First of all, I’d like to say thank you to all of the subscribers who have hung with me as I posted like 50+ old stories. I started out keeping this blog as mostly my own nature journal. So, I’d be able to look back and remember over time when certain plants/animals etc arrived or were seen. I frequently fall behind and then I pull from my notes, Facebook posts and camera history to fill in the blank areas. I’d love to tell you it won’t happen again, but that would be a lie. This has been my habit for years and so thinking that I’m going to truly change is probably misguided. Anyways, glad those of you who are still here stuck it out. I am currently on modern times and will stop sending you dozens of emails a day. 🙂
Now, today’s post is going to really be about some of our recent gardening tragedies and triumphs. Stick with me, this might be a long one!
The Backstory
As a reminder, my husband and I are pretty new to any kind of gardening. When we started staying home more in the pandemic we started trying to beautify our property, in part to attract more birds, bees, and butterflies and also any sort of lizards, toads, frogs etc. I love them all. We started with a flower bed around the front corner of our house where we have our milkweed and some other flowers, mostly annuals. In Fall of 2022 we created a new bed with irises and spring bulks like tulips and daffodils and grape hyacinth. This is in a circle around our weather pole station. I plan on adding bee & butterfly homes here as well. We also added a small hedge of arrowwood viburnum and we’ll grow some other flowers eventually in that area as well. This year we plan to extend our flower bed near our foundation around the other side of our home.
Apple Tree Triumph
Our first triumph – Remember how we planted an apple tree in Fall of 2022 and then it was ravaged by rabbits and deer? Well, it looks like somehow this tree is surviving! It has started to leaf out and is getting blossoms as well. We had followed the advice of the nursery where we bought it and used a graphing compound to try to heal the damage and we protected it from further damage. I’m hoping it’s going to be a strong survivor after having such a tough start!
Arrowwood Viburnum
When my Dad passed away in 2019 someone gave me an arrowwood viburnum. I’m sure they gifted it to me because the label said that it produced vibrant blue berries in the fall that were loved by many kinds of birds. My husband planted it and it’s been growing and flowering but never yet produced any berries. Upon reading more about them, it requires a pollinator. So, last fall we planted a few more and 2 pollinators. The other large viburnum are working just fine, but unfortunately the 2 pollinators did not make it through winter so we will have to try again to find the pollinators and get them going this summer in order to get the berries in the fall. Hopefully we’ll have success locating them!
Spring Bulbs – The excitement
My first foray into spring bulbs comes with some mixed results. I bought a mix that was deer & rabbit resistant without knowing exactly what I was getting. I wanted to try to get more early flowers for early bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. We planted over 50 bulbs I think in this circle. We’ve watched it carefully over this spring excited for each new thing that sprouted up! These pics are mostly from the week of March 29th.
Seeing each new thing spring to life was so exciting! First was the Daffodils. We have a few varieties planted and they’ve been very long lasting.
Last Easter, I rescued a left behind daffodil a few weeks after our Easter church service. I then did what I usually do which is leave it sit around in the pot until it looks nearly dead. I did eventually put it in the ground in the bed up by my house (this was before I had plans for the circle flower bed) with low expectations. BUT, this little daffodil is a survivor! This was one of our first flowers this spring.
Looking like a triumph?!
By mid-April the circle flower bed was looking like a real triumph. EVERYTHING was working. We had daffodils, tulips galore, all of the irises were coming back, something new to me called a Crown Imperial and something that I think is Allium in addition to lots of little grape hyacinths in both purple and white. I was getting so excited!
I mean just look at all of these tulips ready to bloom! I was SO EXCITED! These were taken the week of 4/22/23. There were SO MANY!!
Tulip Tragedy
Then, the tragedy struck. First just one of the tulips was eaten. It was a vibrant one and so I knew when it was missing. I couldn’t find my spray bottle to use a trick I learned from a gentleman at my church and spray them with some soapy water to keep the rabbits from eating them. I had plans to go to the hardware store and the night before lots more were eaten, but there were still some left. By the time we got home from the hardware store, there was a rabbit sitting there munching on the last of them and they were ALL gone.
So, we don’t get to see any beautiful tulip blooms this year, but we learned some lessons and hopefully next year is going to be our year! I’m still looking forward to all of these irises this summer.
Crown Imperial Triumph
This flower was a surprise. I didn’t know what it was and sent it to some gardening friends and eventually had to look at my receipt. This is a crown imperial and I have about 6 of them that all flowered. They’ve been interesting to watch.
Milkweed Sprouting
In other flower beds, we have now started see all of our milkweed sprouting. That’s always an exciting moment for me. I did spray all of these with some soapy water to try to keep the rabbits away from the tender delicious shoots.
Mother Nature always wins!
Mother Nature of course is always making her own flowers and she always wins! The May Apples are coming up in large numbers on the forest edges. We spotted trillium on our walk today and these little purple flowers are showing up as well. And, of course dandelions. We’ve been leaving all of our dandelions.