Enjoying a Glorious Spring Weekend

We have had a crazy spring to say the least! Temperatures all over the place, snow, rain, sleet, you name it we’ve had it. But this weekend was truly a glorious one and made us forget all the bad stuff Mother Nature has thrown at us the last few weeks (or maybe months). In between catching up with the yard work, Steve and I got out to enjoy the spring that has finally arrived.

We started off with a hike off the beaten trail at the Morton Arboretum. The spring bulbs were in full color.

But what really caught my eye were the spring wildflowers we found. Some of these I haven’t seen in years, so it was fun to keep our heads down and see what early spring wildflowers we could find.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)–The sun was shining on this patch so the flowers were wide open. They’ll close up at night and last only a couple of days.

Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris)–This area is usually flooded, but not much rain this week so a nice big patch of Marsh Marigold glowed in the distance.

Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica)–This flower that just screams spring covered a woody hillside making it look almost cloud white. Stunning!

White Trout Lily (Erythronium albidum)–There were trout lily leaves everywhere, but it wasn’t until almost at the end of the walk we finally saw a few flowers. Trout Lilies, or Adders-tongues as I used to know them by, take years to finally mature and bloom, and then it’s only for a few days.

Dutchman’s Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) -This has to be my favorite of the day! The flowers truly look like pantaloons with the ankles upward hanging from a clothesline.

May-apple (Podophyllum peltatum)--Not quite blooming yet, but soon.

Besides the flowers that were enjoying the spring warmth, so were the turtles. In this pond, every log had multiple turtles sunning themselves.

We finished the day by exploring the 2016 special exhibit “Ribbit! The Exhibit“. There are 23 larger-than-life copper frogs taking part in a variety of activities, all centered around the visitors center. J.A. Cobb, a North Carolina-based sculptor, fashioned these fun sculptures from sheets of copper around steel armatures. Here’s my favorite–

And in keeping with this frog’s theme, I did see and hear many birds on our walk, including a pair of Wood Ducks and a Pileated Woodpecker.

What’s your favorite spring flower?

Finally Fixing the Rabbit Fence

There are so many garden pests, but rabbits have to be right up there at the top of many gardener’s list (unless you have deer, then that’s a whole different issue). Last summer I posted in “Oh Those Pesky Rabbits” about the issues I was having with rabbits eating many of my tender young vegetables.

For many years I hadn’t had issues with rabbits. I had installed chicken wire fencing a few years back to block rabbits from getting through the cedar fence. But as the years went by, both the cedar and chicken wire fences has become damaged, removed, soil levels changed and generally the whole anti-rabbit fence system became ineffective.

Last year, I found these cute babies in the yard, just waiting to attack my gardens.

By the time I realized I had such a big problem, the cedar fence was almost impossible to get to because of summer foliage. So I was going to have to wait until spring to fix it.

Last week, Daisy and I scared a huge rabbit out from under the shed who fled across the yard, escaping through this giant hole in the fence. It was time to get this problem solved!

Off to Home Depot I went to get some chicken wire, wire cutters and a staple gun.

After trying out a few staple guns, I ended up getting a light duty Stanley TR45. I hope that it’s strong enough, but I had trouble squeezing anything more powerful and I didn’t want to invest a ton of money.

Success!

The staple gun worked just fine for this job.

I think this will keep out the rabbits!

I finished off the rest of the yard in an afternoon, and now will enjoy a nice glass of wine celebrating a job well done.

While I raise a glass to the rabbits, my next puzzle to solve is keeping Daisy out of the peppers. Check out “Little White Pepper Thief” to see what that problem is.

Happy New Year 2016

Happy New Year and Best Wishes for 2016! I truly appreciate all who have visited my blog this year. Here’s a look back at some of my most popular posts of 2015!

1. Taming My Tomatoes With A Florida Weave: My tomatoes were a mess, so I tried something new to try and keep things in order.

2. The Blue Jays are Back (and That’s Not a Good Thing): What to do when you have nuisance birds at your feeder?

3. Warding Off The Vampires: This was my first try at growing garlic. Easier than I thought and definitely worth the effort.

4. So Long Beautiful Maple Tree: Sometimes things go terribly wrong with plant. In this case, construction and cold brought about the demise of our beautiful Freeman Maple

5. November in Chicago: This fall was quite an unusual one. Here in Chicago, the plants were quite confused as to the time of year and it made for an interesting fall.

6. Something’s Wrong With the Clematis and Clematis Stem Wilt: An Update to Something’s Wrong With The Clematis: The wet spring affected a lot of plants. Many of us saw some terrible die back of our clematis due to Clematis Stem Wilt. Hopefully next spring everything will rebound.

7. Little White Pepper Thief: Apparently Westies love peppers. I didn’t get any sweet or hot peppers from my garden this year because of my little thief 🙁

8. Spring Surprises: Even when you think you know everything in your garden, you get surprised!

9. Beautyberry Bushes: Did They Survive the Winter? After a winter like we had, I thought I had lost my new bushes. But, they are one of the last to leaf out in the spring, so I’m glad I was patient.

10. Fall in Northern Michigan/Stumbling Upon Club-Mosses: This was one of my favorite posts of the year. Not only was fall in Northern Michigan stunning, my mom and I stumbled onto a forest area full of a club mosses. Very cool to see and explore.

..and a few of my all-time most popular posts:

Curled Leaves On The Bushes (August 2014)

Creeping Thyme Problems (April 2014) and an update in August, Oops, September Garden Update

Painting Rock Garden Markers (February 2014)

Pelicans In Illinois (September 2013)

Our Family Christmas Tree (December 2013)

Hope you keep visiting, I have all kinds of ideas to keep everyone in the gardening mood all winter.

Remember, you can also find Stephi Gardens on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter.

August, Oops, September Garden Update

A while back I thought I was getting caught up, but then sending twins off to college this fall proved to be quite a time consuming effort! So the garden has been a bit on auto pilot for a little while now. Thank goodness it got off to such a good start this spring. Here’s some tidbits on what I would have written about, if I had had the time 🙂

There was a family of chickadees that must have nested and fledged near my feeders. For weeks, I was so entertained by the hilarious antics of the 3 young chickadees that truly behaved like little kids.

I got a lot more green peppers and Mariachi hot peppers as the summer went on. Unfortunately, Daisy was not at all dissuaded by munching on the hot peppers and continued to eat almost all this year’s pepper harvest (Little White Pepper Thief).

Surveying the garden for her latest snack…

A couple of years ago this patch of creeping thyme was a disaster. I wrote about it in my earlier post, “Creeping Thyme Problems“. I was skeptical that the severe pruning was going to help, but it has. It looks gorgeous and lush, and smells awesome when I walk on it to get to the garden hose. So if in doubt, cut away, it’ll be better for it!

I didn’t get many sunflowers this year thanks to the bunnies. But I did get this one, beautiful Evening Sun Sunflower. Made me smile.

Thankfully Daisy doesn’t seem have found the tomatoes or basil. I don’t ever seem to tire of fresh tomato salads.

The raspberries I planted in the spring flourished over the summer. I even got a few tasty raspberries in the late summer. Looking forward to having the plants mature and getting lots of berries. What did I plant? See my previous post “My Raspberries and Strawberry Plants Are Here!”

Two of my clematis plants got a terrible case of Clematis Stem Wilt earlier this spring (What’s Wrong With the Clematis and Clematis Stem Wilt). I was hopeful that the plants would survive and I think they did. Both plants put up a couple of new, healthy looking stems that looked good until the last few days when something has decided to munch on the leaves. We’ll see in the spring how they look. At least there’s hope.

The petunias were home to lots of pollinators. This bumblebee was fun to watch as he dove deep into each flower. He seemed to really prefer the dark pink over light pink. While I have no decent pictures, I had hummingbirds also visit my yard late this summer. I don’t always get them, so it has been a treat the last few weeks to have them visit.

How was your garden this year?

(BTW Go Hokies! Go Blue!)

Summer Sunday Visit to the Chicago Botanic Garden

This past weekend, we had the pleasure of having my husband’s cousin visit from Australia. In trying to decide what to do, we tossed around heading downtown (hmm, Lollapalooza weekend), heading to Brookfield Zoo, Morton Arboretum or maybe even up north to the Chicago Botanic Gardens. Much to my surprise, it turns out he’s quite the garden fan himself, so off we all went to the Botanic Gardens.

It’s been quite a while since we had been to the CBG, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I was more than pleasantly surprised and it was well worth the drive! I loved seeing the different gardens, plant grouping ideas and especially seeing it through Australian eyes. We spent the day comparing growing notes and found many similarities, but of course lots of differences given the much warmer weather where he lives.

Here’s just a little bit of what we saw–

Chicago Botanical Gardens — Pretty sun garden. I’ve only used Lantana in pots and love the display as a planted annual. I’m trying to figure out how to grow my own from seeds or cuttings, but in zone 5 it doesn’t look very easy.

We went through the model railroad exhibit. It was a fun trip across the country, with all the models (except the trains) made from nature.

Then came the vegetable gardens…

Chicago Botanical Garden — I’m always looking for new ways to trellis and contain my tomatoes. I like the zig-zag idea for a narrow garden space. Seems pretty easy to handle the twine.

Then the storms moved in and we couldn’t go in the butterfly house. Got a rain-check so we’ll be back!

Have you been to a local botanical garden lately? Where is your favorite?

The Bee Balm Is Very Happy

Sometimes you just pick the wrong place to plant a plant. That happened to me with a bright red Bee Balm (Monarda variety unknown). As I wrote about before (Time For the Yarrow To Go), this particular Bee Balm had been planted underneath a newly planted River Birch which is now almost 20 years old. As you might expect, in the intervening years it has plunged everything underneath into mostly shade, rather than the dappled light shade when it was newly planted.

For many years I just ignored the Bee Balm since it didn’t really bother me; it was just another scraggly plant that bloomed well enough. It did tend to get powdery mildew which was unsightly and probably unhealthy for it. (But, looking at the pictures, it really should have bothered me long before it did.)

A couple of years ago, around the same time that the Bee Balm was actually starting to bother me, I also felt it was time for the very messy yarrow to go. It was taking up one the best full sun spots in the yard and was not performing well in it.

So out came the yarrow and in went the Bee Balm. Now, two years later the Bee Balm is blooming spectacularly!

It looks so much better in this spot in the yard, and even the small patch of yarrow that snuck back looks good. The butterflies and bees are quite happy, too.

Finally all the Bee Balm around my yard is happy!

Clematis Stem Wilt: An Update to Something’s Wrong With The Clematis

Yesterday, I wrote about the terrible condition of two of my clematis plants (Something’s Wrong With The Clematis).

This morning, after an interesting discussion on Facebook, I called the Morton Arboretum Plant Hotline. They are a great local resource for what’s going on with plants in the area.

They said it sounded like my clematis have clematis stem wilt. Yikes! That’s not good, but not awful.

According to the Arboretum and the Missouri Botanical Garden clematis stem wilt is a fungal infection that comes on suddenly just as the plant is about to bloom. Yep, exactly what I saw.

Within just a few days the stem and leaves turn black and start to die. It may only affect a singe stem, or the whole plant.

Again, exactly what I’ve seen. One has only some of the stems dying, the other all.

Pretty much the only way to treat it is to cut back and remove the infected stems and leaves. Also, clean up any dead leaves underneath the plant so that the spores don’t stay in the soil and reinfect the plant. Don’t forget to disinfect your pruning tools afterwards to keep them clean. So that’s what I did today.

Here’s what they looked like when I was finished.

The one above has a mysterious new small plant growing right in the center. I’m hoping it is the clematis already recovering and not a random weed. We’ll see.

Large flowered clematis seem to be more susceptible than small flowered, something to consider if this becomes a chronic problem. And as with most fungal infections, a cool and damp environment can contribute to the infections. The good news is that the plants usually recover.

The odd part for me is how close the stunning clematis jackmanii variety is to the infected clematis. It looks about the best I can ever remember. Not much I can do about it except remove all the infected stems and leaves and say a little prayer.

As I was cleaning up I was looking at the clematis seed heads. So interesting and pretty in its own right.

Hopefully your clematis are finding this a good year and the stem wilt doesn’t show up in your yard.

Something’s Wrong With The Clematis

Usually, my clematis are one of the stalwarts of my garden.

They grow beautifully with very little attention. But this year, after being gone to Yosemite for a few days, I came home to both my Clematis “Sugar Candy” looking like this:

It was really puzzling. My two ideas as to what was happening where that somehow some stems were cut down low by an animal or accidentally during weeding, or round-up was used in the area without me knowing. Although, that seems less likely since only the clematis seem to be affected and it seems to be stem specific.

I looked carefully at the base to see if there was anything obvious that I could see. There didn’t seem to be anything I could see.

After another week or so, things weren’t looking any better. One of the plants does seem to still have a thriving stem and continues to bloom.

The other barely has any green remaining so my hope for that one surviving are not very high.

But there are two lonely green leaves, so maybe???

So what to do? Before fall, I’m going to carefully prume out all the dead stems. Once the clematis goes dormant it would be impossible to tell live from dead. Then basically wait and see how it does next year. I probably won’t prune them as I have in the past (Checking in on the Clematis) to let them recover.

On the flip side, The Clematis “Jackmanii” is doing spectacularly well this year and is overgrowing everything in its path. Not sure why, but I’m not complaining.

How’s your clematis doing?

(I do wish I could have taken better pictures, but it’s been so cloudy and gray. Dead plants and gray skies don’t make for a cheerful image 🙂 )

The Garden Was Party Perfect

My goal this spring was was to get the garden in shape for my twin boys high school graduation festivities. While the weather barely cooperated, the gardens were helped by the cool spring and looked beautiful, green and lush. Some of the spring shrubs were still blooming and overlapping with some of the early summer blooming vines and perennials. What didn’t have color, I filled in with annuals from a local nursery. Even the vegetable gardens seemed on their best behavior. I think I am going to be spending a lot of time relaxing in the backyard this summer enjoying all this early spring work.

On personal note– this has been such a hectic year and I haven’t been blogging as much as I had hoped. Now that my twins have finished their senior year and all that comes with it, I hope to be writing on a more regular basis. Wondering where they’re going? Here’s a hint…

Beautyberry Bushes–Did They Survive The Winter?

Last year, I wrote about buying three Purple Pearls Beautyberry Bushes (Callicarpa x NCCX1) at the Morton Arboretum Plant Sale. I had seen them the fall before in the parking lot there and thought they were just stunning with all those amazing, unusual purple berries (see Purple Beautyberry Bush). I had to plant them in my yard!

For a first year plant, they looked fine last fall and I was looking forward to even healthier, bigger shrubs this year. Like many of us around the country, this was a tough winter and of course I worried about what would survive and what wouldn’t. So as everything awakened from winter, I was mostly happy to see things leafing out and looking healthy.

But not the Beautyberry Bushes. By late April, they looked like nothing more than 3 dead sticks when everything else was already leafing out.

But, it just didn’t seem like they were dead. The branches had some spring to them and if I scraped a small piece of bark it seemed fleshly underneath.

But they really looked dead. I was worried, but not ready to yank them out yet.

One of the great services that the Morton Arboretum provides is a free plant clinic where you can call or bring in a specimen and they can try to help you. I finally got around to calling and spoke with the nicest women who happened to have them in her yard too. She said hers looked just like mine and that they tend to leaf out a lot later than most shrubs. The also regrow mostly from the base. so I should be patient.

It had been a couple of days since I had looked at them, so now I was curious. Lo and behold, little sprouts of green had just emerged!

They were alive! Even now, 3 weeks later they are still way behind many of the other shrubs, but I can be patient. At least they survived!

Category: Flowers