A LONG WEEKEND, A TREE IN BLOOM

Did you all have a great long weekend (at least my U.S. readers who celebrated Memorial Day)? I love long weekends (well, who doesn't?) but my goodness, they are so exhausting.

Saturday was our big master gardeners' plant sale, so I took Friday off of work and spent nine hours helping set that up. Then it was back early Saturday morning for the actual sale. It went well, but it's always interesting to see what is purchased first. This year, anything edible was really hot. Our heirloom tomatoes (which we grow ourselves by renting out space in a nearby nursery's greenhouses) are always hot sellers, but this year people really wanted vegetables. The kale sold out in minutes. The gardeners we get shopping at the sale don't want to fuss with seeds. They want plants and they want them growing quickly. I can understand that feeling.

What didn't sell well was purely ornamental plants. I'm not sure if that's because the people who come to our sale (which, years ago, used to be strictly herbs) are focused on edibles, or if ornamental gardening in our area is fading from popularity.

Usually I get a lot of gardening done on Memorial Day weekend, and this year was no exception, although there is so much more to do. If I don't get onto weeding soon I will be in dire straights. I usually plant all my containers this weekend, but it's still a little cool outside and I'm really babying all the annuals I've purchased from nurseries and taking some time to properly harden them off. I did get the window box planted and I'll show you that later in the week. It was a bit of a departure for me in some ways and I'll be honest, I'm nervous about it.

The back/side yard project is progressing. I'm happy to tell you that I'm finished removing sod. Thank goodness. I completely forgot about using the mattock, which I actually purchased for the same reason some years ago. Once I brought that out, it went very quickly. I'll show you some of what I've been up to there later this week to.

The tree would be much prettier if that trailer weren't parked in our driveway. The garage roof is in the middle of being replaced and we told our contractor (and neighbor and friend) that he could park his trailer there while they are working on it. That's Limelight hydrangea budding out in the foreground.

But today I'm going to tell you about the world's most accurate rain predictor. It is my Serviceberry tree. Our tree—a gift from my mother-in-law about 11 years ago—has grown so much. It's obviously happy in its location. As far as flowering goes, the small white flowers take about a week to fully open. Once open, they will stay like that for up to a week, creating a gorgeous white cloud. But only if they stay dry. If they get wet, they droop and that's the beginning of the end.

So of course, it pretty much never fails that the day the flowers fully open will be soon followed by rain and once again it happened this year. When I woke up Monday morning I could see from the bedroom window that the Serviceberry was in full bloom.

So I did what any rational gardener would do and I ran out to take some pictures because I knew it could rain at any moment. I was able to enjoy the tree all day until the torrential downpour came at 5 p.m. and then was followed Tuesday morning by a deluge that had me jumping out of bed to rescue some seed trays I remembered I had left out on the patio.

The Serviceberry is a great tree and it offers something at almost every time of the year (OK, not so much in winter because it doesn't have interesting bark or anything). I'd love it more if those flowers didn't bring on the rain and stuck around a little longer, but I love it just the same. Floppy flowers and all.

Whoosh! There goes the weekend

Sometimes when I disappear from the blog for more than a few days it's because I have nothing to write about and I never want to bore you. But other times it's because I'm so darn busy there is just no time to write.

That's been the story for the past week. I promise you posts on almost all of these things, but I just haven't had a moment to take more than an iPhone photo or write any words.

But just so I don't completely leave you out of the loop, here's what's been happening.

On a total whim this weekend I decided to try to create a "hedge" of chives along one section of the circle garden. I started pulling up all the little chive volunteers and plunking them in along the edge and then I ended up pulling up one plant and dividing it for the rest. I think chives are so pretty in and out of bloom so I thought why not. I already had the plants and there's no harm in trying it. If I don't like it, I can just move them.

It was a weekend of go-go-go trying to get some gardening tasks finished up. I didn't even come close, in case you were wondering. It is amazing how much time it takes to move six yards of compost. I'm not sure what takes more time, the weeding of the beds before I put it down, or the moving and spreading of the compost once I do. In any case, I'm looking at at least one more weekend of it before I'm finishing.

I did want to do one little construction project this weekend. Apparently I failed direction-following in kindergarten because the directions on how to make the cuts for this tuteur (or obelisk, whatever you want to call it) couldn't have been more clear but oh no, I had to do my own thing, which is how I ended up with this.

I have a friend who likes the phrase "all chicken-winged up." That, dear readers, is all chicken-winged up. Since I was throwing this thing together in record time though ... I just torqued it enough to screw it on somewhat straight and went with it. It's not exactly the most beautiful thing I've ever made but once I slap some paint on there, it will work out just fine.

The Serviceberry is about a day away from full bloom. Of course rain is predicted all week. I shot a quick photo of it this morning on my way out the door just in case that's as good as it gets before the flowers collapse.

And in the most exciting thing that happened all weekend ... the backsplash was installed in the kitchen. I love it more than I even thought I would! We are so close to finished on that project (thank goodness).  I just have to paint the walls and we have to get someone to finish that damn crown molding (speaking of that, I'll be on the radio on Wednesday talking about it, believe it or not). Lots of photos to come of that! I can't wait to show you.

 Thanks to everyone who participated in the first week of The Garden Appreciation Society. We'll do it again tomorrow so get your bouquets ready!

Big snow, big mess

Last week Tuesday we got a dumping of snow the likes of which we've not seen for years around here.   It wasn't so much the quantity—a healthy 12 inches at least, but probably more like 14 or 15—but the water content of what fell. I read somewhere that it had 30% more water than the average snowfall, thanks to the storm system picking up massive amounts of moisture from Lake Michigan.

All that heavy snow wreaked havoc on the yard. The trees were laden with snow, bowing under its immense weight.

I've heard plenty of times that it's not good to shake the snow off trees (I believe that's because the branches can be brittle and break when they snap back up), but it was clearly a salvage mission out there. The Serviceberry tree, which stands at good 20 or 25 feet tall was reduced to a 6-foot-tall mound, all its branches bending over. The new arborvitaes planted last year had all flopped over, laying almost flat in the snow. The main branch on an older birch that we hang the bird feeders on drooped so low the bird feeders were laying on the ground.

The Serviceberry to the left of the photo was completely crumpled.

One of the bird feeders was sitting on the ground as a branch of an old birch bowed under the weight of the snow.

The cedar trees, though, sustained the worst of the damage. We have precious few cedars left on our property as they are difficult to grow because they are the favorite treat of deer and therefore are stripped bare of all foliage 7 feet off the ground and lower. They do line our driveway and we have a lovely mature cedar outside the living room window that provides an excellent screen from the neighbors and the road. We also have a few more the east edge of our property that screen us from the neighbor in that direction.

That's our garage back there. The Serviceberry was bending almost into what should have been the driveway and the cedars and spruces on the other  side of the driveway were full of broken branches.

Every cedar lost branches. We actually had to cut branches along the driveway just so our neighbor who plows for us could clear the driveway. The ones to the east were a huge mess. And the great cedar outside the living room lost two branches, causing the remaining tree to list toward the house, at one point making it so heavy with snow that it rested on the roof.

With a main branch broken, this big cedar outside the living room was listing badly.

We spent all weekend clearing fallen branches and took six overflowing truckloads of branches away. Lumberjacking is exhausting work!

Most trees recover pretty well once the snow falls off them and the remaining part of that cedar did pop back up a little, but it's clear that losing two more main branches (we had cut one damaged one off that balanced it in the other direction several years ago) was the death nail. It's no longer safe.

The ancient birch tree that the bird feeders were on needs to go as well. We knew that was coming when we were hanging Christmas lights on it and discovered that the entire thing is mostly hollow and dead.

And then there is the great birch to the east. It is a stately tree that I look at from our bedroom windows in every season. I've noticed over the last couple years that the branches seem to be getting closer and closer to the bedroom windows. It is a lovely tree to set the hammock under and relax in summer. Occasionally we find huge dead branches from it fallen on the lawn. It's not healthy.

Sadly I think it's time for this birch to go.

Birch trees have a life span of about 50 years here and I have to think this tree is at least that. This has been wearing on us lately, and last week when I laid in bed listening to the branches break outside (I heard the big cedar branch come down with a huge crack), I couldn't sleep for fear that I'd wake up with that birch tree in my bed. I guess when you start not being able to sleep because you're worried about a tree falling on your house, it is, perhaps, time to do something about that tree.

We will be incredibly sad to see it go, which is why we've put off what we knew was inevitable for at least three years now.

Any doubts we had about our decision to have the tree removed by a professional when the snow melts a little (but before the ground thaws to minimize damage to the yard), were tempered when we saw the huge birch that fell in our next door neighbor's yard during the snowstorm. Our houses were built within a year of each other and we have reason to believe the trees were planted at about the same time too.

Our neighborhood is called Cedar Beach, but with all the damage to the cedars in the neighborhood, I'm starting to think someday the "cedar" part of Cedar Beach won't make much sense.

Somewhere under that pile, the boxwood meatball is lurking. I wonder if it will be totally flattened when it emerges.

The lone flowering tree

We only have one flowering tree in the yard. It's a Serviceberry, which is a lovely, tough-as-nails small tree or large shrub. It's commonly seen around here in its multi-trunked form in parking lots, hellstrips and other places where it can be planted and left. In our yard it's the corner piece to what I call the "main" garden, and it was a gift from my mother-in-law shortly after we bought the house. That means it has been here for about seven or eight years and it has really grown in that time. With its dainty flowers it's not as impressive as many other flowering trees, but I like its form and it looks great all year long

If you're a regular follower of this blog, you saw it last year, but since it's my only flowering tree, you get to see it every year (whether you like it or not)! This picture was taken last week, when it peaked on Wednesday and Thursday and by Sunday the show was over. A fleeting display, but oh, so worth it.