Growing Peaches

Growing peaches has been one of the most rewarding aspects of planting the fruit orchard here at Seven Oaks. The ironic thing is that among the peach trees, the one we originally thought would die is the one producing fruit this year.

Peaches ripening on the tree

When we planted the fruit orchard trees in 2007, they came as bare root sticks called whips (I think) from the Arbor Day Society. This is an Elberta peach tree.  The first year, all of the trees struggled to develop roots, but this poor peach tree never thrived.  After two years it really looked as if it was going to die.  My husband wanted to build another little raised garden bed near the back patio. He came up with the idea of running a PVC pipe from the gutter and leader underground and into the soil under the raised bed.  Rainwater from the roof of the house now runs directly into that garden bed and to the roots of the peach tree. I was really on the fence with that idea. On the one hand, given Virginia's crazy hot summers and droughts, it sounded like a good plan.  On the other hand, I was concerned that the rainwater might rot the roots or over water the peach tree. The poor tree looked as if it wouldn't make it anyway, so we decided to take a chance and complete the project.

Peach tree blossoms at Seven Oaks, April 2012

After just about a year, that struggling peach tree took off! It now tops 11 feet tall.  It is the only tree in the entire yard that has peaches. At last count, there are about 25 peaches on the tree.

It dropped a lot of fruit early in the spring.  I'm still learning about growing peaches, but from what I understand, that is natural. "Thinning" the fruit enables the tree to put more energy into the remaining fruit so that they grow bigger.  I think our tree naturally dropped some extra fruit when it was still small.

Right now the peaches are turning gorgeous shades of orange-red.  They are hard as a rock, so no picking and tasting them yet!  I'm looking forward to the harvest.  Even if they don't taste as good as store bought, they're MINE...grown the way I want them to be grown...not waxed, not sprayed with all sorts of scary stuff, but grown about 20 feet from my kitchen window.

And you can't beat that for freshness.

The Resilient Lily

Deer are perhaps the most talked-about critter among gardeners.  In our Master Gardener class this past winter, for example, I learned that deer are actually a worse problem for many families living in the local town of Farmville (yes, that's the town's real name) than for some of us living in the country.  A small herd of deer, for example, has taken up residence in a housing development.  There are undeveloped lots within the housing development - lots with steep hillsides, I am told, that make it very expensive and difficult to build houses. So the developer left them as empty, wooded lots.  There are ponds nearby, and streams, and so the deer have become very comfortable living in the empty wooded lots and wandering into the neighbors' yards each evening to feed.  Someone reported that an entire landscape was eaten overnight by voracious deer; azaleas, for the most part, but every flower the homeowner planted around his house was devoured in one night.

I lost most of our shade garden kit that way from deer emerging from the woods and nibbling the plants down to stubs, although the problem that I had with sand washing down from the pathways also compounded what was already poor quality soil.  I've written about this before in a post called The Winding Garden Path, so I won't beat myself up or bore you again with the details. Suffice to say that experience is indeed a great teacher when it comes to gardening.

The shade garden kit we purchased from the catalog included daylilies, coral bells, lilies and hosta.  Note that last two plants, please: lilies and hosta.  I might as well hung up an "all you can eat" buffet sign for the deer by planting lilies and hosta. Deer love to eat both Asiatic lilies and hosta.  Within weeks, the struggling plants had been eaten to the quick. I plant hosta right next to my porch now - the deer don't come that close to the house.  There's plenty for them to eat in the woods and among the fields, and I keep hoping they won't notice the hosta "candy" planted by the porch steps.

I thought that all of the original shade garden plants were gone for good, but as I've been quoted as saying, "Nature is resilient."  This beautiful lily bloomed for the first time, a remnant of that shade garden kit planted several years ago.  Nodding among the new plants, it lends a bright, cheerful color to a darker corner of the garden, drawing the eye down the pathways.

I love that lily.  Lilies are a sign of rebirth. There's a reason why at Easter, many churches include lilies as part of their decorations.  They symbolized resurrection, and seeing that lily struggle out of the poor soil, push forth energy into producing leaves and stems again after being chewed to death by the deer, and finally making a brazen statement - "I am here. I live. You cannot keep me from blooming!"

Lately, I have been meeting a lot of people like that lily.  So many people among my circle of family and friends lately struggling with cancer, other illnesses, economic insecurity and family troubles.  It's like the infection from the world has spread down to the personal level; no one is without struggles.  Yes, everyone has always had their share of problems, but lately I feel as if everywhere I turn, someone has bad news and needs prayers and emotional support, which I am glad to give.

I cannot  watch the nightly news anymore; it's story after story of war, tragedy, people behaving badly.  I suppose the world was always thus.  We watched the movie Spartacus the other night and the cruelty of ancient Rome was a good reminder that yes, the world was the same, or perhaps even worse in some ways, throughout all of time.  The human heart doesn't change much over the centuries. The expression of vice and virtue does.

There among my plants blooms this lone lily, a symbol of hope and rebirth, a survivor of my hardscaping mistakes when I tried to build the path the first time, a survivor of deer, drought and insects.  And it blooms more lovely than ever.

Among the vice of the world, virtue blooms too.  It is often hidden among the dirt and debris of the world's garden, but it is there. 

The world may have its share of troubles, but with God's grace, we continue to bloom where we are planted.

Pierre the Tiger

Pierre the Tiger

Sometimes I wish I had the courage (or perhaps foolhardiness?) of my cat.  Take Pierre, for example.  A few days ago, hubby called me to the windows to watch Pierre's antics.  Pierre was outside, jaunting through the garden and exploring the new area we planted.  I stood by the windows and watched. I could barely see his chubby gray self, hunkered down among the day lilies.  His body was in that "I'm about to pounce" pose that any cat owner easily recognizes. He'd seen something, and he was on the hunt.  He crouched low and suddenly sprang into the air.  But what was he trying to catch? A squirrel!  The squirrel darted up the pine tree, then stopped midway, chattering and gnashing his teeth. Did that deter Pierre? No, of course not.  Now he was trying to leap up the tree, but he's not a climber and so the match ended with a draw. The squirrel, of course, darted up the tree and crossed over to the next pine tree, and in the blink of an eye was gone. Not so my tough cat.  He parked himself at the base of the pine tree and waited, until finally I had to go outside, pick him up, and carry him in, protesting all the way.  To this day, Pierre is probably thinking, "If it wasn't for my meddling Mommy, I could have HAD that squirrel!"

Green as Color in the Garden

A serene, green corner of the garden.

With all the talk about color palettes and color wheels and coordinating color in the garden, it's easy to forget that green counts as a color, too. Many garden design books talk about green as a 'neutral.'  I think of green in the garden the way I think of my favorite pair of black pants.  It goes with everything.  With the thick backdrop of loblolly  pine trees behind the garden, dark green is the backdrop here to the flowers.  And of course all the flowers have green leaves, except the dead plants but I don't count those.

Yet when you have just green shades in the garden, it can be very soothing.  There's one corner of the flower garden that now rests in shades of greens and grays.  In early spring, the mounds of phlox growing low on the ground are covered with bright pink blossoms, but by June they are resting and refreshing themselves, growing and spreading out. 

The variegated green leaves you see in the right side are from my red twig dogwood.   It does not have flowers, but the leaves offer beautiful color and interest. They are a light green color with plenty of white on them.  The stems and trunk of the red twig dogwood are red - a bright cardinal red. During the winter, when the leaves are gone from the shrub and there's not much to look at in the garden, it really does provide a beautiful contrast, especially in the snow.

Other greens adding interest include the spiky foliage from the day lilies.  Many of the day lilies are starting to bloom, but I have some thick clumps of what is euphemistically called ditch lilies - the orange tiger lilies that grow wild by the roadside of America - and these have dark green, sword-like foliage which is quite attractive.

Another big swatch of green in the garden is the yarrow. Achillea "Fire King" has spread throughout the sunny perennial garden.  Soon, the clusters or florets will begin blooming, adding a sort of red-purple mistlike haze over the great swaths of lace-like green leaves.  Behind them are the Rudbeckia, the Black Eyed Susan, and various daisies.  While the daisies have begun blooming with cheerful yellow flowers, the daisy and Rudbeckia foliage adds more green.

Flower garden, June 2012

The green area offers a peaceful, restful place during the hot summer days. I can look out my office windows at this scene, and although I am looking at it from above and a different perspective than in the photograph, it does offer a serene place for contemplation and retreat when I need a brief respite from work.  

National Hug a Cat Day and Venus Amazing

Pierre the Great (and the Gray)

Today is National Hug a Cat Day, which of course means that Pierre and Razzleberry are hiding.  Can you tell they "love" hugs? (sarcasm intended.)  Actually, Pierre is out on the front porch snoozing to get away from his pesky little 'brother' Razzleberry.  The cats have been getting along well, but Razzleberry is three years younger than Pierre, and on some days it shows.  Pierre remains an active cat but Razzleberry wants to play, and he doesn't seem to like playing with cat toys. Pierre can entertain himself for hours batting around stuffed mice or his favorite, the stuffed chicken toys with real tufts of feathers, but Razzleberry doesn't have much use for stuffed toys.  He'd prefer to play with Pierre's tail.  Then the fight is on, with plenty of growls, snarls, and jockeying for position to see which cat has the upper paw.  Fortunately they are both lovers rather than fighters and aside from some nasty sounding growling and hissing, nobody gets hurt. 

I love to hug my cats but they don't really appreciate hugs, do they?  Now Shadow the dog would love a hug, but she smells like a pair of old gym socks left at the bottom of a locker, which makes her rather unpleasant to hug sometimes. There are the occasional ticks marching along her coat . I give her a hug anyway and try to avoid the ticks. 

Life has been good, but busy. The garden is settling into its summertime beauty. We've had enough rains so that the flower garden is blooming abundantly. The Japanese beetles arrived two weeks ahead of schedule and are already drowning themselves en masse in the bird bath.  I told John that we should just put out more bird baths - gives the birds a place to play and acts like a natural Japanese beetle lure.

We lost one dogwood tree very suddenly, and it makes me sad that the something attacked and killed this beautiful red dogwood.  We had no warning signs that the tree was going to die. John noticed a sort of horizontal slash across the trunk, which we believe was made by an insect of some kind. A few days later all the leaves turned brown and now the four year old tree is dead.  I will need to research what could cause death to a healthy dogwood tree that fast.   I am almost certain it was an insect as we do not use any chemical sprays (so no chem damage) and there was no sign of fungus, virus or other infection.  It was just like sudden death to the entire tree after that weird slash appeared on the trunk.

Today, by the way, marks the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. It's an amazingly rare occurrence.  It happened in 2004 and now today and tomorrow in 2012, and then it won't happen again for centuries! Of course you cannot look directly at the sun without damaging your eyes, but NASA has information on how to see it. I'll wait for the photos.  The transit of Venus has all sorts of astrological symbolism. I am not into astrology (it's kind of superstitious in my book and against both logic and Christian values) but I do find it fascinating that this occurrence won't happen again for another 100 or more years. The last time this happened was in 1882!  Here is NASA's information on the 2004 and 2012 transit of Venus.  Along with how much I love the natural world, the animals and plants, I love learning about the stars, planets and galaxies. Just as I've sat in awe in a lawn chair and watched meteor showers here so too I hope to see on the news more pictures of Venus moving across the face of the sun....it will not happen again in my lifetime.  Another awe-some moment!

Nature's Resilience

See the day lily at the base of the pine tree? Discarded root that grew.

I've often said that nature is resilient, and the day lilies blooming  at the edge of the woods prove it. This spring, we dug up many plants in the island bed in the center of the front lawn.  Some were so overgrown with grass, probably seeds blown in from the lawn, that we could not untangle them; we tossed them into the woods to let nature compost them.  One plant was the Stella d'Oro day lily.  I had another, and I was able to transplant a bit of the roots into the flower garden by the driveway. The root took, and now I have another one there, and so I was content. The rest of the root system, totally entangled with thick grass, was thrown into the woods and forgotten.

Then this spring - a flash of bright gold among the leaves.  Shadow and I investigated. Not only had the tangled bit of roots taken hold and grown, but an abundance of flowers greeted us. 

Sometimes I feel a bit like the tangled roots of the day lily.  I root, grow and bloom not just where I choose, but where life sends me.  Sometimes this is where I wish to be, but when I am open to the spirit, it may be where I never thought in a million years I would be - but it is exactly where I should be.  Here I set down roots, flourish, bloom. 

Nature is indeed resilient.

Stella d'Oro Daylilly