Sometimes I Feel Like the Fox From "The Fox and the Grapes."

When I was a child, the farm I grew up  on from when I was about 4 until I was 12 had an old cherry tree.  I loved climbing it, but more importantly, I loved the pies my mom made from it. It was a red, sour cherry,of unknown type...as the farm was established in the 1870s and we lived there in the 1960s and 1970s.

One horrible spring, a tornado came through and although it missed the house and barns, and the sheep we raised, it  claimed the cherry.

I've always loved cherries of all types, sneaking spoonfuls of frozen bing cherries from the 25 pound tins stored in our freezer. When we moved to Troy, I planted a dwarf Northstar cherry as red sour cherries are hard to come by.  In theory, the tree will only grow to 10 feet tall,but I think it will be taller.

With the numbness in my feet from the  chemotherapy, I cannot go on ladders as I would fall. So, I picked what I  could.  I asked my husband to help.....but he doesn't like  cherries....he  says they are too gushy and reminds him of cough syrup...of  course he says the same thing about blueberries as well.

I picked and finally he took pity on me and came out with the ladder and helped, but with him almost 6 feet tall and being on a 4 foot ladder, he still couldn't reach the top.  I had to teach him about avoiding bird pecked and wormy cherries (I don't spray).  At least we got enough for a couple more pies, but in reality, they will probably be turned into cherry crisp or cherry sauce for me and my daughter....who inherited this love.  One pie was made and shared with our friend Bob who came out from Connecticut last week to help with my garden.   Bob grew up in Michigan's cherry country....and like me, considers sour  cherry pie to be the tops.  Birds will get the rest now, and I will start spraying a fungicide to alleviate the cherry leaf drop which plagues me here as the springs can be damp and conducive to it.  Of course this is also the first year in three is has born cherries as late frosts got the blossoms the last two years.

And  I hear, sour cherries are good cancer fighters.

If you don't know the Aesop's fable about the fox and the grapes..it's here.  Not the version I was looking for ( a folk song my brother used to sing in the late 1960s in his local group "The Brotherhood.").

Surprise in the Garden: Parrotia persica

 This week one of the many tasks I had was to prune a few trees in my garden. Without a little help, sometimes poor growth, crossing limbs or just congested growth takes place. While this may not be major, pruning it and working to make the tree the best it possibly can be is a good thing.

I was dumbfounded when I came to my Parrotia persica, or Persian Ironwood.  I've written about it before, especially since it has pretty fantastic fall foliage.  In my tree's case, it is brilliant yellow with streaks of intense red.  You can see it here on my older blog post.

I knew it was related to the witch hazels (hamamelis species) but other than the leaf shape, and the growth pattern (prone to congestion...sometimes people describe it as the "green wall") I didn't really clue in.  This week changed all that. I didn't even remember it had blooms! But like witch hazel, it is blooming now with the spectacular deep red blooms.  I will have to watch to see if they open any wider, but they are about 1/2" in diameter.

If this isn't good enough to sell you on the tree....take a look at this photograph by Vibernum Valley....Mine is only now beginning to show this patterning. I planted it about 6 years ago, and it is now about 4" in diameter.

Way cool.  I'm glad I planted it.

Thank Goodness there's no Smell-o-vision!

Our crazy weather has everything blooming and fading in spades. It was well over 80 degrees F. today...and I'm taking a beating from it.

One of the things which has made it particularly awful are the Bradford Pears and their only slightly better relatives, the Cleveland Pear. See all the white flowered trees? They're Bradford and Cleveland pears.  The whole neighborhood is full of them.  There's a mature one outside my bedroom window. Then my next door neighbor has at least three....and there's two directly across the street from me...and on it goes.

The result of so many of these trees is that there is an awful stench on my street.  Most people don't realize how bad they smell....in fact my next door neighbor thought that something somewhere had urinated a particularly vile stream of something....but no..it's the sicky sweet pears....that smell more like carrion than fruit.

I detest these trees.  Nurseries push them.  People and developers plant them in groves.  They are brittle limbed, and while the cultivar the Cleveland Pear is somewhat better, it still has a lot of the negative aspects.  They seed in all over the place.  They are  not natives, but were introduced from Korea and China in 1963.  They have little tiny fruit that birds disdain, and are not edible for humans.  They sucker.  They have really shallow and rampant root systems....and they stink.

In addition, their leaves are leathery and they don't decompose well.  While the fall color is pretty, they hang onto their leaves until long after the last leaf pick up.  Their life expectancy is about 25 years...

There are so many native trees and ones with better habit which should be planted....and yet what goes in is the stupid Pyrus calleryana.    If you're looking for something different...or want to know the REAL skinny on a tree you're considering planting...I recommend Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs..anything Dirr writes is really fun and wonderfully insightful.  He also has written a larger tome which covers trees in detail, as well as one for warmer climates.  Another good resource for picking trees and shrubs, but much dryer than Dirr is William Cullina's Native Trees, Shrubs and Vines. It is a little more restrained than Dirr's work, especially because it doesn't have the non-natives, but it is still worthwhile checking into if you're going to plant a tree....I've been planning for when this tree falls...it's brother fell in 2008....and I'm still cutting suckers off the roots! BLECK.

Greening America, planting for the future

When I first moved here in June, 2005 there were 9 trees and foundation plantings across the front of overgrown yews. While off-loading the household goods from the semi, one of the guys made a comment about the plantings, to which I responded, "If you want them you can have them."

At that point, it became a point of honor for the guys to rip out the plantings with their tractor. Imagine the cab of a big rig chaining itself to the base of a yew which we had already dug out as best we could. I think the neighbors were getting just a little taste of what it meant to have me for a neighbor.

Right away, I took out three of the nine trees. I took out two Crimson King Norway maples--they were planted on the south end of the swimming pool (DUMB move, we had just lived with a mature norway maple on the south east side of our swimming pool in Connecticut and fishing out seeds and leaves from that thing was a major undertaking). I admit, I'm also prejudiced against Norways as they are not native and they seed themselves all over. The third tree I took out was a sickly redbud. I love redbuds, but this one was really ill. Not to worry...I'm still digging up seedlings and root stock from that same tree.

The following spring, my brother came to visit and he took out a silver maple which was planted smack in front of the doorway. Silver maples are great trees for swamps.....and native woods. They are not good trees to be in people's yards. They are quick growing and thus tend to be the developer's choice. Then, I hired a blue spruce to be taken down. It was a beautiful tree, but it wasn't in the right spot. People have a tendency to plant really cute baby trees and not to remember they get to be behomoths.


Now, you might think that I hate trees. On the contrary. I love trees. More people should plant trees. In fact, while I have taken down 5 trees, I have planted 32 trees and many understory trees/large shrubs. I'm fairly careful about siting the tree so that when it gets large, it will still be an asset to the property.

I also look for trees which have more than one season of interest. Here's a short list of what I have planted:

2 Parrotia persica --(common names: parrotia or Persian Ironwood) non-native but wonderful bark and fall foliage.

2 Asian Pears

Stewartia pseudocamelia This is a fantastic one, although it is a real water hog for about the first 5 years. It also has a delicate bark which can be easily girdled. I had one in Connecticut and loved it...the first one I planted here croaked because of our late season droughts. I replaced it with a pricier one...and I hope it makes it.

Franklinia alatamaha This native was found by John Bartram but has been lost in the wild. It has fantastic leaf color while blooming in the fall with camelia like blooms.

Sweet Bay Magnolia A large tree, and it will provide most of the shade for the house once it gets going. Lovely lemon scented flowers in June and July. Interesting seedpods. The white flower pictured is the one in my garden.

Beni schichihenge Japanese maple. I'm not convinced by this one yet... It likes a little more acid soil than I have and it sort of just looks sick rather than being a presence, but it is small.

Golden full-moon Japanese maple. This one is very hard to find and is one of the trees I originally had planted in Connecticut. I dug it up and potted it, and brought it down in April, 2005 rather than leave it in Connecticut. Good thing I did too as it would have been cut down like almost all of the other trees I put in there.

2 Coral bark Japanese maples They're little. They also need lots of water to start.

Sourwood This is a native with lovely color and a small, unassuming pyramidal shape. My friend Martha has a lovely one in Connecticut. The one I planted here died back to the base the first year and put up a small secondary growth. I'm hoping I can convince it to grow in the soil here....it likes acid, and mine is alkaline.

2 Styrax japonica--or japonicus (Japanese silver bells). These were seedlings of the Emerald pagoda I had in Connecticut.

Dwarf "Patio Peach" Bonfire. I'm a sucker for yellow, red or variegated varieties. This peach is small, has red leaves and edible peaches.

North Star dwarf cherry. Wonderful cherry producing great red sour cherries when a late frost doesn't get the blossoms.

Weeping Katsura. This is a largish Japanese tree, and is one in the corner of the first picture. Slow growing. groan.

Cornus mas variegata Variegated cornelian cherry. Dogwood relative, small yellow blossoms in spring.

4 Korean fir (Abies koreana) Great little tree...I have the "silberlock" variety and it is the bottom photograph. Cool plant which has PURPLE cones at a very young age. Also needs lots of water in the beginning until it gets established.

Shadbush or Service berry (Amelanchier) Great little native with neat bark, lovely edible berries (if you can fend the birds off). Wonderful fall color.

Weeping Norway spruce. gulp. It's near my goldfish pond...what can I say?

2 red lace Japanese maples

2 limber pines (Pinus flexis Vanderwolf's pyramid) It looks like a white pine, but won't get to be 100 feet tall. :)

Trident maple (Acer buergeranum). This is a cool plant with exfoliating bark as well...but I could only get it on line. When it came it was about 4 feet tall. But a deer came and chomped it down so now it is 1 1/2 feet tall. Slow growing. Boohoo.

Seven son's tree (Heptacodium miconiodes... ok, this is more like a large shrub as it gets to be 15' tall. But it too has exfoliating bark and wonderfully scented flowers. The bracts are actually more interesting than the flowers.

Acer rubrum "Frank's red"
I put this in to replace a Bradford pear which was too close to the house and which blew down last year in a freak "dry huricane."

Quercus "crimson spire." This one I got on sale this year and put in a temporary spot waiting for the time when the other Bradford pear blows down.

There is precious little shade here....at present. I will never see shade from these trees. I plant hoping that perhaps in the future someone will benefit from them. In a way, I'm doing my own little bit to cut down on global warming. I don't know if they will last. The magnolia, American silverbell, Japanese silverbell, Forest Pansy, Sweetgum tree and the sargent crab I planted in Connecticut have all been cut down. The only saving grace is that they cut down the danged Norway maple as well. I hope that the Stewartia is still there...but it probably isn't.

I'm sure you're tired of reading this....and I haven't even started in on the shrubs!

P.s. we have .77 acres in case you're wondering..or is it .68? My brain is stuffed up from my cold. Just shy of an acre at any rate.