings: Belleville Garden Walk

After grudgingly (kicking and screamingly) accepting the fact that blog posts are never going to write themselves, I decided the next best thing is to con unsuspecting real-life friends into writing some guest posts.

Today, Amy Bruhn (avid gardener, master gardener volunteer since 1996, and fellow cat fancier) takes us on a Garden Walk she attended on July 18 in Belleville, Michigan.

Last Sunday, the Garden Faerie chose to go all the way to Chicago on a fancy-schmanzy Dearborn Garden Walk instead of driving to the local Dearborn (Michigan) and going on a garden walk with me. Shows me how I rate, eh? But no worries, I asked Tonja, the new president of the master gardener group I belong to and who I don’t know very well yet, if she’d like to go along with me and she said yes. And then the Garden Faerie said I could write a guest blog so she could see a little bit of what she missed. Let’s just say it was a lot different than the garden walk she went on.

The garden walk was in Belleville, a rural community that is the halfway point between my house in Dearborn and the Garden Faerie’s house in Ann Arbor. This was the fifth annual garden walk hosted by the Belleville Area District Library. The theme was “Country Gardens” and the five gardens on the walk were all very large. The smallest was just over one acre and the largest one was on ten acres. Fortunately they gave us a map and Tonja brought her husband’s GPS to help us navigate the back roads, many of which were dirt.

Since I didn’t know I would be doing this guest blog at the time, I didn’t take a lot of pictures and just enjoyed strolling through the gardens and relaxing in their beauty. But there were some things that called out to me and insisted that I take their picture, such as some of the antiques that were tucked into of the beds in the first garden.

I loved this small chair used as a plant stand. No, it’s not a full-sized chair, because could you imagine how huge the Hosta next to it would have been?

And I think a bird cage such as this would look fantastic hanging in my weeping cherry tree. Looks like I need to start hanging out on eBay again…

This garden had so much stuff tucked everywhere that it almost made my head hurt. I think they must have worked for a paver brick company because they had more brick than grass. I understand the concept about reducing the size of your lawn, but they went too far with so much hardscaping (in my opinion, at least).

I liked that they added a blue heron statue next to their pond. I wonder if it keeps the other blue herons away? We have a blue heron here in the suburbs who preys on all of my friends’ ponds, so maybe they should try a blue heron scarecrow.

See what I mean about all the brick pavers? In addition to the bricks there was an over abundance of rocks and statues, which threw it all out of balance and overwhelmed what greenery they did have. (GF: The views expressed in this entry are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the right to sue me. Please direct any correspondence directly to NotMyProblem@neenerneener.com.)

This bed was larger and didn’t have quite the high ratio of statues and other objects in it, but I still didn’t find it to evoke a relaxing or peaceful feeling, which is what I want out of a garden.

But what I did really like was this guy in the tree in the photo above. Here’s a somewhat blurry close-up. I swear he’s the spittin’ image of my friend Judy’s husband! (GF: You know I have at least three regular readers--what if they know Judy?!)

I thought of the Garden Faerie at the next house. I don’t think she actually has a little fairy garden, but don’t you think she should? (GF: She doesn't. But she was under the impression that fairies are woodland creatures and is amused by the lighthouse. And by referring to herself in third person.)

And I loved the scarecrow in this vegetable garden. The garden was huge and probably could have used an entire family of scarecrows. Mom, Dad, Junior, Sissy, and there’d still be room for Grandma and Grandpa!

And whenever I see chairs or benches in a flower bed I stop and wonder if gardeners actually ever sit down in those chairs or benches. Do any of us ever get to really take a break and enjoy the product of our gardening labors? I need to learn how to do that because on the rare occasion I do sit down, I always see flowers that need dead-heading, bushes that need pruning, beds that need weeding, and others that need mulching. But I must enjoy it, or I wouldn’t keep doing it, right?

This garden was lined with long flower beds and also had large island bed plantings. Each of them was bordered by annuals – petunias in the sun and impatiens in the shade. I couldn’t imagine planting all of those annuals and assumed they must hire help to plant them and also to keep everything so well-manicured.

Here’s a closer view of the darling fountain and one of the planters on a pedestal.

They had beautiful planters interspersed throughout all of the flower beds, but they were classy and enhanced the beds and didn’t overpower them. Along with planting all those annuals, I couldn’t imagine watering all of those planters. (GF: Lazy Water-conscious gardening rules!)

This was perhaps my favorite statue. (GF: My friend Nita, who may be conned into guest posting on native and prairie plants, has the exact same one!) It gave me an idea… maybe if I gave Shadow or Faith a shovel they would help me in the garden. For some reason I doubt that would ever happen. Perhaps the Garden Faerie would have better luck with James and Fiona. (GF: Ha ha ha ha! If I could train James to spray on weeds, that could work, especially now his output is radioactive!)

Whenever I go on a garden walk I see plants that I know I should know the names of, or that I once knew but have forgotten. And I often take pictures so I can show them to the Garden Faerie and have her ID them for me. But I never do. (GF: Which saves a lot of time in me needing to admit I don't know them!) But this time, since I’m writing a guest blog, I can sneak those pictures right into the blog!

I love the shape on these purple flowers and this would make a great replacement for the loosestrife that I’m still trying to eradicate from my flower bed. So what is it? (GF: I had to cheat tweet to find out this is a perennial lobelia, Lobelia siphilitica--thanks to all the tweeps who responded. It is a cutie.)

And while I hate grasses, I really like the shape of this one. I know the Garden Faerie told me the name of it when we were in Columbus last year, but I have since forgotten the name. Help! (GF: It's Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola'). And what? You don't like grasses? How could I not know this about you?! Thud! That's me falling over. My Little Blue Stem and I are going to pout for a good 20 minutes!)

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