Moving forward

As we get ready to pass on an old house (built in 1929) and relatively new garden (we've been here 22 years) to the next owners, I'm happy and wistful.  We accepted an offer last weekend, so it's now "contract pending."

My dad, not a sentimental sort, reminded me this morning via email of Robert McCloskey's words in The Time of Wonder, "a little bit sad about the place you are leaving, a little bit glad about the place you are going"  (he remembered:  happy about the place you’re going to, sad about the place you’re leaving.)  

My mother often read that book to my sister and me, along with his other books. 

I've thought about that phrase a lot over the last couple of months.  

She's been gone for a long time, now, sadly, and wasn't married to my dad for quite a long time before that, but I still have the book.

I'm glad about the place I'm going to, but still a little bit sad about the place I'm leaving.

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Sassafras and dogwood

The flower buds of sassafras and dogwood are visibly swelling.  Sassafras flowers, both male and female, should be open any day, with the return of warm weather.

Today brought chilly and rainy weather as a cold front pushed against warmer air.

Flowers on our rabbit-eye blueberries are ready to open, and quince flowers are already visible.

This was March 6, 2012 -- with a sassafras in full flower.

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Bloodroot in flower

Coming back to the Piedmont today, I was delighted to see bloodroot in full flower.  I've made so many posts about bloodroot -- it's a favorite early spring flower.  Here's a post from last year.

We planted it in various places around the garden, starting with one plant. Ants have spread the seeds and patches have popped up all over the front woodland border along the front path.  Totally rewarding.

There are a number of large clumps now in the front, along with smaller plants.  Lovely.

It's in flower in the South Carolina Botanical Garden, too. I took this photo late this afternoon.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)

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A chickadee's view of the garden, indeed

Doug Tallamy has been a passionate advocate for expanding our landscapes to support native insects, and therefore birds, etc.

In this piece in the NYT, he made the case, again. Links to the article appear below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/opinion/in-your-garden-choose-plants-that-help-the-environment.html

This is good stuff.  We need to be good stewards of our gardens, adding back more native plants, and embracing even the less than lovely natives (hmm, black cherries and pin oak are species I have a hard time convincing people to add, as well as sweetgums and sycamores, for non-mulched areas.)

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Ready for a new gardener

I cleaned up the main vegetable garden in the Piedmont today.  I meant to get a photo this afternoon, but time got away, with pulls of other things.

This is what it looked like getting ready a year or so ago.

prepped for planting (main vegetable garden)

It didn't need much prep, as I'd prepared and planted last fall, just to have early frost, deer, squirrels, and woodchucks pretty much clear what had been planted -  out.

I planted some kale, weeded around the perennial leeks, cleaned up around a flourishing patch of creasy greens, and "fluffed up" the soil around emerging sorrel and chives, and all of the bare areas.

It's ready for a new gardener.  The satellite garden has gone back to mulch, but it's ready, too, as is the sunny patch of lawn below the house (perfect for converting to a number of large raised beds for vegetables and herbs!)

My containers near the potting bench have parsley and spinach in them; the porch plantings have been equally spiffed up.

I'm about to prepare some sugar water for the hummingbird feeder. The males are heading north, now.  The feeder will be waiting to provide sustenance along the way to farther north.

I was wistful as I prepared the beds this afternoon, but I have lovely raised beds in full sun to look forward to.  I'm grateful for that.

full of greens and kale

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Remarkable resurrection ferns

Resurrection ferns dried and hydrated.

Resurrection fern (Pleopeltis polypodioides)

While I'd seen spare populations of resurrection ferns when I lived in Maryland, I really became aware of them when I read "Light a Distant Fire," an historic novel about Osceola and the Seminoles by Lucia St. Clair Robson. She wrote about how the scouts could disappear into the ferns on the live oak branches. After we moved to Florida, I came to see how this could be accomplished.

This is a true fern that reproduces via spores, but it is also an epiphyte or air plant. It does not need to be in contact with soil to live. It derives its needs from the air, especially the humidity and dust that it carries.

The common name of resurrection fern is due to its ability to lose 95% of its moisture, stop its photosynthesis, and go into a type of suspended state when it appears to be dead. When it rains or when the humidity becomes high enough, the fronds unfurl and turn green in a matter of hours. Hence the name resurrection fern, because it arises from the dead.

Most other plants will die if they lose 10 to 15% of their water. Scientists have discovered that this fern has a high concentration of a special protein (dehydrin) in or near its cell walls when it is brown. When the fern is green this protein is not present indicating a chemical reaction as the water exits the cells.  In other words as the plant is drying, dehydrin allows the cell walls in the leaf to fold so that the unfolding when water is present can be reversed without damage. For the science of dehydrin see this paper in The American Journal of Botany.

Steve Christman over on Floridata.com states that you can propagate these ferns by laying pieces of the rhizome into the furrows of the bark of the tree where you want to grow it. I may try this one day, because I'd love to have more of them around on our property. On the other hand, I can wait for Mother Nature to plant them in appropriate places without doing any work.

But whatever the science, these small ferns add to the charm of Florida's live oaks. 

In their normal habitat: horizontal branches of a live oak (Quercus verginiana).

This is in South Florida in the wet season, but the ferns are turning brown around the edges.

The fern looks dead, but it's not...

After reading this post, go drink some water, because humans will die when we lose only 15% of our water. Also, full disclosure: Lucia and I are good friends and were neighbors in Maryland where she still lives and where she has written a bunch of fun-to-read and well-researched historicals. She was a librarian and knows how to make her readers feel like full participants in the story. www.luciastclairrobson.com

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Cool-season vegetable gardening (and moving forward)

I really like to promote 4-season vegetable gardening here in the Carolinas.

There's no reason not to grow winter-hardy vegetables (kale, collards, and the like) through the winter, if you like greens.   The last two winters, though, have not been kind to even normally hardy (without any protection) winter vegetables.

So I've started from "scratch" two years in a row now.  Hmm...

I do have a decent patch of creasy greens in the Piedmont (it can freeze solid and bounce back) along with a similar, but less robust patch in the mountains.  The mache is coming back in one of my flats, too.  It's a tough plant.

The perennial leeks, although frosted, are fine, too.  And the chives are emerging, woo-hoo!

I'm cleaning up the main vegetable garden beds here in the Piedmont, readying them to plant.  I won't be planting them, simply keeping them ready for the next gardener who will come.

This image of the main vegetable garden and shed is one of my favorites - our real estate agent loved it.  The garden shed has been cleaned up.  It's ready for the next gardener, too.

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