Garden chores, howling winds and arctic freezes

Posted on April 21, 2022 by John Kevin Hickey

Spring is returning to my area in fits and starts. Which is of course not unusual. The transition between the seasons is always unpredictable. The transition from winter to spring seems to always have the biggest swings. Cold one day, warm the next, then a deep freeze.

The winds here have been unrelenting. Weeks of gales that have made everybody cranky. I exaggerate a little, but this has been one of the windiest springs I can recall. Steady winds from 15 to 35 miles an hour, with gusts up to 60 mph, for days on end.

I am not very inclined to work in such weather.

Springtime chores

On the days when the winds aren’t howling, and the temperatures have been pleasant, I have been able to get some of my springtime chores accomplished. I’ve cleaned up all the garden beds, gotten the lawn aerated, and put fertilizer down on the grass.

I’ve also pruned back several shrubs, including my ‘Blue Mist Spirea’s’. I really like Blue Mist Spirea. Their deep blue flowers provide a splash cool color in the late summer garden. Some years, if the weather cooperates, their leaves can even put on a decent show in autumn. Added bonus, they are drought tolerant.

But they do require an annual haircut in the spring.

Below is the “before” picture of one of my Spiraeas. Quite a mess, am I right?

Blue Mist Spiraeas are one of those shrubs that typically die back partway over the winter. In really hard winters, they can die back all the way to the ground. So, it is a good idea to prune them back in early spring, at least down to where there are buds showing. Not just for aesthetics, but because this shrub sets its blooms on new wood.

In the picture below, the red arrows are pointing at a couple of emerging buds to give you an idea of what they look like.

I took my secateurs (we Americans call them garden pruners, but the British call them ‘secateurs’ and I really like that word. So fancy!) and went to town. Below is the after picture. My Blue Mist Spirea is now ready for the growing seasons ahead.

Ta-Dah! Much better, no?

Aerifying the borders

Another project I’ve undertaken this spring is aerifying the borders. Aerifying is a fancy way of saying “sticking a turning fork in the ground and wiggling it back and forth”. I’m doing this to uncompact the soil.

Is this necessary? Absolutely not. But the soil in the Vintage yard is fairly heavy clay. In fact, the area I live in has earned the sobriquet “Bentonite Manors”. Bentonite is a type of clay. Clay has its positives; for one, it holds moisture really well. A useful characteristic when one is trying to grow drought tolerant plants.

Stick a fork in the ground, and rock it back and forth to help loosen up the soil.

On the other hand, one of clay’s biggest downsides is that it can get easily compacted. Which prevents air and moisture from penetrate down to where the roots can access it. Not good.

Snow is very heavy, and parts of the garden were under a layer of snow for several months. Perfect condition to create compaction issues. While earthworms and other soil fauna will eventually loosen up the soil, I figure aerifying can’t hurt and may even help speed the natural process along.

You want to do this in spring, however. Temperatures are cooler then, and the rain is usually more plentiful. If you aerify the soil in summer, you risk having the heat and low humidity dry out the soil at the root level, which is a surefire way of killing your plants.

This is also why you only aerate the lawn in early spring or mid-to-late autumn.

A stranger appears

While doing some of my chores, I spotted a lone stranger in the garden.

A single, yellow crocus smack dab in the middle of the long border. I know I didn’t plant it. Where did it come from? How did it get there? A mystery that likely will never be solved.

I do have some purple crocuses nearby, but these bulbs are at least 10 feet away from the new guy. Plus, as I just mentioned, they’re purple and definitely not yellow.

Well, as Dr. Ian Malcom says, life finds a way.

Purple crocuses

Artic blast cancels the show

Finally, I’m a bit bummed out. I’ve been planting ‘Lemon Queen’ daffodils in the former veggie garden for the past couple of years. Last year’s display was quite good.

This year, the show has already been cancelled.

The buds of the flowers were just getting ready to bloom when we got hit by an unseasonably cold arctic blast. Temps at the Vintage home hit 15 degrees. Those cold temps froze the moisture in the buds, creating ice crystals. Those crystals literally tore up the plant tissue.

Which means no flower display from ‘Lemon Queen” daffodils this year.

Fortunately, the plants themselves will be fine. I’ll plant a few more in the autumn and hopefully, if next year’s the weather cooperates, the ‘Lemon Queen’ daffodils will put on a fine show.

Nature has a way of reminding the gardener just how much he or she is NOT in control.

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Saying goodbye to a very dear friend

Posted on April 2, 2022 by John Kevin Hickey

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find—it’s your own affair—
But… you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

The power of a dog – Rudyard Kipling

I have had several dogs in my life, and I have loved them all. But there was a dog who came quite unexpectedly into my life, and yet stole my heart in a way no other dog ever has.

His name was Chance.

Rescued by my eldest daughter, Chance came to us as an adult, with a fully formed personality that made him the most unique dog I have ever had the honor to know.

He was tiny yet fierce. A real fighter. He had a huge Napolean complex and would not hesitate to take on dogs several times his size (which is why we couldn’t take him to dog parks).

He was fiercely protective of those he loved. Strangers had to be slowly introduced to him, and he never quite let go of his suspicions. He was mortally offended by the fact that other dogs and people existed in the world. Our poor neighbors: he never took a liking to them, no matter how long they lived next to us, and he never hesitated to let them know he was always keeping an eye on them.

For all his fierceness, he was also a lover. He was the most empathic and affectionate dog I’ve ever known. He had an almost ESP ability to sense when his loved ones were distressed. In those times, he would quietly lay next to his human packmate to console them.

Other times, he just wanted to love and be loved, and he was very insistent about it. If I happened to be lying down, he would often climb up on my chest and allow me the honor of scratching his butt or belly. Other times he would join me in the bathroom, as I performed my morning ablutions, and offered his ass for me to scratch. While I was eating dinner, he would stand next to me and offer me the opportunity to scratch his ass.

He seriously overestimated how much I wanted to scratch his ass.

Chance was also a very good big brother to his “sister”, Bailey.

Chance and Bailey “rassling”

Guardian of the Garden

Chance appointed himself the Guardian of the Garden. His job was to ensure that squirrels, bunnies and cats were kept out our territory. And he was very good at his job. Squirrels that needed to get from one yard to another had to haul ass along the tops of the fence, as the noisy beast with the razor teeth pursued them.

On warm summer or autumn evenings, as MrsVintage and I sat out on the patio, Chance would do his nightly patrol of the perimeter. He would carefully check the fence line along the whole backyard for any potential intruders, and you could track his progress by the swaying of the flowers and grasses. He would finally emerge from the far end of the border, covered in twigs and seeds, and we could rest easy knowing that the backyard was secure.

Silence

The house seems so quiet now. I feel his absence acutely, especially on the weekends. It’s like there is a hole that follows me everywhere I go. (Bailey is a sweetheart, but she is a momma’s dog. She doesn’t have much use for me, except to feed her and give her an occasional belly rub).

Before, in the mornings, I used to put food in his bowl and he would happily chomp away on his breakfast as I devoured mine. Now I eat my cereal in silence.

When I go into the library to read, I look for him but his little bed in front of the fireplace lays empty. I listen expectantly for the familiar sound of him running down the stairs to join me, but he never does.

When I work in the garden, he is no longer there to keep me company. I pause in my labors and look up, expecting to see him sunning in the grass or eyeballing nervous squirrels, but I work alone now.

A boy and his dog.

Farewell

Farewell Chance, my very dear friend. You were loved, and you are already missed.

You were brave, goofy, annoying, affectionate, intelligent, playful, dignified, a clown.

Above all, a loving and loyal companion.

You truly were a prince among dogs.

And I will never forget you.

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Plans for the garden in 2022

Posted on March 26, 2022 by John Kevin Hickey

With spring just around the corner, it’s time to make plans for the upcoming growing season. Well, technically, winter is the time for making plans for the upcoming growing seasons. Now it’s time to start implementing said plans

This looks to be a typically busy year in the garden. Most of my plans involve improving existing garden beds (a gardener’s work is never done!), but there are some renovations I would like to accomplish this year. Starting with converting the front yard to a gravel garden.

A couple of years ago, MrsVintage and I turned a weedy and ignored section of the front yard into a desert garden (Big things happening in the Vintage garden (mrvintageman.com). Our plan is to take this concept further out into the front yard. Water is getting ever more scarce here along the Front Range of Colorado, and every year the cost of water increases. We hardly ever see the front yard, and paying usury rates for water seems pointless.

Plus, I’m getting tired of mowing the damn thing.

This is not a project that will be done all at once. It will probably take us two or three years to get the whole thing accomplished. Our goal this year is to extend the gravel garden out passed the Bigtooth maple, an area of about 60 square feet.

(I just recently discovered that the city I live in offers up to $3000 in rebates if you convert you front yard into something more water thrifty. They also will provide a detail landscape design for free, and they have an agreement with a company to come in and remove the old sod for an incredible discount. Pretty awesome, since we were going to do all this anyway!).

We plan to expand this gravel garden concept further out into the front yard.

Gardening basics

Before MrsVintage and I start on that, however, I want to get some basic gardening done in the rest of the yard. Beginning with raking the mulch out and putting down compost throughout all the gardening beds.

Most of the plants that I have put into the Vintage garden don’t really require a ton of organic matter. In fact, the majority of the plants kind of like their soil lean. I use wood chips as a mulch in all my garden beds, to preserve moisture and reduce weeds. But as the wood decomposes, it temporarily takes minerals and nutrients out of the ground. Eventually, as the wood completely decomposes, it will release those minerals and nutrients back into the soil.

But until it does, the plants are being denied what they need to grow. That is why I like to put two to three inches of compost down every couple of years. The compost will provide the plants with some needed nutrients right now.

Once the compost in down, I’ll put the old mulch back and add some fresh mulch on top to make it thicker. Thicker mulch means less moisture loss and fewer weeds.

Making improvements

Other than the front yard, I have no big projects planned for the year. I’m mostly just going to make a few tweaks to weak spots in the garden.

As an example, last year I was not happy with how this garden bed looked:

I felt the two Artemisia’s (the grey plants) were too big for the area and they were overpowering the rest of the plants. So, I dug them up and transplanted them to other areas where I felt they would play nicer with their neighbors.

But now I have two large gaps in this border. I’m going to fill them in with a couple of Panicum switch grasses, as well as several Jupiter’s Beards. I’ll be posting updates on my progress later on in the year.

I’m also not completely happy with this border that is along a north facing fence in the backyard:

While it looks pretty good in late-May to early-June, the rest of the season this area looks pretty dull. Part of the problem is that several of the plants I put in here have already died. I suspect that the area was too dry for them. I know for a fact that I seriously underestimated how much shade the area gets.

So, I’m going to put a Karl Foerster feather reed grass in the sunnier section and several perennials, specifically Johnson’s Blue geraniums, into the shadier spots.

I like Johnson’s Blue geraniums a lot. Their subtle blue flowers appear for a few weeks in early June, but as an added bonus, their leaves turn orange and red in the fall. Plus, they’re reasonably drought tolerant. Two seasons of interest, and water thrifty? What’s not to like!

Unfortunately, it is a given that I will have lost plants over the winter. So as the seasons progress, I’ll be looking for bare spots and filling them in with plants that will hopefully thrive better in those locations.

If at first you don’t succeed, beat your head against the wall

I’m going to once again attempt to grow tomatoes in 5-gallon buckets. I’ve learned a few things from last year’s dismal failure. For one, come around July, you will find me out in the garden every evening with my little UV flashlight looking for tomato hornworms. I won’t make the mistake of letting the little bastards get out of control like I did last year.

Otherwise, the rest of the gardening year will be filled with mundane (yet necessary) maintenance tasks: weeding, watering, deadheading and the like. I can hardly wait!

Waiting for spring feels like a month of December 23rds. So close, yet so far away to the big event. The anticipation is excruciating!

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