Tag: red twig dogwood

This Crazy Winter

The winter of 2019 is definitely one for the books. We’ve been through snow, rain, crazy temperatures swings, a winter thunderstorm, the polar vortex…and now another ice storm has hit the Chicago area.

As temperatures hovered around freezing, the precipitation has rotated between rain, sleet, freezing rain and snow. Aside from the treacherous driving and walking, the ice made for beautiful scenery. Pretty much everything outside, like my feeder pole and feeders, were covered in ice and icicles. If you look closely at the icy peanut feeder, you can see one of the red-breasted nuthatches that is spending the winter in my yard on the peanut feeder.

Looking around the yard everything, like this Dwarf Korean Lilac, was encased in a thick layer of ice.

The buds on the star magnolia were similarly encased. The spring flower buds are actually protected by the layer of ice as long as I don’t try to knock the ice off.

The annabelle hydrangeas are hanging heavy…

And the neighbors red-twig dogwoods are truly showing their winter colors.

What do do about the ice? Not much you can do without inflicting more damage to weak branches and spring buds. Best to just wait and hope that it thaws soon. The wind has been howling tonight, which means probably even more breakage since the weight of the ice makes everything really heavy. The river birch has been dropping branches all over the patio.

The arborvitaes are really having a rough winter between the heavy snow earlier this winter and now the ice. Only thing to do at this point is be patient. Multi-stemmed evergreens like arborvitae can be protected in the fall by tying up loosely with cloth, burlap or twine. But these are my neighbors shrubs, so all I can do is in the spring tie up the branches that have fallen on my side.

The Morton Arboretum has a great article on Winter Injury to Shrubs and Plants.

How are your plants fairing this winter?

Bonus photo: The sun came out today and made everything super sparkly!

 

To Add More Gardens or Not???

I am really in need of a new area for vegetables. For years, I’ve struggled with too many plants in a too small of a place. But, I also don’t have a good spot for adding more vegetable gardens, either due to too much shade or existing plants in the way. So I am contemplating putting 2 new raised beds off the back of the patio in a space that used to house the kids swing set.

View from my patio looking straight out

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Right now, this looks out onto half dead red-twig dogwoods that are unfortunately succumbing to some kind of canker. To try and help the dogwoods, we’ve tried to cut back all the old wood, clean up the leaves and last spring did some rejuvenation pruning removing about a third of the branches. No more have died and I’ll do another rejuvenation pruning in the late winter. We’ll see how much longer they last.

But, back to the vegetables. I have been following the sun pattern for most of the summer, and I think this spot will work out. It’s not full sun, but gets good morning and mid-day sun, which is the best I can hope for. I am trying to decide if I should add some trellis work in front to shield it, but in talking to my landscaper, he confirmed my fears that while it will look nice, it will make the area quite shady.  Maybe some other kind of less dense fence will work?

So now the question is, can I make this look pretty by adding some flowers, grasses or other interesting features to the area, or will it just turn into another messy vegetable garden? What have you done to “hide” the vegetable garden or do you think they are pretty?  I think what my mom has done with her gardens is pretty.

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