Gaining on spring

Ussurian pear (or is it callery pear?)

Elsewhere, spring is already melting into summer. Here, after a long winter and a cold, wet May, spring is finally getting underway. 

April showers ...

The day started with rain, then sleet, then snow and by Saturday evening there was another 8-10 inches of heavy, wet snow on the ground and weighing down the conifers.

The top of the red pine near the driveway was of special concern. We'd lost the top twice already to ice and snow in past years, so Brian pulled out the roof rake to shake some of that snow loose.

The rest of the trees will have to wait for sunshine and warmer temperatures today.

 The front yard at dusk.

The backyard at dusk.

Short days

We are moving steadily toward the shortest day of the year. Here, the sun peeks through the trees across the road just after 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Ch-ch-ch-chain-saw changes

The stump on the left used to be a tall balsam that balanced the balsam on the right with the stairs between them.

Sometimes, after I'm gone for the day, dramatic changes welcome me home. Sometimes, a tree gets planted. Other times a tree gets moved. Or, like most recently, a tree gets cut down.

I knew it was coming -- we had talked about the necessity of taking down a balsam that stood sentinel on one side of the entrance to the little wooded enclave we call the Shady Nook. The tree was tight against an aspen -- as tight as crossed fingers -- and the situation with its girdling roots wasn't good for either of them. Then, this past winter the top of the balsam snapped off. No sense putting it off any longer. The tree, which had been ailing for some time, had to come down. I went off to class and the resident head gardener pulled out the chain saw. And suddenly, the Shady Nook looked very different.

First, of course, this means the Shady Nook isn't so shady anymore. And it means that the area, which was the very definition of dry shade, also won't be so dry anymore. It means opportunities to rethink the area and to use the balsam stump as a pedestal for a pot of something trailing or a place to put a birdhouse. Maybe one similar to the birdhouses with roofs planted in succulents that we saw at Winter Greenhouse. It means that someday, a new conifer of our choosing may sink its roots there. And the Not-So-Shady Nook may become the Shady Nook again.

One of the green-roof birdhouses we saw last year at Winter Greenhouse.

Happy Earth Day

A couple of seedlings grow on the stump of a dead tree along the path to the stream. (Photo was taken in March, just after the spring equinox.)

Today, Earth Day, is a good day to plant a tree -- or anything!

The great black walnut experiment is under way

Walnuts with their husks (hulls) are at top. They're about the size of a tennis ball. The hulled walnuts are at bottom.

I obviously have a lot to learn about black walnuts. For example, take this passage from the Minnesota State Extension Service: "Take care when hulling or shelling walnuts. The practice of driving over nuts with an automobile can be a dangerous one. Nuts and broken shells may be thrown into the air by the tires, possibly causing bodily injury or property damage."

Huh? Driving over walnuts with a car?!

Apparently, this is a fairly routine procedure for hulling if a quick google search is any indication of how prevalent the practice is. Walnuts deserve a lot more respect than I realized.

Nut trees have always seemed a little mysterious to me. Trees grown for fruit or shade were a part of my childhood, but nuts -- when we had them -- always came in a bag or a can from the grocery.

So I was excited when a package containing black walnut seeds arrived in the mail in October. Chrissy sent us black walnuts harvested in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. And it was a revelation to me that black walnuts had a husk that had to be removed. The husk can be used in making dye and there are lots of warnings to use heavy rubber gloves when handling them or risk stained hands for a long time.

Lucky for us, Chrissy sent us both hulled and unhulled nuts so we didn't have to back the Honda over the nuts and risk "bodily injury."

Checking for damage to the seed. The two floating at left were discarded.

But we did need to check the hulled nuts for insect damage or other injury before planting. That meant plunging them into a bucket of water. Floaters were no good and needed to be tossed (but not in the compost; walnuts contain juglone which can kill or stunt other plants). Those that sank were viable and good for planting.

The good seeds were planted in soilless mix in one-gallon nursery pots.

That gave us 14 nuts to pot and place in the cold frame. Walnuts need stratification (cold treatment) to germinate; we're going the natural route and just leaving them outside all winter.

Even though its nuts have good flavor, black walnut (Juglans nigra) is grown more for its lumber than for its nuts; English walnut (Juglans regia) is the one that's grown for commercial nut production because it's easier to harvest and crack.
 

The walnuts went into their pots Nov. 4. I'll report back in the spring.

The seeds were covered with a couple of inches of soilless mix, tagged and placed in the cold frame. Information from the Extension Service suggests we can expect maybe half to germinate. (These pots since have been covered with snow.) 

Details on growing and harvesting black walnut can be found here and here and here.

Winter rises

Winter is asserting itself at sillydoggarden. It turned cold this week -- not unreasonably so but after a mild November these days with highs in the teens are a little hard to get used to. And there is the snow. It's not much but even a thin layer of white is a dramatic change from the quiet buffs and browns and greens of the past few weeks.

Fortunately, we were mostly ready.

The last of the parsnips (a variety called 'Gladiator') were harvested from the vegetable garden earlier this week and taken to the stream for a quick wash to remove the big chunks of soil. Our vegetable gardening season opened with a parsnip harvest and ended with a parsnip harvest. The circle is complete.

Brian finished caging the trees and shrubs that are especially susceptible to winter browsing. The yard is dotted with these contraptions of wire fencing and bamboo.

The 'Skyrocket' junipers at the herb garden entrance are wrapped in burlap to guard against sunscald.

This bird feeder will need to be filled almost daily. (We go through lots of sunflower seeds.)

Fresh snow means it's easy to see who's been out and about overnight.

And the sillydog seizes the day, savoring the flavor of winter.

Festival of the trees

We love trees at sillydoggarden. The trees in the foreground (this side of the road) were all planted by us. This photo was taken in early October. 

Trees have been on my mind lately -- especially black walnut (more about that in a post to come) and the conifers screening the road. So I was happy to find this link to a blog carnival devoted to all things arboreal. Posts about witch hazel and larch especially caught my eye.