A SNOWY WRINKLE TO A DRIVEWAY IDEA

Remember back in fall when I shared my idea to line the apron of the driveway with containerized trees? I wouldn’t say that the reaction from readers was enthusiastic.

I completely understand why. It’s not entirely congruous with the rest of the yard and several people had warranted concerns about the care that containerized trees would require, to say nothing of how much that whole scheme would cost. These are all good points and I’m very thankful for them. Were it not for the rather lukewarm reception to the idea, I might be out hundreds (or, ugh, thousands) of dollars in containers for this harebrained scheme.

I do this sometimes, have a random idea pop into my head and get so excited about it that I get almost obsessed with it, even if I know it’s not a perfect plan. There will be more of these (in fact I’m cooking up another weird gardening idea now but I’m not to the point where it’s real enough to bother mentioning).

A few people suggested doing some nice plantings along that edge of the driveway; perhaps something asymmetrical, but balanced, that would be more in keeping with the rest of the garden. That is an excellent idea, but I knew immediately that wouldn’t work.

Here’s why.

We got our first “real” snowstorm of the year on Sunday. I know it was considered real because it forced the cancellation of most of the flights at the Milwaukee airport. I know that because I was supposed to be on one and I was supposed to wake up Monday morning looking at palm trees and neither of those things happened.

And while the interruption to my travel plans was a bummer, it did allow me to snap a couple photos of the snow situation here, which I wanted to share to show you why permanent plantings won’t work along the apron. As you can see, massive piles of snow are dumped there when we have our driveway plowed. And while perennials seem to do OK buried (some years the pile has extended into the circle garden), no small tree would be able to tolerate that kind of abuse.

Here was a badly Photoshopped idea to illustrate my idea and a real-time photo after the snowstorm.

I haven’t made any decisions about flanking the apron with anything yet. To be honest I have mentally spent a good part of the plant budget for the year (disclaimer: There is no real budget but I have a general concept of when I’ve spent too much and given the potential cost of the containerized tree idea, there wouldn’t be a lot left in the kitty for anything else).

So, for not, that plan remains on the proverbial drawing board, along with several others that range from doable to completely outlandish but very fun.

An unfortunate case of the munchies in my yard

The world outside my door appears to be frozen. Certainly nothing is growing, but I didn't expect things to be shrinking. Sadly, there are a lot of things shrinking in my yard.

The deer are starving. This winter has been so snowy and so cold with almost no relent (we're hoping for above-freezing temperatures this week which would be good for the soul and maybe, just maybe, decrease the size of the snow piles a little) that their food sources are buried or gone altogether.

Like most gardeners, I don't have a particularly good relationship with the deer, but I can't stand to see any animal suffer. What is concerning is that the size of the herds we are seeing are so much larger than in past years. Either the deer that usually hang out in the state park by our house are moving out in search of food or there are just a lot more deer. I fear it's the latter.

Not only are the deer getting even more bold (you would think the 275 pounds of dogs that live at my house would have some effect, but the deer practically laugh at them), they are eating whatever they can reach.

Unfortunately the main targets in our yard were the six arborvitaes we planted to screen the neighbor's house after we cleaned up a few dead trees in the woods. We bought Western arborvitae (Thuja plicata) Spring Grove in part because a neighbor planted several of them a few years ago and they grew quickly and were never bothered by deer even though they were planted along the road where the deer frequently stroll.

I've learned my lesson about "deer resistant" plants many times before, but I never even thought of protecting our trees for winter because they've never been touched by deer before. Usually, if the deer are going to make a meal out of something, they do it pretty early on in its time in our yard.

But now, all six of our Spring Grove arborvitaes have been "lollipopped." That is, the only foliage that remains is the top 18 inches or so. In my experience, the bottom never regrows, but the tree will probably live, but only grow foliage from the level it's at now and up. That isn't so good for when you're trying to block the view from your neighbor's kitchen window.

I'm not alone in this. The aforementioned neighbor with several Spring Groves that rapidly grew to about 20 feet tall suffered the same fate. The bottom 6 feet of his trees have been stripped.

The deer are munching on other things as well. Nothing within their reach is safe. The dwarf apple tree buried in a snow bank has ragged ends on every small branch, all nipped by deer. The same goes for the Limelight hydrangea in front (I'm not worried about this as it's destined for pruning anyway). The damage around the yard is extensive and is only likely to get worse.

That ragged end on the branch is a sure sign that a deer has been sampling.

By they way, I know so many people are buried under piles of snow so you probably don't need to see pictures of more snow. Too bad, you're getting some anyway.

These were taken Sunday, before another 6 inches fell Monday (and proceeded to blow into giant drifts). Testing paint samples on the front of the garage in fall sure looks like a great idea now, doesn't it? No one can say I haven't given the color a great deal of thought, though.

My poor meatball boxwood always gets crumpled in winter. It's hiding under there somewhere. 

Hard to believe this is what it looked like under that snow pile about 6 months ago, isn't it?

Have you noticed the wildlife in your area getting a big desperate with the crazy winter that so many of us are having this year?

Don't look now but winter's coming

I was born and raised in Wisconsin, and other than a brief stint down under, I have lived in this state for my entire life. If you're not familiar Wisconsin, you probably associate the state with three things: cheese, the Green Bay Packers and cold weather. It's no coincidence that these are the first things that come to mind when you think of Wisconsin.

So how is it that every year winter sort of catches me by surprise? I have been dragging my feet a little bit on the garden clean up. All the containers are cleaned out and put away and I cut back almost all the perennials (unlike other years I decided to cut back almost everything in fall, even though it's said to be better for your plants to let them stand, to lighten my work load in spring). But I haven't been good about caging some of the trees and shrubs that I like to give a little more protection to (either from the deer or from the weather). For some reason I kept thinking, "Oh, I'll just wait for a warmer weekend day for that."

Seeing the snowflakes fly outside my office window on Monday was a good sign that my plan was flawed. But waking up Tuesday morning to snow still on the ground was proof.

Usually we get plenty of flurries that kind of make it look like you're in a snow globe but nothing really sticks until very late November or early December. For the first snowfall to stick to the ground was a bit disconcerting.

When I left for work Tuesday morning, it was 23 degrees outside and this is what it looked like in my yard.

The Limelight hydrangea flowers are all dry now, but I sort of like to let them stand over winter for a bit of interest.

The cardoon in the corner finally succumbed to the weather. This was my first year growing cardoons and I'll definitely plant them again. What a great architectural plant with beautiful gray-blue foliage.

If you're looking for some more information on how to put the garden to bed, lots of bloggers have written excellent posts about it. Heather at New House New Home offered her to-do list here, Margaret's monthly garden chores list is always great, but her November list is especially good and here are some of my very own tips for winterizing the garden.

Looks like I'm going to need some gloves to finish up the last of the work in the garden. And I'm not talking about gardening gloves.

A tree that might be worth the chance

I've been spending some time doing lots of research on trees, which is an area I'm less familiar with, because we're about to lose two very special trees. The tree cutters were supposed to come this week but the weather has kept them away.

A March snowstorm took out half of this Cedar leaving it angled precariously close to our house. The rest will have to go.

We'll be taking out the rest of the cedar that was badly damaged (and threatening to eat our house) during a late winter snowstorm as well as the giant birch that is sickly and has needed to be removed for years. I'm especially upset about losing the latter and I'll be honest and tell you I might even shed a tear over that one. 

I will really miss this birch tree.

I have a personal goal to plant a new tree somewhere on our property every time we take one out. Part of the beauty of our property is the hundreds of mature trees and I want to make sure that future owners will be able to enjoy them as well. 

We are having the birch stump ground out so we'll be able to replant in almost the same space. It's a special spot—the main focal point in the back yard—and we've enjoyed having a large three there so we're hoping to replace that with something prominent. I'm not sure what that will be yet. I'd love to plant an American beech (Fagus grandifolia) there because I love the other beeches growing on our property and we are in one of the few places in Wisconsin where they will thrive. But beeches are notoriously difficult to propagate in a nursery situation so it's very difficult to find one of any size.

We're going to wait to decide if we need an evergreen for screening purposes where the cedar will be removed. If we do, it won't be another cedar. The deer adore cedar and there isn't a cedar tree in our neighborhood (which happens to be called Cedar Beach) that has foliage below 7 feet. This is fine for mature cedars because they flourish above the deer-eating line, but it is impossible to grown them big enough to get to that point without a deer attack. Deer can destroy a cedar that's 10 feet or less in one night.

If we don't need the screening, I think this might be an opportunity for a small specimen tree. The location is just out the living room window so it has to be something special.

Venus dogwood

One tree I'm very interested in and actively trying to find is a Venus dogwood. I first read about this tree on Deborah Silver's blog a few years ago and when I read a mention of it elsewhere the other day it sparked a mental note I had saved that this was a tree to look into should I ever have a place to put one. 

First of all, I love dogwoods. Most have a lovely layered branching habit that to me is the perfect combination of found-in-nature casual rambling and strict Japanese-style pruning (if such a combination is possible). Secondly, some, including Cornus kousa and Cornus florida have beautiful four-petaled flowers. Unfortunately they are also prone to a disease called anthracnose, which eventually kills the tree.

Check out the size of those flowers! Dr. Elwin Orton showing off his tree. Rutgers photo

Well guess what Venus, a hybrid developed by Dr. Elwin Orton at Rutgers University, has going for it? No disease issues. Huge flowers (up to 4 inches, they claim). Bloom that lasts for maybe as much as four weeks (at least it does for Deborah who lives and gardens in Detroit). Fall color. Fast growing. Pretty bark. Twenty feet wide and tall at maturity. What's not to love? You can see why Deborah calls it, "the most spectacular white flowering tree on the planet." High praise. 

There are questions with hardiness. It is listed as hardy to zone 6 in some places and zone 5 in others. We are technically considered zone 5b ever since the USDA updated the zone map last year, but I'm wary of that qualification. It only takes one bad winter to cause major damage. Deborah says she has planted 80 of them in the last several years and hasn't lost one, but Detroit is definitely a warmer zone than us.

So if I go down this road and can find a Venus dogwood, it will be with a bit of trepidation and finger crossing. Sometimes that's road that a gardener can't help but take.

Weed supression in 15 minutes or less

We've had just about two straight weeks of rain here, but I'm not complaining. For one, we need to fill up Lake Michigan which hit its all-time historical low water mark this winter and for another it could be so much worse. North Dakota got so much snow earlier this week that the federal government gave residents of the state an extension on filing their taxes!

But the sun shone yesterday and I was thrilled to have a little bit of time after work to do a very quick project outside. Other than the raised vegetable gardens, all of the gardening I've done is on the house side of the small creek that runs through our property so right now the area just on the other side of the creek is a bit ratty. I've done exactly nothing to that area and I don't have plans to do anything anytime soon. I could see myself transplanting some woodland plants or ferns when I have extras to spare, but it will be awhile before that happens.

But I'm sick of the weedy mess over there, so in approximately 15 minutes, I did what I think is the easiest way to reclaim a weedy area. This is also my favorite way to start a new garden bed, but it works equally well to just spruce up an area too.

In this case I just used some of the cardboard boxes we had laying around, flattened them and covered them up with mulch. I didn't have enough cardboard to cover the whole area, so as I get more I'll add it to fill in those spaces. Normally I would follow up with a good dousing of water with the hose to keep things from blowing around (you could also use a few rocks if you were doing it in a particularly windy area), but I knew we were due to get a deluge over the next couple days so I let Mother Nature handle that part.

I have also used this method with newsprint (or newspaper). I usually layer the newspaper quite thickly, maybe with six or seven layers and if there is any wind at all using newspaper can get frustrating quickly. That's why I prefer to use newsprint end rolls. This is what is left on the end of a giant roll of newsprint when they print newspapers. If you have a newspaper printing operation nearby call and ask if they have end rolls: most give them away for free because otherwise they have to pay to recycle them. I run the roll back and forth until I have the number of layers I want in a section that is about 15 or 20 feet long (or less if you're working with a smaller space) and then lay it down in one big section. I prefer to use the newspaper or newsprint method for beds I plan to plant in within a year because it breaks down more quickly than cardboard. For areas where you're just trying to keep the weeds at bay, the cardboard does a pretty good job.

It doesn't look like much yet, but in a few weeks the mulch won't look so new and it will be nice not to look at a pile of weeds when we walk across the little bridge across the creek.

In other news, I was just thinking the other day that it's time to start brainstorming ideas for this summer's containers, and then I chided myself for even thinking that when I still have the containers "planted" for winter.

I took these two shots this morning when I left for work. The bad news is that there is still some snow left. The good news is that not too long ago that stake was buried.

In my defense, there is still snow in my yard so I think I get a pass. Maybe.

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.

It really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Holiday-type things are a-happening at The Impatient Gardener cottage. Last Friday we got a tree (a feat that is deserving of its own post), which is up in the house and there are lights on it. The decorating will come, I'm not worried. I know a lot of people who decorate their tree on Christmas Eve as part of a tradition so I'm hardly the only person in the world with a bare tree standing in their living room.

Christmas cookies have been baked. There are three more varieties to make and then I need to box them up for the handful of neighbors who I take some to every year.

I did end up decorating the pergola with garland and a wreath because Costco had their 25-foot garland on sale for $8 and I just couldn't pass it up. It took me all of 45 minutes to get it hung so it was well worth the effort.

The Christmas cards will go out in today's mail. I'm not thrilled with how the printing turned out on them, but that's how it goes.

But what REALLY makes it look like Christmas around here is the small snowfall we got yesterday afternoon. It's the first in 288 days which is a record.

I got home at dusk because I had to run a dog to the vet and happily pulled in with just enough light to snap a couple pictures of the pretty scene.

See? Wasn't the garland worth it?

This is looking down the last hill to the turn off to the house. I've been stopping in the same spot on the road when I can and snapping a picture and putting it up on Instagram. I thought it would be fun to see how the view changes throughout the year. This is the 25th picture I've taken there and the first with snow. It should be noted, those are not my crazy tire tracks!

The window box looks so festive covered in snow and all lit up.

It's amazing to me that we used to light the entire Serviceberry tree. Now we can only reach the bottom half of it.

The dogs, of course, love the snow and were so excited to see it. Rita prefers a snow mattress so I had to shovel around her.

Another snowstorm is on the way tonight and tomorrow but it doesn't look like we'll get much snow from it. Most of last night's snow is already melted but for the first time in a long time, I'm a little happy to see the snow. The white stuff really does go a long way to make it feel like Christmas is a'comin'.