My Haunted Garden

I used to see her wandering the south lawn, tall and grey headed with her hair pinned back, wearing an old grey pocketed sweater over a print house dress straight out of the 1950's. Although she wasn't young any more, her back was straight and her step firm. The first time I saw her, I thought one of my elderly neighbors had come to see what I was doing to the yard, and I stepped out the back door to say hello. But she wasn't there. I walked all the way around the house, and saw no one in the yard at all, so I just chalked it up to my over-active imagination, thought I was seeing things, shrugged and laughed a bit at myself, and went back inside.

She was back a day or two later. This time I just watched her for a few moments. She walked along the bed in front of the stone wall where I had planted a row of lilacs, stopping now and then as if peering at the ground at her feet. Then I turned my head away for a second; and when I looked back, she was gone.

She came quite frequently at first, every time I did something different to the growing flower beds; or when I cleaned out and weeded one of the old beds. I tried to follow the original rock borders, saving as many of the old perennials as I could find. It seemed as if she was inspecting my work, curious to see what I was doing, if it met with her approval.

She came less and less often as the garden progressed and began to thrive again under my hands. The renewal of her beloved plants must have satisfied her, for I haven't seen her for many years now.

I found out later that this lady who built our stone house, dug the basement single-handedly, and raised several children in the one-room cabin that was still standing when I moved here (later torn down) loved flowers and would spend all of her spare money (which wasn't much) on what new plants she could find for her garden. She raised a big vegetable garden and orchard where our woods now stands, clearing rock on the hill (no mean feat in the Ozarks!) so she could till the soil.  Piles of rocks still exist in the woods, as I often discover when trying to plant something; and the fencerow is (now) two feet high, three feet wide and running the length of the back of the property, along what was the garden (about 200') of rocks.

Euphorbia and wild geranium

Back in those days, I spent a lot of time at the library checking out garden books, and I must have been following in her footsteps as she set about to create an English garden. I could see some of the combinations she used, straight out of the pages of those books; a ferny green euphorbia with yellow flowers, planted with wild geraniums; mock orange with lily of the valley.

There is still a hundred feet of powder blue irises that smell of grape Nehi soda, interplanted with orange daylilies, that runs the full width of the front of the yard, a good 10' wide. It is a glorious sight in May! She planted naked ladies (lycoris): (the progeny of which are now in nearly every bed in the garden), probably every variety of iris she could get at the time, daffodils in abundance that bloom from the earliest yellow in February, to doubles, poeticus, and others that don't open until the first week in May. I have no idea of the names of most of them.

Old irises are starting to bloom on the north side of the house

Epimediums, still growing strong in their original spot!

Chrysanthemums, October 2009

There are still epimediums, grape hyacinths, (now in glorious abundance), phlox paniculata, star of Bethlehem and peonies; a chrysanthemum that opens creamy yellow and ages to pink--and spreads agressively! Perennial sweet peas are also part of her legacy. There is some variety of (maybe) Louisiana irises that have an open, flattish purple-blue flower, deep roots and colonize with abandon. A Seven Sisters rose, that has now gotten somewhat out of hand, used to adorn a rock cornerpost in the front yard. Now it clambers up a redbud that has sprung up nearby. Several smoke trees, including one very old and gnarly individual, seem to be original, as well as a hawthorn with some wicked nasty thorns. And not to be forgotten, the tulip magnolia that was so beautiful this spring, a deeply pink dogwood, and white lilacs.

Grandfather American smoke tree (cotinus) March 2010. I expect every year that it won't leaf out, but it always does.

Ancient white and purple lilacs

Blackeyed susans live here too, and coneflowers, columbines (Granny's bonnet doubles), giant toad trilliums, spiderwort, nandinas, scarlet honeysuckle, autumn clematis, forsythia, and crape myrtle "colonize freely" all over the place. I haven't forgiven her for the ground cover euonymous, but I live with some of it. So far. (One huge vine on the stone wall has a trunk the size of a man's leg, so you know how long that has been here!) My neighbor two houses down the street who has lived here since she was born, talks about the tall hollyhocks that used to bloom above the wall. Even though those are no longer there, I still have their descendants growing down along the herb garden fence.

"The panthers of the meadow,tiger-lilies". -Titus Munson Coan

And the tiger lilies! They stand a stately 5' tall when they bloom, hundreds of them! They reseed freely here and there and I never know where to expect another one among the garden beds!

 I mourn the loss of some plants that seem to be irreplaceable, expecially a yellow dwarf daylily (hemerocallis) that bloomed in April (it just disappeared one year), I have tried to find a replacement but it may be lost to the nursery trade. I still keep hoping it will show up somewhere in the garden  A lovely white Japanese viburnum simply declined and died one spring. There was another pink dogwood that graced the backyard but it succumbed when a black walnut grew into its space, and they disagreed with each other. Dogwoods and black walnuts just can't seem to get along; probably because of the alleopathic chemical juglone produced in the walnut roots.

I know that she traveled, and brought back seeds and plants wherever she went, as well as rocks and seashells that she embedded in the stone walls of her house. She made piles of interesting rocks under trees, perhaps leftovers from the house walls; and used them around her garden beds.

She didn't like dogs, and fenced the whole yard to keep them out, and to keep her cats safe from them. As far as I know, there was not a husband in her life, though there must have been at one time. I don't know what happened to him.

There was a concrete birdbath, embedded with shells, stones and bits of jewelry. I have found most of the broken pieces and used them as a surround for a tub of yellow water iris.

A stone wall runs a hundred and some feet on the south, and all sorts of things are embedded in it--pieces of dolls, more jewelry bits, marbles, pieces of glass and china, and shells.

The original wire arbors over the front and side gates are still here, and most of the fences around the house. There are only remnants of the fence around the woods, most of it having rusted away, though I still find buried pieces of barbed wire from time to time. I've found intact dishes and small perfume bottles in the soil, and once I found a set of wedding rings, deep beneath a tree that had to be cut down. (Now there might be a story!) Other finds include a pair of rusted cap pistols and just yesterday we discovered an old wrench that finally surfaced on a woods path. We usually hang the metal artifacts on the studio and toolshed walls.

The siding on the studio is cut from tongue and groove boards that clad the one-room cabin. Board and batten ceiling from the old structure was made into a cupboard I use on the back porch for garden sundries, boots and gloves.

Sometimes I wish she would come back again for another look. I would like to know what she thinks of her garden now. I miss her, this lady I never had the chance to meet but feel I know so well. I live with her in small ways, every day, for her personality is stamped upon this house and garden as surely as our own. She would have been a good friend.

"Where is heaven? Is it not
Just a friendly garden plot,
Walled with stone and roofed with sun? "
                                             --Bliss Cameron

Spring Surprises, and Stuff and Nonsense

Lots of things just pop up here. I don't know if birds "plant" some of them, or if they just come in on the wind.. Somewhow the new "stuff" usually manages to plant itself in the right spot. I have a couple of dogwoods and several redbuds that I've acquired that way, a mimosa, a black locust, and a few junipers that I've trimmed to interesting shapes.

Last fall I discovered a small sassafrass growing in the fence row, so we dug it out and put it back in the woods. Since its taproot got slightly mangled in the process, we held out little hope for its survival, but surprise, this spring, the little thing has leaves!

How do those plants move themselves like they do? About 3 years ago, I planted a lime green aquilegia next to a hosta that I thought would complement it with its lovely color. It did fine for two years, and now it is gone out of that bed. I found it, full grown, in the lower hosta bed, a good 20' away, under a dogwood. There also was a lovely white ajuga clump in that same bed. It disappeared also, to be found down a path next to a ground cover of euonuymous. Both of those plants have increased dramatically--but not where I put them!  How do they DO that?

The garden club has come and gone, and what an enjoyable evening it was! Perfect weather, good friends and wonderful food! Next month someone else will host a garden party. Oh yes, they all loved the garden!

 

A pretty happen-stance combination, ajuga flowers through creeping phlox. Pink lily of the valley is in the background.

Lunaria (money plant) in the foreground with woodland phlox divaricata. I love this combination! Lunaria is a biennial that always reseeds itself, and every year there is a different look.

I don't know if I like trilliums better white or when they age to pink. Either way, they are some of the most lovely spring flowers in the woods!

I peeked under the umbrellas of the mayapples, and look what I found!

False Solomon's seal is almost as interesting in bud as it is in flower. I am finding these spreading all through the woods this year.  A very welcome surprise!

Dwarf crested iris (iris cristata) just popped into bloom overnight! These actually came from an Arkansas woods, many years ago, a gift from a friend.

Fairy bells (disporum sessile variegatum), is actually a Japanese native wildflower, distantly related to the Solomon's seal family. I got it from the now gone and much missed Rocknoll Nursery, many years ago. It languished in another bed for years until transplanted to the current hosta bed, where it has flourished. This is the first year I've seen blooms! It is quite beautiful, about 12" tall, and not invasive, but spreads stoloniferously very nicely. A wonderful non-native worth seeking out. Very pretty with ferns and hostas.

I just cannot resist a pretty face, any more than I can resist checking out every garden center I pass. I found this charming pink pussytoes (antennaria Rubra) at Lowe's this afternoon. I divided this plant in two, it probably could have been three.

I also loved this little hernaria

"Sea Foam". Just right for my shade garden, likes morning sun only!

We discovered wild plum (Prunus americana) growing in the woods Out Beyond. It looks a lot like wild cherry, bark and all, but the leaves are more round. I would really like this to be growing in our woods; and it might be, if I haven't pulled out all the seedlings thinking they were wild cherry. Now I'll have to look at each one before I pull it! It blooms in the woods usually before serviceberry. Sometimes it has pinkish blooms.

Still lots of spring beauties (claytonia virginica) blooming Out Beyond. I mow a path through it each year, but not yet!

 

A nice surprise by my recycle bins. Where did you come from, my pretty?

Other stuff: our city had a truckload sale of rain barrels and composters. We picked up two of these rain barrels, and will hook up a soaker hose to water beds on the north and south sides of the house. Now I have to plant something low in front of them to hide those concrete blocks. They should save on our water bills, that is, provided it rains!

And nonsense! This rock creation is in the loosely termed "Japanese garden".  Those are Japanese roof irises(iris tectorum) in front of it. The roundish rock on top is a local "mineral egg".

It is in front of a little Japanese maple, Seriyu, which is a green upright lace leaf that only gets about 15' x'10' This is its third year. I carried it home from Wildwood Farm in Kenwood, Ca,  on my lap on an airplane! It has grown almost 6" this spring so far.  

I love dandelion puffs! I always spray some of these delicate beauties with extra-hold hairspray and they will last for a long time in a vase or a dried flower arrangement.

A little rain turned the yellow oak pollen on the hosta leaves into golden drops!

Another beauty, Aquilegia canadensis, our native columbine.

An update on the bluebird/ woodpecker feud: nobody seems to have claimed the woodpecker hole in the hackberry tree. It is still empty! The bluebirds have gone back to the edge of Out Beyond and I don't know where the woodpeckers are nesting, but I still see them around. There are lots of trees with dead limbs for them to have claimed!

"There is a mockingbird

Singing in the oak tree.

 He sounds delirious,

Leaping and catching air with his wings.

Perhaps he is drunk with spring!"

                                                    --S.P.

Spring Images, Oddities and Odd Thoughts

Spring is blooming at an astounding rate! It is as if, having been denied by cold, snowy days, it is bursting out all at once!

Jacob's ladder (Polemonium reptans) actually a cousin of wild phlox

Weeping cherry

Spring beauties (claytonia virginiana) practically make a carpet everywhere

Peppermint stick tulips (tulipa clusiana) opened up today!

Violet "Freckles"

Red violet

White violet

Brunnera, perennial forget me nots

Grape hyacinth with tritellia

Sometimes you just find oddities! Not sure what kind of fungus this is, but it looks hungry! I love fungi in my garden, they are like a type of wildflower to me and there is such diversity among them!

Another of its family!

I looked for morels but I didn't find any. It's the right time of the year and we just had rain yesterday, but no sign of any so far!

Sometimes a rock will cause you a second look! 

Pretty sober looking fellow!

If I squint just right, there is a fanciful dragon!

We spent most of the day going to the recycling center and running errands, and when I finally got into the garden it was almost hot outside. I plunged right into filling some holes with top soil I purchased today but underestimated how much I needed by about two bags, so Monday it will be back to Home Depot for some more. I had planned on planting a few herbs that I picked up today but somehow, chickweed got in my way and I spent the rest of the day until dark rooting that out of perennial beds and paths, so it will be tomorrow morning before I get them into the ground.

There is so much anticipation of spring, anxiously awaiting the first spring blooms and the first green shoots that somehow our minds completely block out what comes next! Along with the lovelies of spring come.......WEEDS! Chickweed, henbit (tho I do leave some of that for the bees), dandelions, poa annua, the whole gammut of undesirables that come right along with the pretty things! Amazing that I forget that one chickweed plant can cover a good two square feet of ground, and sometimes so entwine itself with a perennial that you can't get it all out. I know if I wait long enough, that irritating weed will go away with summer heat, but I don't want to put up with it that long. Besides, when I think of all the seeds that one plant can make.....it nearly gives me nightmares!  So I pull them out, and believe me, they are reluctant to give up their hold on Mother Earth! Perhaps I would feel kindlier to chickweed if I tried making soup out of it. I do have a recipe from "The Countryside Cookbook" by Gail Duff, and it sounds good!

As a gardener that has the care of a very old garden and rarely uses any kind of chemicals, I do have lots of weeds, too! Some I consider wildflowers and leave a few, like mullein, or verbascum thapsis, which is not actually a North American native but comes to us from Europe. I love the architectural look of this plant, and I am always surprised where it comes up each year, in a different part of the garden. This year there is one by the pond. I always leave one to go to seed and surprise me next year! The yellow moth mullien also gets to stay. It is a shorter plant with wavy leaves and pretty yellow flowers, and welcome wherever it shows up.

As I'm cleaning up leaves, I notice where some of the early snow crocuses came up. The flowers are long gone, but the leaves that follow are nearly two feet long. If you plant these early spring dainties, don't expect them to stay small and dainty when the leaves start to grow! You must leave them until they ripen so they will make food for next year's bloom. Only certain varieties make such long leafy growth, others stay under a foot tall. Saffron crocus, which blooms in the September also has long, droopy leaves that stay green until May, before they ripen.  

No new news on the bluebird/woodpecker housing squabble. I didn't see any of them today. I did see a little brown creeper in the woods, and tried to get its picture, but those cute little birds are really fast! By the time I got one in the lens of the camera, it was on the other side of the tree and 5' up, and out of the shot! I don't think they are common here. It's the first time I've seen one in these woods.

The crows were harassing a hawk today, I think they managed to chase it off temporarily. I'm sure it will be back tomorrow, but there was a lot of screeching and cawing going on.

The toads have stopped singing. I guess that means I can look for long ropy strings of eggs in the pond, and tadpoles soon!

And then there are the traveling plants. How did that veronicastrum get clear over to a bed on the north side of the house, in the shade  (it's supposed to be a full sun plant) from the bed a good hundred feet away on the other side of the house? And where did that achillea come from that is growing in the hosta bed? The closest plant is about 500' away in the meadow behind us, and this one sprung up full blown last year. I must have somehow missed it weeding. This spring it is nearly 3 feet across, beauiful and ferny. I'll leave it because it bloomed beautifully last year, and in the shade, too!

Gardening is so full of wonderful surprises!

Ras Tafari loves to check out the wildflowers!