Garden thoughts

In response to the most recent “mach was.”

Recently we (I) moved from 4.25 acres of wooded yard to a small suburban house. From this:

 

At the old house, we had this elm tree, which I helped plant when I was little.

 

to this:

 

This is about a ten year old (I think) elm that was put in by the Town, now the Village. It’s the only tree on my entire lot.

 

I feel horrible about it, but more about the trees that are now gone (everything on the old lot was removed) than the trees that are not here, if that makes any sense. In the last five years I worried a lot about those trees and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved by the alleviation of the burden. At the same time, I did love living in in the middle of a wood, and I miss it a lot, especially the feeling of privacy!

 

The entry to the old house as taken from the road, about a year ago. It’s all been taken out. I haven’t driven past.

 

I didn’t really garden much at that house. Things my mother planted just sort of grew. This was particularly true with the asparagus and the rhubarb, which were the only things in the garden after she died and dad gave up the pumpkins.

 

Garden shed at the house, June 2020. We called it the “roadkill shed” because it was exclusively built from things dad picked up off the road. Not sure where he found the solar panels.

 

I tried to maintain them as I like to eat both of those things, but about a year after the stroke, well into vascular dementia, dad mowed off the remaining rhubarb and asparagus.

 

One rhubarb plant came back up! (June, 2020). My brother transplanted it back to the farm (to meet its cousins for the first time).

 

At the new house, I’ve only got the one tree. We also have a lot of these in the decorative borders around the house, which similarly points to the last few owners being severely uninterested in gardening.

 

This is a hosta. It demands nothing from the gardener except a cut-down right before the hard freeze. However, it also gives nothing to the environment.

 

I still am not entirely sure I am staying here, but if I do, these will have to either come out or be supplemented by an early pollinator of some kind. Honestly, I think suburban lawns are ugly. I am not allowed to plant this lawn in “noxious weeds,” but I’d really like to put in all native species. This would anger the neighbors and probably drag my property value down, though.

In the interest of peace after my visual transgression, I did make a gesture in the direction of conformity:

 

This is a multi-color mum.

 

But I’m not sure she doesn’t owe me, because meanwhile, I’m dealing with an overflow from the neighbor’s yard.

 

The boxelder bug, Boisea trivittata.

 

Yup, she’s got a boxelder tree, and the south-facing facade of the house is swarming in the these pests. They’re not dangerous or bothersome other than that they stink if you step on them. Supposedly they go away as soon as the weather changes.

So all the windows and entries on the south and west sides of the house are baited with diatomaceous earth and sprayed with pyrethine, in hopes of keeping them out of the house.

 

Interestingly, the German word for this stuff is “die Kieselgur.”

 

And, of course, the Village’s big gardening activity is well under way, and everywhere I drive, this is the vehicle I am following. It’s been reasonably dry, so hopefully the crops will come out of the fields without a lot of problem.

~ by Servetus on October 3, 2021.