R.I.P. Garden Elf

In the wee morning hours of August 16, my mother passed away in her bed. She was 85 years old, and from what we can figure her heart just wore out, giving her an ending that’s becoming rare in the western world: a natural death.

I mention this here because she was a key player in my yard and garden life -- my personal “garden elf” -- and it’s fitting that we can use the word “natural” when discussing her demise. She was an ardent lover of the natural world, particularly plants and birds, and devoted much of her life to enjoying and supporting it.

As a birder, she ventured all over North America with folks who became her lifelong friends. As a mother, she exposed her family to the magnificence of our country through a trip across the United States featuring the national parks, and gave us a chance to know nature on a small scale in our suburban backyard and annual vacations to Cape Cod.

As a woman who lived her beliefs, she donated time and money to organizations that support the great outdoors -- The Nature Conservancy, the Audubon Society, and a local preserve, Roaring Brook Nature Center. And as a gardener, she grew flowers and cultivated habitat wherever she lived.

Her biggest canvas was our home in south-central Vermont. This offered 11 acres of abandoned perennial gardens, new annual beds, retired hayfields, rock piles and walls, third-growth deciduous forest, a pond, and acres of irregular lawn. The whole has always been more than my husband and I can manage, so each spring, summer, and fall since we moved here -- 15 years -- Mom drove up from Connecticut every few weeks to spend a few days helping.

This is why I considered her my garden elf. While my husband manned the machines and did all the heavy work, and I did all the medium work and hand maintance, Mom did all the finish work: trimming edges of the lawn that the mower can’t reach, weeding spaces between terrace pavers and pots and garden borders, raking up mountains of pine needles, pruning neglected shrubs, making everything tidy and lovely.

Throughout, she listened to and watched the birds. Our location offers mixed habitats that attract 20-40 species according to season. Several of these species don’t frequent her neighborhood 150 road-miles south and gave her much joy. Their arrival each spring warranted a phone call or e-mail. Fox sparrows, rose-breasted grosbeaks, ravens, and the kestrel topped the list. Ditto the first daffodils, peonies, and black-eyed Susans.

We kept a species list whenever she visited; which, combined with the varying forms of journal I’ve tried over the years, built up a reliable record of wildlife in our neck of the woods. While I mainly bird out the window, Mom often would wander down the road in the early mornings and catch species that don’t come to the feeder. She taught me to identify many of them by song.

At the end of a gardening day, we would draw up chairs, pour ourselves a drink, and kick back to watch the feeders. Some of our best conversations took place during that ritual. After dinner, we would walk the property to admire our work and the view, along with the wildflowers, then turn in early -- country style -- to start again the next day.

Many of my friends envied me having a personal garden elf and offered to hire her. She turned them down, wanting just to do what she loved with her family in a beautiful place. Her devotion gave me an opportunity to develop a good relationship with my mother -- another thing that many people envy, for not all are so lucky.

Mom’s legacy is what I see and walk through every day, giving year-round reminder of all that was good between us. It’s comforting to know that once my turn comes to move on, the gardens we nurtured together will still be there for the next folks who come along.

Her formal obituary is at http://hosting-1512.tributes.com/show/marjorie-marie-haley-94286803

 Birding at Cape Cod, early 1970s

At home in Unionville, CT, early 2000s

Our pond

Just about a year ago, Tropical Storm Irene gave us way too much water. Irene’s floods were followed by a dry winter, then an abnormally dry spring and summer. Previous posts have reported on our misadventures with flooding and starting a well replacement. The latest episode in this water feast/famine story is our pond springing a leak.

At first, we thought the drought was drawing the water down. The level drops most every summer, and this dry year we weren’t surprised to see a creeping exposure of shore. But when the drought broke and we got seven inches of rain inside a week -- the water level kept dropping. And dropping, to the point of threatening the fish, frogs, clams and everything that lives there. How the heck do you deal with that?

This pond is no ornamental lily pond. It’s an acre-size ecosystem, built 50 years ago by previous owners. They put a concrete “chimney” in the deep end as an outgate that controls the water level. Our wellspring feeds the pond, and when it’s full the water spills into an opening at the top of the chimney, to flow out into a woody marsh via a pipe from the bottom of the chimney. The water height can be adjusted by adding or removing wooden boards embedded in the chimney’s front face, which originally were sealed with tar. Those boards have been rotting over the years, now causing the leaks.

The whole chimney stands 12-15 feet from its base in the muck to a dock supported on top. Even with the pond half empty, the base was still 6+ feet below the surface. The worst leaks through the boards were way down below the water level.

So hubby put on his engineer hat and fabricated a replacement insert from a plywood-type material called Advantech and encased it in rubber. By devising a way to block the outflow through the pipe at the bottom, he was able to remove the old wood as far down as possible and slide in the new insert without draining the pond.

This worked well but didn’t finish the job: As expected, the new “gate” leaked in spots along the sides, with a larger leak at the bottom. Plugging those required underwater work.

At first he and a friend free-dived with just a mask and sealed most of the edges. But the main leak, down in the muck and rubble, persisted.

Thank goodness for friends who have friends with diving gear! It took three multi-hour sessions involving two men in wetsuits taking turns with scuba tanks and weights, using a ladder, multiple ropes, a can of tar, lots of disposable gloves, various scrapers, a garden trowel, and long rubber strips to fully seal the edges and that bottom section. Yours truly manned the “barge” (a 16-foot Grumman aluminum canoe) used as a support platform for the tools and supplies.

The men worked blind in silt that stirred the minute they entered the water. The fish watched, not sure if we were friend or foe, but unknowingly grateful we were saving their home.

We finished the job and the air in the scuba tanks at the same time. A trickle leak remains, which is disappointing but way better than the torrent we started with. Within a few hours it was clear that the water level had stopped dropping -- indeed, is starting back up! Now it’s a waiting game, to see if the trickle will hold or get worse as the rains return. Hubby knows he will be back down there to fully seal that trickle, but when is the question

Volunteers

I didn't plant anything on these steps and terrace, save for the red lettuce in the green planter. (Oh yes, and the orange glove on the traffic cone.  : )

Garden envy

What a difference a half-mile makes!

Here in microclimate land, I live in one of the more micro climates. Hence this blog title -- our yard behaves like Zone 3 even though we live, according to the map, in Zone 4. It's all because of one hill and a curve in the road.

Two of my neighbors are my gardening buddies. We get together in late winter and swap seeds, discuss crop successes and failures, and arrange who will start what for whom. Then we plant about the same time in May, each of us varying each year in what sort of early-season and pest protection gizmos we employ. We live approximately a half-mile apart, with me at one end of the road and them across the way from each other at the opposite end.

Regardless of timing and fertilizing and protection variables, by this time each season the difference in our private landscapes becomes obvious. My transplants are always smaller; I get lower rates of seed germination; and everything in general is less fecund. Originally I believed this reflected my inadequacies, but now I realize it's all about sunlight and soil.

I amend the soil; they amend the soil; though who's to say which combo is better. I fertilize; they fertilize; but who's to say which fertilizer and frequency has what effect.

The bottom line is: They have tons of sun and I don't. Even though my new garden location gets tons of sun since we cut down the pine trees, it's still not as much as they get. In fact, they have environmental problems I don't: wind in one case, overheating in another. I get a little of both but to a lesser degree, because our end of the road gets clouds more often. That extra 10-30 feet of altitude, combined with the hill, combined with directional orientation (they have open southern exposures), makes a huge difference.

The hill (aptly called Hateful Hill) trips clouds and drops moisture more than on the other end of the road. There are many days when the weather radar shows perfectly clear skies throughout the region, yet it's either cloudy or precipitating at our place. One neighbor and I both have rain gauges; after each rain, we measure different amounts, with usually more at my place. Could be a calibration difference -- neither of us has Official Weather Stations -- but the trend is consistent.

I envy my neighbors' burgeoning crops, and am glad I don't rely upon my garden to feed us. How anyone who lived here in the 1800s and had to live off the land survived, I can't imagine. Well, there was a large evacuation when the midwest opened up, with its unrestricted light and rich, dark soil . . .

Whatever. The upside is: Every year my garden produces food, no matter the sun, rain, insect, predator, pest problems. The perennials that have survived here are decades old. It's a wonder that bedazzles me every year.

But there's no mystery why I don't plant a bigger vegetable garden and can/freeze/pickle for the larder every fall!
 

Wishing well

One of the not-so-quaint features that came with our old farmhouse is a surface well (a.k.a. spring well), which comprises a wooden frame about the size of a casket sunk into the mud around a spring, and capped with a plywood lid. It lies a few feet from the road in the low point of our dooryard.

The spring is reliable and the water good, but the well case gets silty so we’ve had to install two fabric filters for dirt plus one UV filter for germs, all of which must be changed multiple times a year—or multiple times a month during heavy spring runoffs.

The time has come to rebuild the casket and cover for this well, but before investing the effort and materials, we decided to see if we could find a better location. Drilling is not an option; ergo, we must dig the old-fashioned way.

The backyard has two subterranean streams running through it that ooze up to the surface during periods of high water. If we could trace one of those streams to where it emerges from bedrock, and thus sink a collector uphill of the silty spring, then we’d be way ahead of the game in terms of water cleanliness and pressure.

So hubby made himself some dowsing rods and crisscrossed the backyard. At the appropriate spots, he revved up his backhoe and commenced digging. Before long, the backyard looked like a landmine had exploded!

Yes, we found lots of water. We also found the deconstruction debris from when the barn was torn down in the 1970s and the ell of our house built onto its footprint. One of those holes exposed a vigorous water source, but between the debris and the fact we’d have to mow around the casing, we let that option slide.

As well, we found an interesting and diverse combination of strata: muck, sand, topsoil, clay. Few rocks, and as yet no bedrock. The goal is to find a water source below the clay, but to date we’ve only found water running on top of it. One source was vigorous enough to undermine the clay bands as we watched.

Exploration stopped when one heavy load of clay bent the tractor bucket, thereby postponing other yard projects until that can be repaired.

So we’re still wishing for a well, and haven’t decided whether to keep digging until we hit the sweet spot or just head to the lumberyard and buy materials to rebuild the existing well case. Meanwhile, we’ve inadvertently created more sinkholes, since the water we disrupted a few feet down has sucked in the dirt, so that what was dug out no longer refills the hole(s) to the top. In fact, one almost consumed our plow truck as hubby attempted to shove the dirt piles back into place. Later, it grabbed a trailer being relocated in the yard.

The backyard has always been a bumpy place to ride a lawnmower, usually needing a visit to the chiropractor after a full mowing session. Now it’s a veritable obstacle course, with not much to show for the effort. But . . . nothing ventured, nothing gained, so we’ll probably press on until a solution presents itself.

Corporate crime: Poisoned bird seed

"The Scotts Miracle-Gro company pleads guilty to knowingly selling poisoned birdseed, and lawn and garden care products containing undocumented pesticides, to an unsuspecting public."

See complete story at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/grrlscientist/2012/mar/21/2

The spring thing

In keeping with the erratic weather we've had for the past two years, this year's transition to spring has been, well, erratic.

The big surprise was the heat wave. Mid-March, temps in the 60s and 70s! A full month early! Dry and gorgeous, day after day. It was a gift for everyone who like to be outdoors -- or, like us, who needs to be outdoors, in order to take care of huge yard and garden projects. We got a month's head start on what's normally a cramped season. We also put our canoes in the water on a record early date.

(That was weird . . . after the paddle, we went for lunch at a pub at the base of the local ski hill, where we sat inside in wetsuits with canoes and kayaks on top of the cars outside, while people trooped by in boots and parkas carrying skis and snowboards. The ground was brown, the hill was white, and all bodies of water were mixed ice and liquid. Typical March!)

Anyway, during this heat wave, the first perennials broke through and the earliest migratory birds returned and most everyone went nutty with spring fever. Meanwhile, while celebrating wearing T-shirts and shorts before equinox, we never stopped looking over our shoulders, haunted by the five feet of snow we got in the last ten days of March some years ago. Another year, an April blizzard. And another year, a killing frost on June 1 after everyone had planted their gardens.

And so it goes. We haven't gotten any blizzards yet, but we've swung back to "normal" weather, three weeks now of mixed precipitation, biting blustery winds, and blazing sun. The emerging perennials put on the brakes and are hanging in a state of suspension, waiting for the warmup to resume (though one crocus dared bloom and got away with it).

Real spring is just around the corner, and both mud season and maple sugar season are definitely over. Now gardeners are eyeing their plots, wondering if the seeds they've started can go out under cover, or if we still have to wait until Memorial Day to be sure . . .