Not Ready For Cold Weather!!

Not very thrilling, huh? To you it may look simply like an empty plastic bucket, but to me it signals victory. I did it: I planted the three million daffodil and tulip bulbs I "accidentally" ordered!
The "accident" part is a somewhat amusing story of friends collaborating on an order and a few substitutions later, I wind up with a lot of bulbs. I had anticipated the spots I had marked in my Lilac Border would be sufficient for the thirty or so white daffodil bulbs I intended to plant. Believe me, I got varieties that I'm certain will be marvelous, but I had to dig quite a few more holes and prepare an entire new area. Suffice it to say that next year's garden is going to be spectacular. I am eagerly awaiting the vernal appearance of "Snowboard", "Frosty Snow", "Thalia", and "Starry Night"- and that's just the daffodils! (These, of course, are to compliment the "Ice Follies", "Mount Hood", "Thalia" and "Barrett Browning already in place!)
I was fortunate that despite a couple of rainy days (read downpours) that impeded my planting, (along with several art-related events that I was frantically preparing for) it was relatively mild and I was able to get everyone buried before the snows fly. Yes, it is expected to rain and then snow today, in direct contrast to yesterday's benevolent 60 degree weather. I'm for sure not prepared for that! It was nice to plant in reasonable temperatures; typically, I am a "cheap date" and I purchase my bulbs marked down at home improvement centers in late November and flirt with frostbite while planting in sleet and worse. The things we endure for next year's garden!
So here's a more fantastical scene:

That's my garden helper and all around shadow Robin the Good adorning our bedazzled stairway. She looked so sweet when I took the picture, but the carpet looked so dingy that I had to improve on it. Robin thoroughly enjoys helping in the garden and keeps me in good spirits when my energy flags. (Believe me, removing the sod from another area was not what I originally anticipated!) Robin is sneaky, though, and steals gloves, empty plastic perennial pots and generally anything not weighted down in the wheelbarrow. Some help!
Anyway, everybody's planted and I'm ready for some serious indoor activity. (My mosaic project is regrettably on hold until next spring as cement isn't happy in cold weather.) My studio awaits!

Planting That Big Tree Part 2

How's that for an ungainly silhouette? It's still bound up so it looks like those tall narrow things I pose next to at botanic gardens. Well, this is how I left off, with the tree awaiting planting...
So the next day- because we were all tuckered out from excavating enormous holes (like I could see the Chinese Embassy it was so deep!)- we vowed to get the tree installed in the ground, in it's new home.
I was certain that the tree- all 250 or 300 pounds of it- was going to land on Bob or me but it went swimmingly, thanks to Bob and his masterful engineering abilities. He laid planks sloping down into the hole and used a crowbar and a log and instructed me move what where as he carefully maneuvered the tree down.The next thing you know- hey presto! The tree was safely inserted. Bob even got finess-y about shifting just the right trunk to the front.

I was simply glad to see it planted with neither one of us crushed or dead. Hahaha; ever the optimist!
Next came the fun part.

(Having technical difficulties! Don't ask why the picture
is located over to one side... Just bear with me.) Anyway,
that's Bob tweaking the placement. Once the dirt goes in.
there's no undoing it; this tree is permanent!)

So we shoveled a lot of dirt, tamped it down to eliminate

air pockets, watered it in as we added more dirt and before

you knew it, the tree was happily ensconced in it's new home.

Bob spread it's branches out and then staked it so that it 

would be stable in a windy or wet situation. It was perfect

that we had rain the next day as it eased the tree's 

transition. I keep running outside to see if it's still there 

(it is) as I was so pleased with our new addition. It sure

helps to fill the empty spots left by that tornado- and it's 

a handsome tree at that! Welcome River Birch!

The Biggest Tree We'll Ever Plant

Just be glad that I didn't write the blog I was starting yesterday! A hint: the title was "A Bad Mood". Enough of that! Today was great and my mood matched it because Bob and I bought a tree! That's it, wrapped up looking like some giant dildo and eliciting stares as we drove home.

 I have been researching and shopping for a clump of birches, partly because I have always admired them and partly because we have all this empty space cheerfully provided by that tornado that visited. We needed shade and a feature to partially block our neighbor's house and a focal point. I wanted something jazzy that had several seasons of interest. I really like the very white birches but have been warned that they succumb to all kinds of borers and leaf miners and they're brittle and they break. So I turned up several cultivars of Betula nigra (River birch, more familiarly) with the varieties "Duraheat" (lousy name!) and "Cully's Heritage" being recommended as particularly attractive with extra exfoliating bark- bronzey golden brown that peels to reveal salmon pink and creamy under bark, with foliage that turns vivid yellow in the fall. After many trips and phone calls to nurseries, I found what I was looking for...

It was a lovely day, we took a pleasant drive to one of our favorite nurseries and... they didn't have the size we were looking for, despite it being mentioned on a "specimens list" that had been emailed only the week before. All that was available were gigantic and twice what we were looking at spending. Alas! But another employee at the nursery checked and located one that was about to be "upgraded" and graduated to more expensive status as it had grown so lustily this year. She sold it to us for the lower price (literally like 1/2 the price!) Hooray!!!

They wrapped this cluster up and helped to load it and suddenly it appeared like twice as big as it had. I was shopping for a (hahahaha) five or six foot individual and we got us a ten foot tree at a bargain price and I started thinking, "And now we have to get this sucker home and plant it". I'm certain Bob was having similar thoughts. It just looked bigger and bigger and bigger.
As you can see in the above pictures, it rode home quite happily and we got it off the truck intact- or I should say, BOB got it off the truck with ropes and gently inching it towards the planks he posted at the rear of the truck and slid it down. I dutifully held ropes and pulled on my side but nothing budged; I tried.
But I sent Bob into the house after he wrestled the tree onto the ground. He needed a rest and I could handle the next phase: digging the biggest hole I've ever dug. I have graduated from annuals to perennials to shrubs and bushes and small saplings to trees! (But I assured Bob: this IS the biggest tree we will ever plant.)

And here's my lovely assistant Robin, ideally suited to helping me dig. She did a marvelous job of loosening the soil so that I could shovel it onto the pile.

The pile got even bigger than that! Bob is going to finish the hole tomorrow and then we're going to plant. I'll post additional pictures of that Herculean task. But in the meantime, take a look at the detail of this bark. This particular clump is nice, too, as it has four trunks and will create a really remarkable presence in the vast empty wilderness left by the tornadoes destruction. Why, it will probably look like it was always here. Let's see if our friends notice it the next time they visit!

A Floral Interlude...

Wow! I've been so busy that bloggery seems so long ago! Look at how lovely our Magnolia is; I think it's extra pretty because the spring has been so cool. Personally, I love a warmer time of it, but the trees seem to like linger in the cool weather. here's the whole thing:

This will sound nuts, but we're going to mover this tree before it gets any bigger. And we've read that you should move them in bloom, so as soon as Bob gets his chain saw back, move it we will. (We need the chain saw to remove a dead tree where this tree is moving to.) The Magnolia smells great, too. And on the Magnolia front, the Star Magnolia that I gave Bob for his birthday last year isn't deceased after all. We were sure the stellar combination of extreme heat and drought last summer coupled with extreme cold this winter had done it in. It sure was doing a convincing impersonation of a dead tree. But I discovered today that it has leaf buds and I'm relieved. I was searching high and low for my receipt as most nurseries guarantee their stock for a year. (And we're not neophyte gardeners who plant things upside down or do everything all wrong. Not usually!)
Also, we got a tiny- but delicious!- harvest from our second year asparagus planting. My sister Beatrice gave Bob asparagus plants for his birthday last year and they are doing really well.

It's okay to harvest a few stalks this early on...
So maybe it's been good that the spring is off to a late start as we've been busy. We've been working a lot and I applied for a grant and we're still at work on my studio... I'm exhausted just thinking about it all!
And I have only just begun to get psyched about this year's garden. I'm going to bed.