Getting Tons of Help in Creation Gardening. Baby Squirrel Planned Giving Counselor

 Veterans Honor

We continue to receive the benefits of the "firehose pumping water from the Gulf of Mexico." The IBM weather page promises rain all day today - Friday. A few Hollyhocks arrived by mail Wednesday so I soaked and planted them Thursday morning.

The tons of help I am receiving is from the sky. When the total rainfall is calculated over the entire yard for a period of time, tons of nitrogenated water are washing off plants, soaking the mulch and ground, and fertilizing each new plant, whether out of the box or returning from last year.

To get Hollyhocks ready, I cut holes in the bags and let the rainwater soak the packing material for 30 minutes or more. Tap water would work somewhat, but that contains chlorine rather than nitrogen. Stored water is better, but rainwater is best. Although little rain fell afterwards, more fell last night.

Rain-soaked plants seem to grow in 30 minutes. Roots get plump and the upper part sprouts white, as if looking for the promised sun. We had a last-minute appointment with a favorite doctor, so the deadline sped up my digging - which was easy in the soaked soil.

Mrs. Ichabod asked. "You really like gardening, don't you?" I said, "Yes, the planting and the results." We enjoyed the hardy bulb harvest, dozens of daffodils blooming from digging them in previous years. The crew got free ones, and theirs bloomed well too. The Military Gardening Group coveted the Grape Hyacinths, which grew up tall and lasted long into the spring. 

Ranger Bob already has Joe Pye growing from last year. PFC did not want a nine foot plant, so I suggested Little Joe Pye, which I also planted. So did readers - and they loved it. PFC ordered his and wants a zillion Grape Hyacinths.

 Grape Hyacinths are low risk - easy to plant in the fall, inexpensive, colorful, sweet-smelling, and multiplying on their own.

I asked PFC, "Do you know how much Grape Hyacinths cost me?" He was not sure. I said, "A dime each!" Iris are often $20 each, so I remain allergic to the Greek word for rainbow - Iris. Ranger Bob has two large plantings of Iris, so we get some of his.

We all seemed to be waiting for rose blooms forever. Last Sunday I had a branch of Rugosa, with about 20 loose blooms on it, some hips starting to form. Now the Veterans Honor roses are full of buds about to open up. They are the perfect red rose - with old-fashioned fragrance, long-lasting blooms, and spectacular flowers.

Rugosa Rose Hips (seed pods)

Baby Squirrel Solicits Food

Mama squirrels wean their children at this time of year, so they have to find their own food. The rumor is - we have plenty. Nothing is put on the window sills, but yesterday a baby squirrel hopped onto kitchen window ledge and looked in with such innocent, needy brown eyes that I had to take action. Before I grabbed the food jug, he was at the other kitchen window, looking for more giving opportunities, I imagine.

Birds and squirrels eat randomly, and they compete for space and food, but everyone shares. We love to see cardinals and blue jays, but the starlings and grackles are comical in their group landings on the twin barrels. The backyard and the front yard have two baths each, which are handy for bathing and drinking. 

 Falling in Love

More on the Effectiveness of Rain - Rugosa Roses

I posted about Purple Splash roses being revived by rain, which is always effective.

Several events got me interested in rugosa roses. One was the mother of Almost Eden talking about old roses and hips, using them for wreaths. However, my initial investigation found them being offered for a princely sum on the Net, about $30 each.

Every rose flower tries to turn into a a rose hip - seed pod -
packed with Vitamin C. Some roses have very large hips.
Chewable Vitamin C tablets taste just like rose hips.

But I also heard about this group of roses being large and shade tolerant. I was thinking about which dominant plants could be featured in the semi-shaded Wild Garden, and I had my answer. They would block the back alley view, provide hips for birds and wreaths, and shelter for birds.

I checked out Direct Gardening, which has various roses and plants for deeply discounted prices.

Rugosa bushes are fragrant, tolerant of shade and salt spray.

Textured leaves make them rugosa wrinkled.

Rose growers are a bit wary of such low prices, but I read they replace roses that do not grow, just as the big commercial sites do - Edmunds, Jackson and Perkins. So - what about the price?

Six for $10! They threw in some bonus plants, too.

When they arrived, the bare root roses were little sticks with roots on them. The other plants were a bit stronger and more vital looking.

I put everything into the rain-barrel and made sure they were immersed. They remained soaking almost 24 hours. The hosta starts began to sprout. The balloon flowers also began to grow.

I looked closely at each rose stick - they were covered with buds!

Mrs. Ichabod was struck by how they revived overnight in rainwater. "Do people know about this?"

I said, "Roses are often soaked before planting. After I received some bad-looking roses from California, I soaked them in rainwater for a long time and pruned the canes and roots. They leafed out faster than any roses I planted before that time."

I went on to say, "Some people add bleach to water they use for soaking." Mrs. I - "Oh no!"

"And others add fertilizer, in another attempt to kill all soil microbes." Mrs. I - "Pathetic."

The cardboard collar is handy for protecting small plants
from weeds, clover, and foot-traffic.

Small Plant Protection
Nobody beats me in stepping on plants, so I have learned to set them off when they are in high traffic areas. I open up a cardboard food package - empty of course. Each one is a single piece, almost square, often with scoring to make the central hole easy to fashion with fingernails or scissors.

I make a ruffled clergy collar, without the ruffle, to pass over the plant and block most of the weed growth. The Elephant Ears were trying to grow in the front yard, and the clover were ready to take over completely - one example. The location was out in the sun where anyone might walk and injure the new plant rising up from its bulb.

In the Wild Garden I had brown sticks among brown leaves in the semi-shade. I made the collar weed-blockers and kept them in place with small logs on each side. On our walk today Sassy and I saw a familiar pile of logs. I picked out a light, rotten log and took it home for one of the collars.

To make a reasonably straight line, I tied twine between two screw hooks and stuck them in the soil.

I was about to dig into clay. "Oh, clay is so heavy and hard to dig, especially when the soil dries out."

But this clay was covered with cardboard in the fall and garnished with 60+ bags of leaves. This cardboard and leaves mulch proved so effective that hardly anything grew through the layer.

Underneath the mulch, in spite of the dry weather and no watering in the Wild Garden, the clay soil was soft, damp, and filled with red wiggler earthworms. I did not have to deal with digging through a tangle of grass roots - the sod was composted by the lack of sunlight, the abundance of soil creatures, the engineering and management of the Creator.

Covering the Wild Garden in the fall was a matter of getting cardboard boxes from Goodwill, laying them down on 1/2 of the backyard, and weighing down the cardboard with various logs, weights, garbage pails, boards from an old desk. Caution - autumn winds will try to recycle the cardboard into neighboring yards until it is wet and soggy from rain.

Rugosa roses are simple but aromatic.
Many prefer the old roses.

The Fun of Giving Roses and - Rugosa Roses, If You Like Having Really Big Hips

Mr. Lincoln has outlasted the fancy
rose of he year stars from a few years ago.
This rose is robust, impressive, and fragrant.

Mrs. Ichabod has had great results from visiting the chiropractor, not far from our house. We normally take roses to anyone we see, so this turned into extra fun. When appointments were twice a week, Chris said about cutting a new bunch, "We don't need to bring them roses on Wednesday. They just got a bunch Monday." When the receptionist, who adores roses, heard this, she gleefully joined me in claiming my wife was a rose miser.

All the clients loved seeing the roses, and I put some highly fragrant Mr. Lincolns in each time, since people enjoy choking on the fumes. OK, that is hyperbolic, but if someone cannot smell a Mr. Lincoln from 10 feet away, medical attention is advised.

One woman - a client at the chiro's - really talked about how much she loved roses. I had been speaking with her husband, who turned out to be a retired agriculture professor. When she said, "Have you talked enough during my appointment?" I said "No."

When I talked to the receptionist about sharing the roses with this rose fan, the hurt look on he receptionist's face told me that was a bad idea, so I doubled up and brought two vases using 10 cent large, plastic cups from Walmart. I keep telling people, "I have more roses than vases, but the vases slowly vanish."

We met the couple again by accident at Cracker Barrel and got invited to the Farmer's Market, where he volunteers. I brought a big bunch along on Thursday and more on Saturday, when we returned for the big day at the market.

Fragrant Cloud is...fragrant, but also prolific in blooming.
The color is tough to define, much better than the photographs suggest.

Yesterday a hand-addressed envelope came in the mail. Those envelopes are as rare as IRS refunds these days, so opened it up. The professor's wife wrote a thank-you for the roses we left for them at the Farmer's Market. They visited an ailing aunt with them and left the bouquet, so this delighted their aunt. The spreading of the roses was identical to our sainted neighbor, who took my roses to the dying patient she was helping. Mrs. Wright now has a rose, Fragrant Cloud, planted in her memory.

 The original rose is five-petaled,
so rugosas are a case of Back to the Future.

Rugosa Roses - The Last Frontier Is the First
If you would like to be complimented on your really big hips. Rugosa roses are the ticket. These old roses are not for bouquets and do not have showy blooms.

They do have large hips (rose seed pods), which are the source of Rose Hip Tea and Vitamin C tablets. Roses are herbs, but the modern ones are tilted toward showy flowers and have various weaknesses - like Black Spot and mildew.

The rugosa name is for their textured leaves.

Besides their big hips, which birds adore, Rugosa roses:

1. Make a great hedge, since they grow high and wide.
2. Need a lot less sun than hybrid tea roses.
3. Tolerate less water than the glamorous types.
4. Suffer from none of the weaknesses of hybrid teas - Black Spot, mildwe, and so forth.

A rugosa hedge needs some room and is rather sloppy,
but it needs little care, less sun and water.

Rugosa leaves are textured,
free of disease.