EMERGENCE CONTINUES

By early May, I found the plants that had struggled from the earth were all thriving just the way they had done for years. I shook the winter ice from my soul, decided to plant some new perennials in front of the house, and begin the legacy of spicy roots for which I hope to be famous in the future.
Hell, I gotta do something with this farm.



 The lawn greens up as the trees flush. Note the ferns emerging to the right of the meter loop.

 Speckle apparently approves of the beginnings of The Standish Farm Famous Horseradish crop, newly planted from chunks of horseradish root in those little containers. I found the containers (along with several thousand more) in the greenhouse. The planting table would grow.

 These are the flowers from the crysanthemumish weeds. Look just like buttercuspidors, don't they? They share the bill with some emerging poison ivy, bless its evil itchy little heart. I'd soon kill it and would continue to do so for some time.

 Apple blossoms from the rather stressed apple tree on the fringes of the backyard. Perty, ain't they?

 Within as well as outside the 'planter' to the right of the front lawn, sedum blooms heavily. The daffodils are fading at this point. The surrounding weeds are known as 'seven minute itch,' but the itch lasts for much longer. I would leave this area intact so as to see what comes up between the weeds.

 This is the Scary Plant. It has such thickly clustered thorns that I decided not to to trim back the dead ones for fear of becoming hopelessly entangled, finally becoming a scraggly permanent scarecrow in my front yard. Hey, it could happen. The leaves resemble that of a rose.

 Those reddish shoots from the last post turned out to be a cluster of peonies.

 Peony bud

 Spring perennials planted in front of the house. I'd scatter wildflower seeds between them and then add a dozen four-o'clocks to take over the summer blooming.

Raspberries beginning to fill out with leaves, as do the woods behind them.

 

 A small herb garden on the south side of the house just after planting

 Everything going seriously green

 

 The beginning of The Horseradish Empire

 

Driveway to the garage gives up its ice only to beg to be mowed as often as possible 

 

These wide-leafed plants came up early beneath the pear tree (told you I'd get around to it) and grew tall and beautiful even during the freezing nights of early spring. My lovely neighbor Susie, granddaughter of Bertha Izbicki, came over to show me some of the plants around the property. She introduced me to mint, poppies, and other plants I'd overlooked or was ignorant of their taxonomy. This was one.
Her story of this still unnamed flora is that it came from a local Indian. She refers to Native Americans, of which there are plenty around here, either Mashantucket Pequots, Mohegans, or Narragansetts (forgive me if I misspelled or left anyone out and please don't send the Snake God Yig to do something about it. I am friends with Yig and a visit will only be appreciated). This Indian gave the plants to Bertha because of her arthritis; he told her to make a tea out of it and that would help, though for the life of me I don't know how making tea can help arthritis. Oh, I guess she was supposed to DRINK the tea. Well, through the years, it became unknown whether it was the leaves or the roots that were the effective part, so I ask anyone who reads this (all four of you) if you have any idea just what the hell this thing is. It has grown huge and despite being eaten by the Speckle Pup as often as her hunger rises, still blooms as I write this in July.



                              The beautiful drooping blooms of the Arthritis Mystery Plant

                                              Emerging wildflowers from scattering seeds

The strange plant by the front door. It climbed through the topiary from its cinder-block rootball and has now been set free.

 

Swelling peony bud. Ants suck sugar from it

 

                                                                         Peony cluster

Looking past the old cold frame and to the since-gone greenhouse beyond. It is filled with Seven Minute Itch. But not for long.

 

One of two hydrangeas starting to leaf out; it was the only plant I recognized as I chopped back the dry stalks last fall.

 

An eclectic mix of raspberries, seven minute itch, sedum, and the scourge of this part of the country, Japanese bittersweet. That's the strangling vine on the post. Wisteria has nothing on this shit. At least wisteria blooms and smells sweet before it lifts the trim from your eaves. Bittersweet possesses no such graces.

 

Seven minute itch

 

Susie pointed out that one of my young maples is variegated, with entire sections of the tree sporting light green leaves lined with yellow. She says that people come from all around to view it in autumn, as it changes in...variegated ways, I suppose.

COMING SOON

SUMMER INTRODUCES HERSELF

THE RESTORATION OF THE GREENHOUSE 

SPRING 3

EMERGENCE

It took half of April before I realized that I wasn't scraping ice from the truck windshield each morning after running the defroster for fifteen minutes. I even flirted with the idea of getting out my warm weather clothes, but abandoned that idea quickly. Even now, as I write this at the tail end of June, I keep a pair of sweatpants and a light hoodie hanging in my bedroom. I turn off the fans two out of five nights and laugh at the idea of air conditioning.
Let' see how I feel about that in August.
By early April, the grass began to get a slight green flush about it and before I knew it, other green things began to emerge through the still-frozen ground.
My problem was figuring out which were perennial plantings and which were weeds.
I let it all grow.
The first thing to turn its face to spring was my pear tree. Sitting below a dead pine in the backyard, it flushed and budded before anything else.
I went out to examine it one warmish morning, coffee in hand and a smile on my face at the end of the long dark winter. I was happy with the emerging green but sad at the fact that I'd eventually have to cut down the dead pine that loomed almost seventy feet high to the right of the pear. It had been dead when I saw the property in September and it had been dead when I arrived the following October.
"What the hell??" I said aloud in mid-sip. "It's a miracle!"
The pine was sporting tiny little needles as green as an electric leprechaun.
It wasn't a miracle, really. It was a larch, one of only a handful of deciduous conifers in the world. Around here it's called a tamarack. Either way, it was coming back to life. I was happy I didn't have to cut it down and even happier that it was alive.

                                                               The pear in bloom

The larch awakes

 

Below these trees, a collection of wide, fuzzy leaves appeared (look beneath the pear). More on these later.

 

Across the street, on the very edge of the road, a host of dark and light green spears began to push through the leaves. Frost and still-frozen ground be damned; these things were as ready as I to see winter end. I recognized the darker spears as daffodils (jonquils to you English Majors), but was not sure what the lighter green was. I rightly guessed they were day lilies.

 

 

 I raked the area around the emerging spears to give them a little breathing room. I'll bet Bertha Izbicki, the last of the Izbickis to live in the Standish House (Granny to many in the neighborhood), tended these yearly. She might even have planted them, but plenty of folks were here before her.

Other plants were emerging, blooming, or budding out.

 

                                                    vinca minora sporting a few flowers

 This thing is covered with closely spaced needles that just scream out "I will kill you!!" It is some sort of a bush rose that eventually produced beautiful, fragrant pink flowers. It would still be happy to kill you.

 

                                    Rhododendron loaded with buds that were there last fall.

                                               The plant on the right is an oriental poppy.

                 These came out earliest of all; they are beneath the pear tree. More on them later.

                                                                   Pear blossom with leaves

                                         Fiddlehead ferns in the front yard. I let them grow.

 This plant was found growing in the cinder block when I removed the topiary in November. It had climbed into the topiary's branches and sported pretty white flowers, even in late fall. I took it out this spring and planted it in the ground in the same spot, where it thrives. I have found four or five others growing wild on the property.

 

                                Little violets peppered the yard for a couple weeks in April

 These were emerging all over the property. The leaves look rather chrysanthemumish, so I let them go about their business. Turned out they are some sort of weeds, but they put out pretty yellow flowers that look sort of like giant buttercuspidors.

 

 Walking through the woods in fall, I found huge briars with wicked inch-long thorns made of a substance not far removed from bone. These thorns can (I'm not making this up) take a holt of your shirt or jacket, and the only way out of their grasp is to remove the garment. The only way to retrieve the garment is to cut the briar canes and drag the whole thing out, and when it's finished with your jacket, all you have are bloody, thorn-punctured hands holding a few threads.
I wasn't sure if this thing was a domestic rose gone ballistic or one o' them there briars, so I let it go. It followed its twenty-foot-wide fellows in the forest, informing me of its identity (smilax rotundifolia to you taxonomy nerds). I let this one grow to observe its feeding habits and attack tactics, but others on the property were under my microscope for destruction.

 Poison ivy vines clinging to the machine shed. I waited patiently for leaves to form so I could POISON THE GODDAMN THING!!!!! One bad turn deserves another.

 

 One of the sad things to emerge once the snow was gone and the leaves were in the process of being raked was this 18th century door, likely an original from the house. Thin with four panels, it was found half-buried near the machine shed.

 

 This pile of pre-split firewood was gleaned from the patch of high grass at the northwest corner of the yard. I only found it by walking there and nearly breaking my ankle. Apparently a large tree, long since removed, had been cut up in place, then forgotten. It will be put to good use this next winter.

 The patch of deep, dense grass from which the firewood was pulled. I am still harvesting wood from the edges of the patch now in June, but since I've been mowing it regularly, the long grass has shortened and become a part of the lawn.

 

 Berry canes, which I recognized when I moved in in October and so did not whack them with the weedeater. The neighbors tell me that they have all been raiding these for their berry bounty since Bertha Izbicki has been gone. They're mine now!

 

 New growth promising many berries. But what kind of berries? The neighbors call them raspberries, but I'm used to blackberries in Arkysaw. They look wild to me, so might be huckleberries, whatever the hell they are. I though those only grew down south. Perhaps they're all the same and only local vernacular lists them as different.

And why are they called RASPberries, anyway?

 Some things I was glad to see taken over by new growth. Below this rash of green is a household trash pile and a bunch of rotting firewood. It will be cleaned out next winter. Note thee japonica behind the garage.

 

 New leaves on the chokecherry, emerging from the ground up. This was loaded with tiny tart cherries last fall, and I had no time to pick them (the same with the hundreds of pounds of pears). This fall will be different. The cherry is actually on the remaining Izbicki land next door, but they don't mind me doing some harvesting.

 

                                                                          Cherry leaves

 The spot where the station wagon used to be. Note the flattened remains of the dead skunk in the background (to the right under the trees). It was left there as a warning, and apparently was effective as such.

 I have no idea what this bush is, but it looks domestic, familiar, and has no thorns. It stays.

 This was an interesting find. I recognized these hairy things as chestnut husks, and since chestnut is perty much extinct, I got very excited. They were found just south of the greenhouse.

 

 Chestnut grove. Six or seven trees

 Proof is in the pudding, or in this case, in the leafing. This leaf is similar to American chestnut, but has more rounded lobes. This is Chinese chestnut, according to the locals.

 Ferns began to announce themselves in the woods, They resemble Boston ferns. The small plant to the southwest is a skunk cabbage. With a fine little wetland in the middle of the property, I am blessed with a plethora of these.

 

Strange things can be found in the woods behind a 324 year old farmhouse. This is an iron bed, around which a number of vines and plants have entwined themselves.

Jack-in-the-pulpit. I have thousands of these

 This is a dry well. I have no idea what it did or what it does, but it has a very large rock on top of it to keep small children from falling in. Pity. I may have the rock removed. Might as well make some use of the thing.