What happened to May?

I just realized I haven't posted for over a month. A lot has happened so I'll just show some pictures taken at various times since April.

Damaged tree

We lost a bunch of trees in the tornado. The large one that hit the new house will be the most missed as it was right in the line of sight from any south-facing window. It had split in two at a vee about 30 feet high, spun 180 degrees and the south half fell north onto the house. The rest of the tree was doomed so it had to go. Here's the view soon after the damage and then after the tree was removed.

Bedroom progress

A lot of drywall has been put up. Here's a view of the master bedroom from the kitchen area.

And here is the same doorway from the inside.

The windows above the bedroom door allow light into the bedroom from the clerestory windows (which are visible in their lower left corners). The door visible through the closet is the pocket door of the bathroom. Drywall hasn't been hung yet on the wall between the closet and the bathroom and the wall on the inside of the bathroom door.

Pond planting

Sandy got a few water lilies for Mother's Day and enlisted Brandon and Matthew to help her place them in the larger pond below the house.

In the back left are a few water iris that were planted earlier from the same source.

Morning surprise

Completely unrelated to the new house, I found this luna moth on a window when I got up the other day.

Since it's not too hard to see during the daytime, it would be easy prey for birds, so I didn't disturb it until that evening. It had moved less than an inch all day.

After dark I coaxed it out the apartment window and it just glided to the ground outside. It hadn't moved for five minutes or so, so I went downstairs to see if it was alive. As I tried to pick it up, it took off and flew away.

I looked them up on the web to find out the adults only live about 8 days. They have no mouths and spend their entire adult lives trying to reproduce.

Spring arrived early

We'd been waiting for spring and it arrived sooner than expected. A string of warmer than usual weather brought out flowers along the trail from the apartment to the new house.

August plant pictures

There are so many plants blooming now at Greene View Springs that I could fill a dozen screens. Here are a few that just began blooming and one tree.

Just one of many goldenrod variations.

Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum)

Tick-Trefoil

Bald cyprus
One of two we were given at the county fairgrounds last spring. They were bare root and it took a long time for them to leaf out. Both were planted in the damp soil on the edge of the original pond.

The fields are alive

Here are just a few of the flowers on the property these days:

Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa)

Missouri Ironweed (Vernonia missurica)

There are many ironweed varieties. "Missouri" was selected due to the large number of flowers on the flower head.

Common Marsh-Pink (Sabatia angularis)

Hoary Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum incanum)

UPDATE: My sister, the hortoculturist, found the name of this plant. The top few leaves on each stem appear to be spray painted white, same color as the flowers.

The garden so far

I took a few shots of the raised garden we've been building. All of the sides have been made from used lumber scavenged from an old barn that was being torn down within two miles of us. The first picture is taken from below the archway we were given.

Just below the satellite dish you can see the large plastic "tote" in a metal cage I got at an auction for $30. I added about $6 worth of fittings and connected it to a garden hose. It holds over 350 gallons of rain water that drops in from the south side gutter. Now we get water on demand by just squeezing the hose's nozzle. The pressure is low, just whatever gravity provides, but one doesn't have to run to the outlet to turn it off when done with it.

Last week I found a source for more totes and bought two for only $10 each. They need to be cleaned out and I need to buy more fittings to make them useful. Then they will be "installed" on the north side of the barn as high on the hillside as possible so they will provide a lot more water pressure.

The pathway between the upper and lower beds is slanted to the east and to the south and dries off quickly after a rainfall. The upper beds themselves slant a bit to the south and a bit more to the east so water that comes off the gravel and large rocks above gets distributed without help from us.

The lower beds are a bit more level, though that was more by accident than by plan.

The second picture is the same hillside but from more toward the west end. In the middle, next to the archway, are two persimmon trees that fruited last year. Also in the center are two metal grates with peas climbing them. Our hummingbirds are back and we can't keep the two feeders filled. I'm trying to find a large jar that will screw into the feeder openings so we could put out two or three days' worth of sugar water.

Rainy day, but two firsts

May apples have cropped up all over the place. The first bloom appeared in a clump that came up right in the path between the pole barn and the proposed house site.


















Today has been wet and mostly cloudy, but we've had a few new birds come to visit. Here's one, a rose-breasted grosbeak, on one of our suet feeders.

Early spring walkabout

Though it was a drizmal day, it wasn't a bad time for a few pictures of spring trying to catch on. Instead of a big long post with each picture described, I thought I'd let Picasa create a collage.

I haven't had time to look up the names of these plants, but I'm going to start an on-line album with plants we've found and I'll be sure they're all named before I put them into it. In the mean time, if you recognize any of these, let me know.



Beginning with the upper left corner and going clockwise, ending in the center, the pictures are a small red bud tree, May apples, mint plants in the creek, flowers farther down stream, new leaves on a young tree, field pussy-toes, more, but different yellow flowers, small shamrock-like leaves, and a large grouping of spreading lichens.

Finally, something colorful outside

We finally have something with more colorful than grass outside this spring. We got these daffodils on sale last fall and it looks like every one of them came up. There are still many that have yet to bloom.

Preparing a garden

Last year I tried to grow some vegetables but failed miserably. The soil near the apartment is mostly clay, and hard and dry. I planted tomatoes and grape tomatoes, peppers, brussel sprouts, cabbage and cucumbers. All were bought as starts.

Though we did get maybe twenty cherry tomatoes, the other tomatoes barely survived until late September when a few of them started to produce. I brought one that was in a pot inside for the winter and it is now blooming again. About 10 tomatoes that were on it when it came inside actually ripened, so we got maybe 25 altogether, all late in the season.

We got about 8 peppers and two plants that were in the same pot are now producing again inside.

We got zero cucumbers, no cabbage grew large enough to be worth bending over to pick, and the few brussel sprouts were about the size of peanuts.

This year I decided to do something serious. Using a few truckloads of soil dumped by the county from the ditching work along the property, and a bunch of lousy old wood from a nearby barn that is being taken down, I built some terraces and filled them in with real soil. Here's how it looks so far.



Look carefully, just below the large rocks, and you'll see the first plants that Sandy has transplanted. Transplanting sounds so easy. Not here. She had to use a pick axe to get through the hard clay and the gravel nearest the barn. Then she carried the clay away and replaced it with soil. Finally the plants could be set in place. Some we had in pots brought from Indianapolis, some came from along the county road on our property where the ditch was cleaned out, and some from a neighbor's overgrown iris plots.

Inside I've started spinach and a few other plants. Next time we go to town I'll get some peas which can be planted outdoors now. The archway has some new grape cuttings at its bottom. Finally, when I clear a path to them in the barn, I'll pull out the dozens of other seed varfieties we've saved from plants we've grown, seen or eaten and see if we can get the entire hillside growing.

Careful what you browse on

One of the most prevalent flowers in the woods this time of year is the White snakeroot - Ageratina altissima.



I don't understand plant taxonomy well enough to explain this, but my plant books use this latin name: Eupatorium rugosum. Here's what the linked page says: "White Snakeroot has been reassigned recently to the genus Ageratina, although it is still often referred to as Eupatorium rugosum." (Who gets to reassign latin names and how do they decide, is there a vote?)

It goes on to say every part of the white snakeroot plant is very toxic. It can kill grazing animals and its toxin can pass through milk cows and kill babies. Dear will not eat it. too bad, as it is very pretty in the woods these days.

We'll have to deal with this if we every get livestock.

Thistle

Yes, it's an invasive, but there's no arguing it's very pretty when blooming.

If you can determine which of the dozen or so varieties this is, please post a comment.

Typical Hedge-Bindweed - Calystegia sepium

There are dozens of similar species but I think this is correctly identified as Calystegia_sepium.

Our roses are dying...

... and that's a good thing!     ...at least in this case.

This picture shows a fairly large multiflora rose bush that is dying because of some blight that seems to be spreading. Multiflora roses are invasive, exotic shrubs. They were introduced from eastern Asia - China, Japan and Korea. In some places it is even classified as a "noxious weed."



Wikipedia has a nice picture of it blooming.

I have been cutting it off at the base, but it's hard (and sticky) work. The district forester says I should be sure to NOT clean my pruners between plants to encourage the blight to spread. It doesn't seem to affect any other plants.

I tried to take a picture of an area, about 20 feet in diameter, from which I had removed just one rose. But it's hard to show what isn't there in a picture. Next time I'll take both a before and an after shot.

Joe-Pye Junction

As spring progressed and the "weeds" grew, we soon became aware that many of them were a large plant commonly called Joe-Pye weed. Our variety is Eutrochium fistulosum, Hollow Joe-Pye Weed.

I have been cutting trails down the hill and across the property to the south boundary, and many of them that start near the house have seemed to naturally lead to a common point near where we hope someday to add a larger pond. As time went on it was clear that Joe-Pye weed was the predominant plant at the junction, and I have taken to using this posting's title to describe the area. No one walking down any of the trails needs to be told more than "go to Joe-Pye Junction" to describe the cross-trails point from which they would continue on one trail or another. Here are a few shots of it.

View of the junction from the north... Things are sort of overgrown. There is a trail through this but the plants are very wide now.	View from the west... It's hard to tell without a reference, but some of these plants are 8 feet tall!
A close up of the flower head with a few bees on it	Looking over the junction from the south across the area we hope will be a large pond

Springtime surprise

All winter long we have kept the temperature in the new apartment above freezing to try to save as many of our house plants and outdoor tropical plants as possible. There have been some casualties but most have survived.

Two plants in particular seem to have gone into suspended animation through the darker months. They were kept in the unfinished bedroom, the only room we could close off and keep warm, but it is on the north side and the window was kept covered most of the winter to retain warmth.

Here is one of them, a bird-of-paradise plant that I grew from seeds Sandy's son brought home from his honeymoon in Hawaii about 8 years ago.

The seeds sprouted soon after they were planted, and the plant seemed healthy all this time, but it wasn't until spring last year that I realized it needed full sun. I put it in the front yard of the house in Indianapolis until it was moved to Greene View Springs in July last year.

In the fall I noticed the flower stalks, but by then it was time to bring them in from the possible frost and freezing, and the hibernation began. A few weeks ago they were moved to the south-facing room in the sunny windows and the rest you can see.

There are a few more buds. I'll try to remember to get a picture when they are all blooming.

Rocks and roses

Last week while walking the property Sandy discovered some rocks she thought might be useful at the barn. Today she took me to see them.

Holy cow! Some of them are huge. The rock next to the fallen tree below is about 6 feet across one way and about 8 feet the other. Maybe some day we can get it dragged down the hill to use in building a dam below the spring. I doubt it would be worth the effort of moving it up the hill.



Apparently not wanting to waste the walk, Sandy decided to whack off a large multiflora rose. This is one of Indiana's most invasive exotic plants. We have them scattered around the property. They're not a big problem yet, but we don't want them to get ahead of us.

The species is such a problem in the state that it is against Indiana State Law to plant any variety of Rosa multiflora without a permit issued by the director of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources' Division of Entomology & Plant Pathology (IC 14-24-12-5).

One of the smaller large rocks can be seen in this picture also.

Inch and a half worm

As I came back from a short hike yesterday, this little fellow came along for the ride. I put him back into the high grasses after taking this picture. Click on the picture for a detailed closeup.


Near the bottom of the hill there are a lot of milkweed plants expelling their seeds. This one was particularly bushy. Each seed is attached to its own tiny cluster of silky down that serves as its own parachute. Unfortunately the other grasses are growing so tightly around each plant that most of them don't get to fly very far. I took a handful of the seeds and their down to the barn. In the spring I'll see if we can get them to grow so I can plant them in more areas of the property. I'm thinking of it as growing my own monarch butterflies.


Here's a nice link to the Kid Zone web site about milkweed and monarch butterflies.