By Carol Cichorski, on August 5th, 2012 I welcome you to ‘Zone 5 – Favorites on the 5th’. I post on the 5th of every month, redirecting visitors to a favorite posting relative to zone 5. This month we have two bloggers looking for inspiration to fill an area vacated by a large shrub. One of those bloggers is me. The other is Kylee Baumle.
Mike and I recently lost a Contorted Filbert (aka Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick, aka Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’). Curly had succumbed to Eastern Blight a few years ago, yet he stayed in our garden till the branches started breaking off. After all, when it comes to a Contorted Filbert, the curly branches are what it’s all about. In the picture below, Kevin has done a beautiful job of showing Curly in his best light.
 Photo by Kevin Penczak As is so typical in our world, this was part of what turned out to be a total pond redo. Just two days ago, we planted the Japanese Umbrella Pine and Carol Mackie Daphne. More on that later. The road from trimming a few forsythias to a total pond redo is a story unto itself.
I am not the first to lose a Contorted Filbert. Kylee lost her Harry and was faced with the same dilemma of a large open space. She and Romie built quite the trellis. The three dimensional dark trellis is a perfect choice against the light siding of the house. For more details on building the trellis, check out Dead Shrub? Problem Solved at Our Little Acre.
I’ve invited other zone 5 bloggers to join me for ‘Zone 5 – Favorites on the 5th’. If that’s you, please leave a comment so everyone will know you are part of the gang.
If you are a reader hungry for zone 5 sustenance, please follow the blogger’s links to feed upon their favorite postings.
By Carol Cichorski, on August 1st, 2012 
It begins – We have two dahlias blooming. From now till frost, the show will just get better and better. Mike has about 100 plants, divided into two gardens. He has told the plants to focus on growing big and strong by disbudding them till recently. Now its time to start reaping the benefits.
Soon, we’ll have so many flowers that I’ll be picking them almost daily. There will be so many flowers you won’t even notice I picked any. So many flowers that I could sell them at a Farmer’s Market, which is an idea I’ve entertained but not acted upon.
Mike gets to do all the work, growing them from tubers in the basement, hardening them off, and then planting them outside at the end of May. They are all staked and tagged. As they continue to grow, Mike ties the higher growth to the stake so the heavily laden flower branches don’t take a hit from wind and rain. It’s a labor of love.
He is experimenting this year with not using any fertilizer or mulch. I think he is really experimenting with how many weeds he can grow between the plants. He has put down some grass clippings, but I have to admit that a light layer of grass clippings does nothing to discourage weeds. Perhaps now that we’ve had some rain and will have grass to cut, he can add enough clippings to be of some value. Still, it won’t be my favorite look.
I can ignore the weeds and grass clippings. It’s kind of like his dresser top, which is a mess. (Don’t tell him I told you.) Not my problem so I just don’t see it. Hmmm, does that make the flowers his too? Nope. The principle I use for the flowers is ‘What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine too.’ He wouldn’t have it any other way.
Watch for our dahlia garden to be open for your viewing pleasure later this season. We haven’t set a date yet.
By Carol Cichorski, on July 26th, 2012 I could probably be more careful when I deadhead or cut flowers to take inside. Nah, that isn’t gonna happen. I’m just as likely to cut off the bloom-to-be as I am to cut off the bloom-that was. Take the coreopsis below, for example. See the pretty flower on the right, and the one that’s done on the left. There are just so many of those little stems in my way and there is bound to be collateral damage.
Not anymore!
John went on-line to get me these nifty little scissors for Mother’s Day. You might think that scissors are a boring gift. Not me. I’ve had my eyes on these for a while, but just couldn’t get myself to spend the $20 plus shipping. After all, I have scissors, scissors, and more scissors. That made them a perfect gift – something I wanted but wasn’t willing to buy myself.
I should have bought them a long time ago. These scissors live in my back pocket when I’m outside. The blades are only one and a half inches long, which keeps them away from the parts of the plant I don’t want to cut. They are 6″ long in total, and the handles are big enough to let me squeeze with some power for thicker stems. They are bright red, so I can even find them when they are not in my back pocket. Perfect!
The Joyce Chen package calls them a kitchen tool. Not at my house. Thank you Joyce Chen for your Original Unlimited Scissors.
By Carol Cichorski, on July 22nd, 2012  Some garden centers are worth going to just for the experience. Even if you don’t buy anything (like that would ever happen to me), you have got to see these places. The Flower and Herb Barn is one of those. Joann said that if we were going to go to Nashville, Indiana, we HAD to see this place AND have lunch there. You are not planning to go to Nashville, Indiana? Well that is mistake number 1. Fix it. Rolling hills, craft stores galore, and ice cream stores everywhere. What’s not to like?
A five hour drive from our suburban Chicago home and we arrived in cuteville, aka Nashville. The Flower and Herb Barn is nearby in Nineveh. It’s hard to find and just when you think its time to turn around, there it is. It didn’t look like much. What was Joann thinking? Oh, she was thinking all right. Thinking that I would love this place. I did.
Of course they have flowers for sale. Garden centers do that. They didn’t even have many compared to some of our large Chicagoland nurseries. What they had was my undivided attention, thanks to the ambience, a barn full of antiques and a charming little restaurant.
We did have lunch there. Again, Joann was right. The Farmhouse Cafe & Team Room is tiny, so tiny that the food was being prepared by two ladies sitting at a kitchen table in an also tiny kitchen. Nothing institutional about this place.
Of course, I did buy something – Turtlehead. It’s a shade plant that was on my hit list and they had a beauty. I also came home with a vase of wildflowers. I picked those as we enjoyed the scenic route back instead of the main roads. The wildflowers are still gracing my kitchen counter, in an old medicine bottle we had bought just days before while on our trip to the Smoky Mountains. But that’s another story, isn’t it? Tune back in for more on the flowers of the Smoky Mountains.
Also coming will be postings about two other garden centers that are worth the trip. You can head to Destination Garden #1, knowing that eventually I’ll tell you about Destination Garden #2 and #3.
By Carol Cichorski, on July 18th, 2012 I can’t take credit for the picture; it came from www.owned.lv. Yep, that’s Chicagoland this summer.
By Carol Cichorski, on July 15th, 2012 You may remember that I just had to have my zinnia garden back. I had one before and it was a beauty. This year’s bed will rival that one. It’s huge. 82 State Fair zinnias are bound to take up a fair piece of real estate.
My niece Kathryn gave me a funny look when I said this was a low maintenance area.
Look at it this way:
- Mike dug out the area – a one time job.
- We planted the zinnias – one time a year job.
- Billy and George mulched – no work at all for me.
- Weeds – the occasional weed lifts right out.
- Watering – I set the sprinkler up weekly.
I was thrilled by the thumbs up from God when I walked outside one morning and He was pointing a sliver of morning sun on the first zinnia.
They are already blooming nicely and it will only get better. State Fair zinnias get 3-4 feet tall and blossom and blossom and blossom. Mine are spaced far enough apart to get air circulation so they are unlikely to have a serious mildew problem.
Do you want to know what else is blooming in the July garden? To see what other bloggers have blooming on the 15th of every month, visit May Dreams Gardens – Bloom Day for our Garden Bloggers’ Bloom day entries.
By Carol Cichorski, on July 5th, 2012  I welcome you to ‘Zone 5 Favorites on the 5th’. I post on the 5th of every month, redirecting visitors to a favorite posting relative to zone 5. My apologies for using the word ‘Favorites’ in a title where I also used the words ‘Japanese Beetles’. Japanese Beetles are far from my favorites. What we are talking about here is favorite postings.
There is a Buddhist proverb that says “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” Today’s blog was much like that with “When the writer is ready, the subject will appear.”
Unfortunately, what appeared is Japanese Beetles.
Case in point: To the right, you see a bloom on my Easy Does It Rose. Below, you see other blooms on the same bush at the same time. Very sad.
When the beetles rose their ugly heads on my roses, a topic for today was hatched as well. Its not the first time we’ve had to deal with Japanese Beetles, so I just happened to have last year’s posting on Beating the Japanese Beetle in the wings. You’ll see that we resorted to chemical warfare, a rarity in our garden. We pretty much share our garden with God’s other creatures, right down to the field mice that scurry around. We draw the line at the weapon of mass destruction known as a Japanese Beetle.
I wanted to share some other options as well, so I did a little more research, and came up with alternatives from other bloggers.
May you find a solution you can live with, and that the beetles can’t!
I’ve invited other zone 5 bloggers to join me for Zone 5 – Favorites on the 5th. If that’s you, please leave a comment so everyone will know you are part of the gang.
If you are a reader hungry for zone 5 sustenance, please follow the blogger’s links to feed upon their favorite postings.
By Carol Cichorski, on July 4th, 2012 Aint he just the cutest! Happy 4th of July everyone.
By Carol Cichorski, on June 30th, 2012
By Carol Cichorski, on June 23rd, 2012  What’s not to love? Lucille’s potting shed is a gardener’s dream come true. I walked in and was smitten.
Mike was worried before I even walked in. If you’ve seen our barn, it doesn’t look like this, and now Mike will live with fear in his heart that someday it will. He already lies awake at night worrying that I might wallpaper the landscape trailer.
This is the place where form and function meet. Sure, she really does store the tools of the trade here, but she does it with such style. Look how nicely she has stored her garden tools – such a smart use of a shoe bag.
 You don’t want to see what my collection of tools looks like. Really, you don’t. Oh, OK, you can look at them in Fingers Numb. Our shed inspired me to write this earlier this year:
“Digging through the shed so deep,
my gardening tools buried in the heap.
But out they came and so did I.
A joyous day oh my oh my!”
Lucille’s shed inspires quite differently. She posts those little sayings you come across that tend to get thrown in a drawer.
Same for cards. You know, the really great cards that you get and they too get thrown in a drawer.
Not to mention what Mike calls dinky-doinkies; the cute little collections that you don’t have because you don’t have a place to put them. Lucille does.
She does have the required collection of pots, but somehow they are not so painful to look at.
Let’s go back to my original question ‘What’s not to love?’ We’ll have to leave that unanswered, as I simply could not find anything in this shed that was not to love.
|
|
|
