Gardening

The Smell of Winter Waning

Mon, January 23, 2012 1 Comment by Neil Hanson

It didn’t freeze last night. It’s a wonderful thing to walk outside with the dog in the morning, and be greeted by moist 35 degree air.

And…

Something else in the air this morning. A smell come tickling my nose across the bare patches of ground peeking through crusted snow.

The promise of Spring on the horizon, of Winter waning.

Like most smells, this one didn’t hit me in the face and scream its name. Instead, it was a subtle little “scent image” deep in my brain – one that made my eyes snap open and look around for the thing that was different.

The world around us is saturated with the smells of life, but the fact that we don’t pay attention has let most of the scent neural pathways in our brain atrophy. Our nose picks the smells up, and sends the message to our brain, but our brain figured out a long time ago that we don’t really care about all those smells, so it used the neural pathways for something else.

But the smells are still there, and the message is still being sent to the brain.

Now and then, when it’s quiet, and my mind’s washed pretty clean, the brain recognizes a little hint of message that the nose is sending, and pays just a little bit of attention.

This morning, that little hint felt a lot like winter starting to lose it’s grip on the world around me.

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Blooming Jade 2011

Thu, December 15, 2011 1 Comment by Neil Hanson

Once again this year, my old Jade plant bloomed for me. In addition, two of the younger plants, (about 10 years old), had a couple blooms this year. It looks like the blooms will last well beyond Christmas this year, as I kept them outside until the very last minute in the fall. If you’d like some hints on how to get your Jade to bloom, drop me a line and I’ll help you out. Read more »

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The Space Between

Mon, July 11, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

It’s in the space between one thing and another thing where life’s defined. Those times of transition, where we gather pile a ceremonial cairn of what got us to this point, and turn toward the next. Dorothy and her retinue in Oz needed to make a harrowing pilgrimage to end up on that dais, only to watch in disbelief as what she had believed with all her heart would be the method of her transition floated away without her.

Only in that moment of heartbreak – the space between the hope of the previous moment and the promise of the next –   could she see the bubble of transition, and where it needed to come from.

“Click the ruby slippers 3 times and say …”

I just published a post at Prairie Eden’s website, where I talked about this little window of transition our perennial gardens are going through this time of year in Colorado, mentioning that for the designer of physical space, it’s often the space between things that’s more important than the things themselves.

I recently made my own little pilgrimage of sorts, though I didn’t look at it that way when I planned it. It was simply an adventure – a bicycle ride from Monterey, California back to Colorado where I live. The first 2/3 of it I rode by myself, and the last third with a friend. I’ll be blogging about that ride quite a bit in the upcoming weeks and months, and have posted a summary from which I’ll link to all the other posts as I write them. So far, I’ve only published the summary and first day.

When I arrived at Monterey, I dropped my rented car off at the airport. That point of transition between the drive out and the ride back stands out clearly in my mind. I turned in the keys at the Hertz counter, and got my bike all arranged and packed up. After a quick stop in the mens room, I dropped the jeans and t-shirt that I’d worn on the drive out into a trash can, and rolled my bike out through the sliding doors of the airport into the California sunshine.

I remember looking around a bit as I dropped those traveling clothes into the trash, wondering if the action would look odd to folks. Nobody was looking. The moments of transition I was moving through only had significance for me – not for anybody else. To everyone else, I was just a strange guy wheeling a bicycle through an airport.

I think spaces of transition in our lives are like that most of the time. They consume us as we’re transformed by them, but to those around us, we’re just a strange guy with a bicycle…

 

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Some Gardening Cross-posts

Fri, April 29, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

A few cross-posts from our gardening site for the gardeners out there:

Pruning Trees
Pruning Wood-hardy Perennials
Pruning Root-hardy Perennials
Why Prune?

Spring Thyme

Thu, April 28, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

A post from our Prairie Eden website for my gardening readers.

Enjoy!

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Bluebirds

Mon, April 11, 2011 No Comments by Neil Hanson

In the early hours of morning I watched as a pair of Bluebirds investigated one of my Bluebird houses. I’ve tried for years to attract bluebirds to my garden, but without success. The habitat is right, the houses are right, but I just can’t seem to get them to nest.

Eastern Bluebird - Image from SmellLikeDirt.wordpress.com

It’s not that I lack for birds in the garden. I have many feeders out for many types of birds, great habitat and protection in the garden, and ponds full of water. I even have some Sharp-shinned and Coopers hawks that feed occasionally on the birds that feed at the feeders.

But I can’t ever attract Bluebirds to my houses.

Until this morning.

I saw the pair investigating the house, and while they flew off a bit when the dog was out wandering in the yard, they stayed close and kept their eye on the house. I had high hopes that maybe, finally, I’d have some nesting Bluebirds to watch.

As I type this later in the day, the pair hasn’t returned at all. Maybe they didn’t like the sound of the English House Sparrows that congregate on the other side of my house, or maybe they didn’t like that a dog wandered in the yard. Maybe the house just didn’t have the curb appeal they were looking for.

But they seem to have rejected my house, and that makes my sad.

Funny how this sort of thing works in my mind. I “want” something, and will go to great lengths to make it so. I’ve admittedly got a pretty strong will, (a character flaw I recognize), and will go to great lengths to force the desire of that will into being.

My will is an extension of my ego, and that ego and its will aren’t always right. It’s one of the deadly flaws of humanity, that we seem to feel deep inside our minds that our will is the way things are supposed to be. It’s how we’re able to create G-d in our own image over and over again.

But I’m pretty sure we’ve got that upside down in our mind. We don’t get to be the decider of the order of things. We’re just part of the order of things, albeit a pretty intrusive part.

I want to watch Bluebirds in my garden, but there’s something about the location or the surroundings of the houses I’ve put out that the Bluebirds don’t like. They’re not rational creatures who analyze their way through this problem with logic – they’re instinctive little guys who’re working from the collective memory of hundreds of generations of Bluebirds before them. And that collective memory and instinct pushes them to look elsewhere after they stop in and gander at the houses I’ve so lovingly and willfully put out for them to consider.

I’ll keep hoping for a pair of Bluebirds to call my backyard home someday. Maybe I’ll try new locations next year. And who knows – they might be back still this year, or another pair might take a look. After all, my realtor friends tell me it only takes the right buyer…

But for today, I’m enjoying the little lesson they’ve helped me see. While I might still want Bluebirds in my backyard, it’s apparently not what they need right now, and maybe not what I need right now either.

After all, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, I hear you might just get what you need…

 

Jade Blooms

Tue, December 7, 2010 No Comments by Neil Hanson

Each year, soon after I drag my giant Jade plant into the house for the winter, it explodes with delicate white flowers that grace my office for a couple months before fading away. I never knew Jade plants could bloom, and only stumbled onto the secret by accident.

First, they’ve got to be pretty old before they’ll even think about blooming. This one that blooms so big each year was 10 years old before it threw its first flower. Now, at close to 20, the blooms get better and better each year.

Second, the secret that I stumbled on was hardship. Jade is a tropical plant, and if the frost gets on it, it’s done. Here in Colorado, our evenings get cold all year, and in the fall, they can get down close to freezing pretty early in September. The trick is to watch the forecast carefully, and leave it outside in the sun and cool nights as long as possible. Then, when you’ve waited as long as possible, and made the plant suffer through as many cold nights as possible without freezing it, you bring it in and put it close to a nice sunny window for the winter.

And wait a week or so.

Something about that combination triggers the plant to put nice pink and white buds out, that eventually open up into the delicate white flowers.

We’re like the Jade plant in many ways I think. Deep branches with heavy scars come with the wisdom required to foster the delicate flowers of beauty in life. Our early years are focused on the intense growth and development of youth, with little time for tiny beauty that we might be able to coax from our experience. Spending some time out in the cold, suffering through close encounters with killing frost, helps us to understand the real value of the warm side of the sunny winter window.

With enough years, and with enough scars, we learn to flower as well. Not the big showy flowers or the stunning growth of youth, but the delicate white buds and flowers that can only happen if you stumble on the trick.

Seeds and Journeys

Fri, October 22, 2010 No Comments by Neil Hanson

If you’ve been following my last few blogs, you know that this is the time of year I’m particularly fascinated by the finches working the seeds out of the Rudbeckia and Echinacea seed-heads in my garden. Bobbing and swaying at the end of the stalk, they’re undeterred from their attraction to the seeds tucked into the drying seed-heads.

Many of the finches working tirelessly in my gardens this time of year are migratory – stopping to visit my gardens as they journey south. The seeds they coax from my garden are catching a ride through the air, beginning a journey south. They’ll fall on new ground, and find root in new soil, and transform themselves into a new plant in the season of warmth that’ll be coming soon.

It was a beautiful growing season this year. The Rudbeckia grew well, working hard to create buds that would transform into flowers that would attract bees, in turn transforming into ripe seed-heads to attract birds. And now, the garden has done all it can do, and the seeds are handed off to the finches. The journey toward transformation begins.

I saw my oldest son off on a great adventure this week. We flew to LA together, then shared a few beers at the airport while we waited for our next flights. When we parted – he for his gate that would take him to off to Southeast Asia, and me to my gate that would take me up to San Francisco to work for the week – we hugged each other and said goodbye, then walked our separate ways. I stopped after a few steps, and looked back to watch him walk away, till he turned a corner and was gone from my sight. I turned, and walked toward my gate.

I was glad I’d kept my eyes dry as we said goodbye, but I wasn’t able to keep them dry as I walked to my gate. The wet eyes came from pride at the bright and hard-working man he’s become, from shared excitement over his coming adventure, a little from the worry that every father must feel, and just a tiny bit for the loss I feel already at having him so far away from me.

All he’s done in his life to this point has been preparation for this adventure. Like the Rudbeckia plant that worked hard all summer to prepare itself for the finch, he’s worked hard to prepare himself for this moment of transformation. As I write these words, and the finches carry the Rudbeckia seeds south to new soil, his flight across the Pacific takes him to new lands in far-away places, to take root emerge again as the ongoing evolution of who he is becoming.

How often do we look at the life we lead and the seasons within that life as a continuum of growing seasons – where part of each season is the preparation and ripening of our “self” for our next journey of transformation? When the finches come looking for the seeds of transformation, will we have prepared them? If so, will we hand those seeds over and open the doors to new soil, or turn our heads down and hide from the opportunity to take wing and become again?

NOTE: Thanks to Tony Pratt for photographs


The Seed and the Journey

Tue, October 12, 2010 No Comments by Neil Hanson

American Goldfinch - David Ko

I love watching finches pulling seeds out of ripened seed-heads. They’ll sway with the stalk as it moves under their weight, displaying amazing balance while pulling seeds from the blackened and drying head they cling to.

There are many seeds that only germinate if they pass through the digestive track of a bird, or at least germinate much better if they pass through that digestive journey. In fact, I’ve heard stories of plants that have gone extinct after the bird that feeds on their seeds goes extinct. (This may be enhanced legand, but it certainly seems feasable, so it makes for a good story either way.) Then there’s the story of certain forest trees whose seeds only germinate in the heat of a forest fire, essentially assuring that when the forest does burn, they’re the first plants to germinate in the newly cleared forest, where there’s plenty of light. (This one is well-documented.)

We see this cycle of life everywhere around us – this ripening of a seed, which then becomes the next generation. As a parent, I find great joy in watching my children on their journey of ripening, growing far beyond what I could have imagined when I watched them first sprout. And see them now at an age when yet another generation will soon begin to sprout from the ripening that life now shares with them.

But this process of ripening, journey, germination, and start all over again isn’t something that only exists at the macro level of the passing of one generation to another. Within the life we lead, we should look for places where this cycle is trying to emerge as part of our larger journey through life. We’re not meant to slog along, one step in front of the other, never looking up. We’re meant to mature within each season that life shares with us. Only through this maturing process can we ripen into the fruit and the vessel that’s capable of producing the seed of what we are meant to become next in this lifetime.

The journey of your life to this point has produced the seed of what you can become next. You’ve weathered many storms, and learned quite a bit to become what you are today. But what you are is only the vessel to deliver the seeds of what you can next become. Becoming the better you – the one that your soul and your energy is meant to become next – happens when you let go of the seeds and let them germinate.

The seed itself needs to go on a journey first – it needs some catalyst to help it to germinate. It’s probably different for each of us. For some of us, the seeds our life has produced will germinate best right where they drop. For others, finches will pull from us the seeds we cling to as they migrate past us, giving us a chance to germinate far from where we are today. For others, the heat of some fire is required to break open the seed.

I suspect in most cases, we don’t even know what needs to happen. We probably feel a ripening within us, but cling to the old vessel that we’ve been to this point, afraid to release the seeds of what we need to become next, afraid to let those seeds travel whatever journey they need to travel in order to germinate into the best “next iteration” that we can be. I suspect this is the source of a lot of the depression that we see and feel around us each day.

Are you feeling a bit “ripe” these days? Feeling a bit anxious about what’s next? Feeling a bit underwater or over your head? Feeling a sadness that’s hard to explain?

Maybe it’s time to let the finches take the seeds where they need to go, or let the firestorm scar and open the seed. Maybe the vessel that’s you has worked hard to produce the seed of what you need to become, and now you need to let the seed take its journey and germinate. There’s an even better you that can only emerge when that seed is allowed to take that journey – release it and follow it. Become the better you that you’ve laid the foundation for. Whatever you do, don’t fall down onto the cold damp fall ground and let the seed go to waste.

Embrace it.

Celebrate it.

Release it so you can emerge again – an even better you!

The October Garden

Sat, October 9, 2010 2 Comments by Neil Hanson

Seed-heads ripen and stand dry on the dead stalks of the Echinacia and Rudbeckia in the garden. The tops of the grasses turn golden as they dry in the autumn sun. The Agastache and Mexican Sage are the last strong flowers in the garden, and with the first hard frosts they die back as well.

To the untrained eye, the garden in autumn represents “the end” of the season, but to the seasoned gardener, the autumn is really the beginning of the next season.

Woody plants cut off nutrients and water to their leaves, as they conserve the energy they’ll need for the upcoming bloom – right after they take a nap… Hardy perennials shed their tops and curl up in the energy of their roots, preparing for the explosion of new growth that’s soon to come – right after they take a nap…

Goldfinches on Echicacia Heads

This is the height of the gardening season for the birds. Goldfinches line up for a place on the drying seed heads to pull morsels out for dinner, beginning the life of new plants that the seeds will produce thanks to the help of the birds. The last of the migrating hummingbirds dine on the Agastache and Mexican Sage, helping them to begin their new year further south. My bird feeders empty twice as fast this time of year, as they’re shared by a few remaining summer residents, most of the new winter residents, and a few migrating guests.

It’s easy to look at this time of year as a time to cut everything back in the garden – to “neaten it up” before winter. But this is a time when the garden needs to stand and prepare for the coming season. Cutting some plants back too fast can trick them into thinking they need to send up new growth now. The multitude of birds depend on the heavy growth that remains in the garden as protection from hungry predators, as well as depending on the seed-heads on the plants as they die back to provide a good diet. For the forbe eating birds, the heavy growth also provides a higher likelihood of some high-protein bug-snacks.

I’ve been moving through a “cleaning out” stage in my life recently. I make weekly trips to the Goodwill store with bags of stuff that it’s time for someone else to have. I’m trying not to go too fast, or to make rash decisions. While it’d be easy to see this time in my life as an “ending”, where it’s time to clean things up as the kids have moved on to their own lives. I choose instead to see it as only the beginning of the next growing season. I need to move slowly through the cleaning process and keep the garden healthy. As the winter moves along, I’ll need to continue to cut things back in their time, and keep the garden as healthy as I can for the next stage of this new growing season.

Happy gardening. Enjoy that standing grass and the seed-heads as the birds enjoy the meal. Look forward to the snow that’ll keep the roots warm as they’re curled up for the winter. Keep checking those closets and corners for stuff that it’s time somebody else took off your hands…

May Snow

Tue, May 11, 2010 No Comments by hansondad

Here we are approaching mid-May on the High Prairie, and the forecast is for snow tonight and tomorrow. It’s cold and damp outside today.

The daylilies are looking so healthy and robust now, and the Iris are showing some fat buds. The Butterfly Bush are sending up shoots hoping for the warmth of summer to start sucking them faster from the ground.

But Mother Nature seems to be thinking about one last blast of winter. They’re calling for a foot of snow at 6000′.

How strong will the daylilies and the iris be on Thursday I wonder? This is so sad, to see this forecast, and to know the fate that it holds for those plants who are betting on the promise of spring.

Mother Nature is a harsh mistress on the High Prairie…

Snow and saddles

Fri, April 23, 2010 No Comments by hansondad

For the last few days as we have had nice weather, I’ve been thinking about how nice it is for the plants to get a real spring this year – one where they aren’t demolished by a late April or early May snow that makes them burn lots of energy starting over. How nice it is to see healthy plants exploding from the ground in April.

Then, woke up to snow this morning. Not a lot yet, but you never know. If it doesn’t pile up too much, and the temp doesn’t drop too far into the 20′s, most of them should be OK.

It makes me appreciate the resiliency of the plants that survive here, and their ability to face each new spring with fervor, with no idea what will happen. They just keep moving forward, growing, blooming, expanding.

And then my thoughts fall back to the new saddle that I put on my bike last weekend. The old saddle worked OK, though I knew that it wasn’t the greatest design around for keeping pressure off of critical nerve areas and certainly lacked comfort after many hours in it. But I never thought about it – just kept riding it because it’s what I know.

A saddle is such a personal thing, isn’t it? Each year I go through the process of getting the sit-bones broken in to the saddle. There is predictability to the saddle, the pain it causes, and how it fits. It might not be perfect, but I know it, and know how it fits. Recently someone asked me about my saddle, and my response was the same as it always is: “Sure the saddle isn’t perfect – it’s a pain in the ass after enough hours in it – but I know how it is going to feel and how we react to one another.”
But I made the leap last weekend and bought a new one. Now I have to go through the pain of breaking it in to my butt, and breaking my butt in to it.
It’s new and unknown. A little scary, a little exciting.
As I begin the journey through the middle years of life, I realize that there are many aspects of my life that are like this. There may be some comfortable things that are not necessarily the healthiest for me – some habits that I need to change, maybe some different perspectives that I need to gain.
But like the plants that grow here on the high plains, I need to have the courage to keep growing and blooming, and not be overly concerned about the weather that might surprise me next week.

The June Garden

Thu, May 22, 2008 No Comments by hansondad

June – the summer transition month.

Our seasons this year seem to have been delayed by a couple of weeks, though maybe this is just my perception based on a winter that seemed colder and longer than usual. I am certain that this perception has nothing whatsoever to do with another years worth of sand having passed through the hourglass of my life’s clock…

Depending on how warm June turns out to be, it is possible that it could still be an excellent month for planting perennials. Any spaces that need some extra color and punch during the summer would appreciate the planting of annuals as soon as possible in the month, and the space will reward you with color for the rest of the summer.

Pruning tasks in June

  • Lilacs should be pruned as soon as they finish blooming. They are a robust plant that often likes to be pruned, and can be pruned to a variety of forms. If you have a mature one in the right spot, try pruning it more like a tree, keeping all of the suckers and lower branches pruned back, leaving a few arching trunks to grow tall. This only works well on the taller varieties, like the common lilac and Canadian lilacs.
  • Other flowering shrubs – generally, flowering shrubs should be pruned back as soon as they are done flowering in the spring.
  • Trees for shape and health

 

Perennials to divide in June

  • When the iris are done blooming, they can be dug and divided. Dig the rhizome clumps, and carefully pull them apart into individual plants. Use something like grass trimmers to cut the tops back into a fan shape or v shape about 4” to 6” tall. Plant the individual plants so that the top of the rhizome is right at the surface of the ground.
  • Daylilies can be divided anytime, but right after blooming is an excellent time that allows you to enjoy this year’s bloom.

Other June tasks

  • Keep pond pH down to a healthy range.
  • Early June is still not too late to plant summer lilies (like Asiatic), though if they are planted as bulbs, they will likely not flower until next year.
  • Remove spent flowers from all plants, and remove spent stalks from plants like iris and daylily.
  • Fertilize for summer growth.

 

Rhythm Beneath May-Day Snow

Thu, May 1, 2008 No Comments by hansondad

Sitting in front of my office window is an old Jade plant. He waits patiently for the long winter to end, so that I will put him out in the sun for the summer. He has waited patiently since October, when he had to come it.

On the other side of the Jade plant, through the glass of the big window, on a Colorado May Day, a sea of giant sopping snowflakes works feverishly to try to blanket the high prairie with a wet spring snow.

The odds are low, but it could happen. Every few years the Winter Warlocks of the Mountains storm down to meet the Winter Witches of the High Prairie, and they leave behind a devastating landscape of snowy white destruction in May. But the ground is quite warm following several days of bright and warm high prairie spring days, and the sunlight tries heroically to break through the clouds now and then, so my money is down on the Fair Lady of Springtime to be victorious on this May Day.

Today, it is easy to visualize and feel the “spirits” of the seasons that so many people have named throughout time. The never-ceasing rhythm and undulation of the spirits as they move across a land – sharing the land as their “playground”. The cruel and relentless spirit of Winter fighting one last time to reclaim a land that has begun to explode in the beauty that lives among the swishing skirts of a fair and beautiful spirit of Spring.

Upon the landscape of this walk through life I feel the spirits of the seasons as they wrestle with one-another along my path. A springtime of joy that works hard to wrestle the path from the icy grip of a winter of depression perhaps, or a warm summer of contentment that is not ready to yield to an autumn of recollection.

My Jade plant waits patiently. He knows that his time in the sun will come again – I am certain that he feels that coming time in the deepest core of his branches. The cycle never fails – the trick is to stay in the rhythm and the harmony of the cycle that never ends.

The Balance of Beauty, Ugly, and Utility

Wed, April 30, 2008 No Comments by hansondad

I design and build gardens for people. It is a dream job in many ways – the ability to use as your palate beautiful plants that will evolve and grow each year.

As a result of this vocation, people often want to talk about plants, and get ideas on which plants are the “best”. Of course, as with most things, “it depends”, right?

Each plant brings its own particular beauty, expressed in many different ways. Some plants compliment one another, some will always clash. Each has its own “hardiness” for cold, or heat, or sunlight, or shade, or soil, or moisture. And of course, they each have their own “ugliness” too.

Right now I am looking out my office window at the purple Delosperma that lies drooping over my rock walls. It looks brown and dead – starkly unattractive really as the Colorado springtime is exploding in the garden around it. However, I know that by the time that June gets here, those ugly masses of drooping brown will have transformed once again into beautiful bright drapes of purple and green dressing-up the granite walls.

So, I accept this little period of ugly, knowing the beauty that is to come once again.

Our relationships with others are like this too I think. Perfection is pretty hard to find in anything – particularly in people it seems. I know that the gap between me and anything approaching perfection is too great a distance to see on the clearest of days. So, the people who are my friends, family, lovers, or whatever, must have decided that even though I have my seasons of ugly, the beauty and utility that I offer makes the ugly season worth overlooking. No accounting for that…

What is it that makes this possible – this ability to overlook the ugly season that a person displays in order to see the beauty when that season is upon us? I have to say that when I am gardening, there is truly some level of connection that I have with the plants that I put into the ground. I know that plant, and I know its many phases, and I know what it is finicky about, and I know that if I treat it right, and place it right, and assure proper care, that it will – once again – wash the garden with the beauty that I know so well.

My friends are like that too I think. It is that connection that you develop with a person that allows you to rest assured that you understand the balance of beauty and ugly and utility in this person well enough to deal with them, and to help them grow as they are meant to grow. The tighter and closer the connection is, the more in harmony we become with each other, and the thing that once seemed only ugly, can now become balance and harmony.

May Gardening Advice

Wed, April 30, 2008 No Comments by hansondad

Let the planting begin!

May is the perfect time for planting perennials in Colorado. This is the time of year that you can plant very small stock, and provided that you care for them well, they will generally be robust and mature by the end of their first summer. Be sure that the new plants are watered daily for the first month, and when we get into the hot days of summer, don’t let the new plants get too dry this first year.

This is also an excellent time to divide perennials that are getting a bit crowded, or if you are just looking to propagate some new plants. Daylilies are very easy to divide, and now is an excellent time to do so – the earlier in May the better. Dig the clump that you want to divide, and set the clump in a pail of water for a few minutes. The reach down into the pail, and carefully tease the plants apart from each other. Get these plants into the ground and watered ASAP, and be sure to keep them from drying out for the first couple of weeks. The same method can be used to tease apart clumps of many grasses, but do this only in the evening or on cool days, as those first few hours and days after dividing are critical for the survival of many grasses.

There are many perennials that will benefit from occasional division of clumps, and May is an excellent time for most of them. However, there are exceptions. Don’t divide Iris yet – let them bloom first and then divide them in June when they are done. Same with Peonies – they should be divided either after they bloom, or at the end of summer when they are going dormant – I seem to have the best luck dividing after they bloom and giving them lots of TLC that first summer.

May is a good time to prune many shrubs as well. Once the Forsythia are done blooming, prune them right away. They can be pruned as hard as you want to if you do so right away when they are done blooming, and you will get flowers again next year, as the flowers come on the previous year’s growth. Lilac should also be pruned as soon as they are done blooming, though in most areas around here that isn’t until June.

As soon as the trees start to put their green on the branches, it is good to start pruning for shape. Spring is when the root spends most of it’s energy for new growth, so it makes sense to get that pruning done before the energy is wasted on growth that you don’t really want anyway.

If you have a pond and fish, May is a critical time to make sure that the water is in good shape, and that you get the pH and algae under control right away. Barley is a good but slow assistance to the high pH problem that we will generally see, but there are other good products available that work much faster. There are also good products to chemically control algae, though once your pH is healthy, the algae will become much less of a problem.

Happy planting and dividing!

The Heron Visits My Pond

Sun, April 27, 2008 No Comments by hansondad

As I looked out my window this morning, I watched as a heron tried to have breakfast at my Koi pond. I think that he got a few, but I scared him off before he did too much damage.

We have a relationship, this heron and I.

My ponds and my fish represent an easy meal for him, even though there are many places close by where he could eat unmolested. For him, the fish represent his way of making a living for his family.

For me, I raise the fish and sell them, so they represent – for me – one way that I make my living for my family as well. A single fish can represent a value of $100 or more for me, and a hungry heron can easily devour several of them at a meal.

So we are at a loggerheads, the heron and I. I look for ways to stock the pond close to me with fish that he can eat for free, and ways to deter him from my ponds. But my fish will always represent the easy meal for him.

This little relationship is a microcosm of geopolitical politics, isn’t it? We are all after the same thing – a way to make our living in this life – and way too often my way of making my living will keep you from making the living that you want.

What shall I do, then? When does it become OK to simply shoot the heron so that I can have all the fish that I want? By law, I could never do that, but figuratively speaking, where is that point? If I put a little effort into the problem, can I find a solution that makes us all a little more rich, and the heron can live?