Jo Jo -- May discoveries part 2

Hole-digging bees
Spot was outside this week and walked over to see what Sunshine was staring so intently at on the ground. It was a bee digging a hole.
Spot didn't have camera, so we only have a picture of the hole.



I should have put my finger in for scale. The hole in this picture is the width of a finger. Or a bee.
Apparently some bees, such as this one, lay their eggs in holes they dig in the ground.

Unusual (to me) bird behavior
3 new things I've seen birds do in the last two weeks.

1. What's with the robins? Every day, two or three times a day, I see robins fighting over stuff. They chase each other, landing on the ground attacking each other so intently that they nearly don't notice the rat terrier that almost gets to them before they fly away. Is this normal mating behaviour, or do we just live next to a particularly cantankerous robin family?


2. Last week as I was standing under one of the alders, two baby chickadees landed on the branches above me, doing the feed-me flutter. I watched them for a few seconds, and they turned their heads to look at me. Then they hopped down a few branches even closer to me and did the feed-me flutter again, seemingly for me. Not having any insects on me, I disengaged and walked away. They were adorable, but I didn't want them to get the wrong idea. I don't have any interest in raising children.


3. We have a band-tailed pigeon that lives in the back of our lot. According to one of my field guides, "Birds of Seattle and Puget Sound", band-tailed pigeons, not to be confused with the rock doves that you see on urban street corners, are native to this area. I love to hear him or her cooing when I walk out in to the yard.
   This pigeon is very curious. As a triplet of robins dropped to the ground to have another fight, the pigeon came in for a closer look. After the robins disappeared, the dogs sniff-vestigated the area and the pigeon seemed to become fascinated with them. It kept moving closer to them and cocking it's head to the side to look at them. When Ollie noticed, he chased the bird away again, but the pigeon came back in when Ollie wasn't looking. It took a sip out of the stream and checked the dogs out again. It's like the pigeon had never seen a dog in a t-shirt before or something.

Body count
So far, everything we've planted this year has survived, with one possible exception. I fear we have traumatized the persimmon tree in to retreat, or possibly worse.

The same little buds that were on it when we got it haven't grown at all. The tree is still fuzzy, and, to the touch, it feels like it has some life in it, but it's not behaving like a happy tree. We're going to leave it in through next summer and hope for the best. I feel bad for the tree. We just wanted to give it a nice home, but I fear we may have scared it to death.


Moe is a weeding machine

JoJo -- Plant habitat selection

Blueberries!

Finding myself with a patio full of plants, I set about the process of determining where each plant should go.

The first choice I made with my head. Spot and I planted the persimmon with the other fruit trees in a place that had the most room for tree roots and access to sun.

The second, third, and fourth choices I made with a combination of mental planning -using what I knew about what conditions the plants liked -, and aesthetic planning - according to what I thought would look attractive as the plants flourished. We planted the serciveberry on the hill below the alder to create an understory that framed the stream, and we planted the gooseberry just below and in front of the serviceberry.

The next choice I made by closing my eyes and asking the plant to guide me where it wanted to go. With this method, the red-flowering currant was placed by the fence in the space that I had originally chosen for the elusive pacific wax myrtle.
I also did this for the Vine Maple and the Hemlock, which we haven't planted yet. I may ruminate some more on the placements for these.


Red flowering current

The last 3 plants - trillium, wild ginger, and wood sorrel - I did by intuition. I had originally selected a location based on soil and light requirements, but it didn't feel good. It felt like I was imposing my opinion on the yard. Not knowing what else to do, I stood there just staring at the ground for a while. After a while, the sense of trying to control the yard disappated. I started to get the feeling that the wild ginger wouldn't survive where I wanted to put it and a new location appeared. I don't know if it was a good choice at all. Though the placement met the soil and light conditions for the ginger, it's not a place that I would have chosen for mental or aesthic reasons or for easy access. Something just told me that it would be happy there, so that's where I put it.
There was a little more thought put in to the trillium and wood sorrel, but not much.

I'm not sure which method I prefer for choosing a location for a plant. The last method, intuition, felt the most solid. The sense of knowing that the ginger wouldn't survive where I wanted to put it was particularly strong, whereas asking the plant where it wanted to go felt less inclusive of the needs of the whole system. It's possible, though that I just wasn't aware of the system's input in to the sensory reply.

Maybe each method was appropriate for the type of plant that I was choosing for. I'll experiment more with this in the future and see what happens.

In the ground so far this year:

1 persimmon tree
1 serviceberry tree
1 red-osier dogwood
2 gooseberry
1 red flowering currant
2 wild ginger
2 western trillium
2 wood sorrel
Lots of crimson clover
Maybe some buckwheat? (not sure if Moe got around to this).


Crimson clover

JoJo the Eratic Garden Planner

Poor Moe.

Every week I bring in more plants for different parts of the yard without any regard for planning how to discourage the weeds. And in addition to that, the more I learn, the more I change my mind about what I want to do. Moe, a gentle soul, agrees to do what I want. Maybe my radical ignorance is job security.

Yesterday at the native plant sale, a very nice man (who looked like Cisco in disguise) told me not to take on an entire yard of weeds at once. He suggested putting in plant barriers and just tackling one section at a time. I hadn't given any thought to that. I guess I just expected that when we planted stuff, the weeds would go away.

For weeks, Moe has been suggesting buckwheat as a cover crop where the weeds are the thickest. I've told him no, I want clover. Now that I'm thinking more about tackling one section at a time, I think I want to just leave half of the yard alone this year. I don't know what I want to plant there anyway. A buckwheat cover crop would be perfect -- probably much more effective at surpressing the weeds than clover.

Poor Moe.

JoJo -- Return of the fringedweller

When we bought the house a few years back, the homeowner had cleared the hill and covered it with wood chips. The first year, it was covered in horsetail, nettle, and other native stuff, mixed in with the weed horde.
The year after we bought the house, we hired an arborist to come and do some maintenance on our trees, and while he was here, he offered to whack back the weeds for us. We consented, asking only that he leave anything native in place.
He weed whacked everything but the trees.
I cried.
I had spent hours out there checking out all the plants that grew on the hillside, identifying and cataloguing the natives in my head in great detail -- which is a little weird, I guess, for someone who hates gardening. I suppose it's weirder still that I would cry when they were cut down, or that I'm writing a permaculture blog that is mostly, right now, focused on gardening. In any case, I cried. And the years after, when the native did not come back and were replaced instead by buttercup and other weeds, I grew vaguely despondent about the whole situation and lost interest in the yard.

Last fall, Moe cleared the hill once again, this time covering it with rye grass. And guess who came back this spring? Some of the natives! I'm so happy.

Here's is some fringecup that is growing like crazy down by the stream. It's a stream-side deciduous herb groundcover that prefers the shade (source Washington Native Plant Society and Plants for a Future). I guess it's not useful for much other than a ground cover. I don't care. It's a member of our yard family, and I'm happy to see it back.



And another comeback: I'll bet I'm the only person in the history of the universe to be happy to see horsetail. It beats buttercup! Also, it contains gold and nicotine, and the giant version of it used to be a huge tree in dinosaur times. How's that for weird and cool? (Source: Washington Native Plant Society and Plants for a Future). I suppose I will be singing a new tune in a few years, but for now, I'm happy to see it.

JoJo -- Change of perspective

For a while I found myself compulsively fascinated with plants. Then, a few weeks ago, after I decided to stop trying so hard to control the evolution of my garden, I was driving to work and suddenly felt like all of the plants were, well, people. Plant people – not in the sense that they were walking around chatting with their neighbors – more like they were all in comas for a long time, and then suddenly they woke up. There seemed to be no one there, and then there was. They were things, and then they were people. I felt like the population of the earth had increased exponentially. And then I noticed that it wasn’t just the plants – the dirt had come alive too.
In the last couple of days it’s changed even more. Now when I walk outside – more so in my yard than anywhere else, I feel like there’s no separation between me and the plants and the earth. It’s like we’re all the same being, breathing together, our liver over there, our heart over here – if we could even make that much distinction. I’m not saying that I feel as though I have merged with nature, I’m saying that I have noticed that there is no difference. We are the same.
My yard is full of weeds and green manure, plants to be planted, stuff to be done, and it’s all beautiful to me. It’s all right. We are the light and the water and the earth and the plants and the animals and the house and the people.

JoJo -- May discoveries

Here's what we discovered in the yard this month.

This is how I learned that cherry blossoms are edible.



Here's a candied cherry blossom recipe

English ivy, thinking it can sneak over the fence from the neighbor's yard when no one is looking.



Ferns are starting to get a foothold at the bottom of hill next to the stream, despite the buttercup. Go ferns!





Totally cool mushrooms have appeared on the new snag.



Everything is in bloom!
(achoo)

Cherry blossom



Pear blossom



Mystery (to me) flower



Dutiful, dependable rhodie

JoJo -- May additions

Another week, another 2 plant sales from which we emerged with:



- 1 persimmon tree "meader" (Yay!)
It's so small and leafless you can hardly see it in this picture. I'm looking forward to watching it fill out!


- Salal
- Fennel
- Bleeding Heart
- Wintergreen
- Penstamon
- Another gooseberry
- Shamrock (que?)



Moe intends to plant these tomorrow. I can't wait to see!

Good news -- not that it's terribly surprising, but the slope to the stream seems to have very good soil. When I was digging ledges in the hillside to sit the plants where I want them planted, I easily found a number of worms. Not surprising because we leave all the fallen leaves and tree limbs there every year.
Also -- surprising to me -- that giant tree branch that fell in that same area a few weeks ago is already decomposing. I picked up a piece of it and it fell apart in my hand, revealing lots of creepy crawlies.

I still have mixed feelings about my inability to find the plants I want. I had a moment of questionable character when I saw some wild strawberry growing on the public river trail this morning. The idea of a midnight requisition did cross my mind. I have been looking for the local variety everywhere with no luck.
Due only to my desire to not give in on the entire project out of frustration, I've decided to go more with the flow on what I plant. Having some plants to start with does make a big difference. Once I have them where I want them, I get a sense for what else I could put near them.
I haven't given in on the Pacific Wax Myrtle and the Goumi yet, though. I hold rigidly to my plans for those two. I'm going to a native plant sale next week, so I continue to hold out hope for the wax myrtle. I also want to get some wood sorrel for ground cover that I hope to watch do battle with the kingdom of buttercup and morning glory.
My search for the goumi will have to wait for another day.

JoJo -- Inspiration from the river trail

This morning, Spot and a friend and I went for a long walk on a local river trail and saw a lot of restoration projects in progress. It gave me a few ideas for stream bank. There was salmonberry, elderberry, vine maple, dogwood, and many other things that I don't recognize yet.

High level notables:

- Most people I've told that I want some salmonberry make a face and tell me that it's not a very attractive plant. I disagree. There were several thickets of them along the trail. I thought they were pretty growing together. Also, they have edible berries, are good for streambank retention, they provide food and shelter for birds and food for bees. I plan to adopt some.

- I got a sense of how the elderberry is likely to grow in in my yard. The elderberry appeared in my yard two years ago out nowhere -- presumably a product of bird leavings. They remind me a little of mangroves with the multiple stems as trunk. Those things grow really fast! A week ago I saw a baby elderberry growing below the parent elderberry, and now there are two babies that are 4-5 times the size they were last week!



- I got an idea for how to fill out part of the stream bank from seeing an elderberry and a vine maple growing together. I think I'll plant a vine maple near the elderberry. That will create an understory of elderberry, serviceberry, and vine maple. Bird amusement park? I guess we'll see.