Caching In...the woods

I normally don't work on the weekends, but I was at the site last Saturday when I received a call and discovered a fellow garden blogger was in the area. Here's Kylee's account of her visit and some pictures of the site.

I enjoyed showing the garden to Kylee; it was interesting to see the garden through her eyes. Sometimes all I see is what needs to be done--weeding, deadheading, redesigning. No matter what, though, I thoroughly love being there in the woods, along the water, in a garden.

I knew that there was one geocache at the site, as I talked to some geocachers last fall. I learned Saturday that there are two on the site. If this is your sport, don't look at the photos below because this cache is in a very distinctive place.
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Here's Kylee honing in on the cache. Notice how another geocacher is leaning on the bole of this tree.





















Here she is checking out the contents, and another view of the bole.

Eacles Imperialis or Yellow Emporer

I was sitting on the bench in front of the Visitor's Center yesterday talking to Ed, the site naturalist, when his eyes got big and he pointed behind me. Here is what he saw. Note the eggs she laid on the doorframe. She left but we are still watching the eggs.


















While it is an unusual moth for northern Indiana, what made this especially interesting is that Gene's best-selling book, A Girl of the Limberlost, centered on a young girl's search for this moth and...























Gene documented in words and photos the life cycle of what she called the Yellow Emperor in Moths of the Limberlost.























Here is a close shot of its head.


















Look at the image on the back of the head. Doesn't it look like an angry face?

More restoration work

Earlier this summer, they restored the roof of the garden shed and now they are working on a new front porch to the cabin. I was amazed at the deep gaping cavern, maybe 12' deep, when they removed the rotted floorboards. Unfortunately, I had to maneuver over these joists to water the planters on the front porch. This picture may give you an idea of the scale.


















The workers were very skilled and the floor looks wonderful. This is where the porch turns 90 degrees.

Hot and Cool

When the crocosmia is blooming, every visitor stops and asks about it. It is really a showstopper. I think it is large enough to divide, as there is room for a large drift of these hotties.


















Another hot plant in the garden now is the gallardia.


















Is this hot or cold? I love the blue and yellow combination. There are quite a few balloon flowers in the garden but I like this combination planting the best.























And the coolest plant of all now blooming? Globe thistle. An Amish women asked me why in the world I had a large thistle in the garden. I explained about globe thistle but she insisted that no thistle would ever be in her garden.

Daylilies

The daylilies are blooming. While there are a lot of daylilies in the garden, there is little variety. There is a rather large overgrown daylily bed with only two varieties; one variety is pictured in the middle and the other is a soft peach. One of our goals is to expand the collection of daylily cultivars with a longer bloom season in a reworked daylily bed.

Nonetheless, these are beautiful and add a lot to the garden mid-summer.

Milkweeds

There are three genera of milkweeds in the gardens. This is the swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), but it is growing well in a sunny dry location. Perhaps that is why it is over 5 feet when the reference books say it is 1-4' in height. The juice is less milky and it is less fragrant than the common milkweed.


















This is butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), which attracts many butterflies with its showy bloom and is a favorite of Monarchs. When you visit, see if you can find the caterpillars on the plants.


















As I was looking up the botanical names, I found this little factoid about the milkweed family (Asclepiadaceae): "The unusual structure of the flower regulates pollination. Sacs of pollen snag on insects' legs, are pulled from the stamens and then must be precisely inserted in slits behind the crown. If inserted backwards, pollen grains germinate in the wrong direction and are wasted. This may explain why so few pods occur on most plants. Insects too small to pull free die trapped on the flower." (The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers--Eastern Region)

Aerial View

Check out the aerial view of the garden. It is definitely the most distinctive feature on the site from the air. Just yesterday we were discussing the need to reset the stones and align severeal beds. This photo confirms the need to align the two herb beds in the northern section of the eastern garden.

Orange and pink or pink and orange?

Blooming next to the cabin is a beautiful orange honeysuckle (above) and on the south end of the garden is a pink honeysuckle (below). I call the pink one Ron's honeysuckle, since my teenage son transplanted it from the driveway at the farmhouse in the middle of summer last year. It was growing poorly but I wasn't sure it would survive being moved. It is thriving.
So which one do you like best? The primarily orange bloom with hints of pink or the primarily pink one with hints of orange?

Japanese Lilac

The Japanese lilac is in bloom and is wafting its sweet scent across the eastern garden beds. Gene planted this tree sometime in the 1910s. It has three trunk branches but perhaps because of the extremely cold weather in April, only one branch bloomed this year. Its listed as having a height of 15-20' and a width of 12-15'. Does anyone want to measure this tree to see if it breaks a record. (The largest tree in North Dakota is 45 feet tall with a canopy spread of 39 feet.)

aka Cow Slobber

One of the first flowers Gene planted when she bought Wildflower Woods in the fall of 1912 was spiderwort, tradescantia. The spiderworts are in bloom now and will continue throughout the summer. They are mostly blue, but we have several plants with magenta blooms. We are in the process of potting up some young plants for sale, in case you want to add this lovely prairie plant to your garden (or prairie!)

A different sort of tulip bloom

I found this on the walk beside Gene's cabin this morning. Usually it is hard to see the bloom on the tulip poplar because the tree grows so tall.

Canopy

The tree canopy is full now. As you walk down the lane from the visitor's parking lot, you enter the deep shade of mature beech, oak and maple trees. The air is cool and woodsy. Sounds are hushed. You can catch an occasional glimpse of the blue sky. The cares of the world drop away. Come visit this other world.

Walnut lighning rods

Ed, the site's naturalist, saw lightning strike a tree near the crypt early this spring. He went to investigate and found a walnut tree with foam down one side. The spittle was 3" to 6" wide in spots, but the bark was perfectly dry in the center of the foam. At the base of the tree, there were a couple of gallons of foam. You can still see the remnants of the strike, the light discoloration in this photo.
In April, lightning struck another walnut near the crypt. Ed found it on his morning tour of the grounds, first spotting blown-off pieces of bark and chunks of a bat box on the ground. When he looked up, he saw strips of bark hanging from the tree. The damage is still evident.

I will save the full story of the how Gene and her daughter came to be buried on the grounds in 1999, but it was Gene's wish to be buried here under her favorite tree, a chinkapin oak (Quercus muehlenbergii). It was a mature tree in the 1910's and based on a drilling some years ago, we know that the chinkapin oak is over 200 years old. It is notoriously difficult to propagate and we are on the extreme northern edge of its range. It is one of the natural and historic treasures on the site.

Chinkapin oaks grow to heights of 60' to 80'. Walnuts grow to heights of up to 150' in the best sites in Indiana. Thank goodness we have walnut lightning rods around the crypt. In this picture, the chinkapin is on the right, the first walnut tree struck is in the center with the crypt barely visible behind it, and the last one struck is on the right.

A Fragrant Garden

The garden has been so fragrant all week long. First it was the fringe tree with its citrus smell and now it is the mock oranges in full bloom.

CORRECTION: It is the Tara vine on the arbor entrance that is wafting an intoxicating fragrance across the garden. Gene called it a Tara Vine, but today's more common name for Actinidia arguta is hardy kiwi.

Wisteria

The wisteria vines are just starting to bloom along the central arbor in the Tame Garden. These are original plants; that is, these are the actual vines that Gene planted. Mother's Day or the following weekend may be good times to visit, depending on how the weather affects the blooms. The number of blooms vary each season and I'm still trying to figure out the factors. I think milder winters and good spring rains produce more blooms.

On the Star of Bethlehem front, I spent my time today cleaning just one end of the culinary herb bed of these bulbs so I could plant basil seed. Carol continued digging the bulbs out of the wisteria roots and from the rocks lining the inside of the arbor. These are just skirmishes in the 80-year war.

The 80 year war

In the comments, Carol asked if Gene planted the Star of Bethlehem. Up until last weekend, I thought some gardener planted it in the last 30 years while the garden was tended. I was wrong.

Janet Cook, one of our tour guides and cook extraordinaire in name and deed, shared with me her memories of volunteering in the garden in the mid-70s. The garden had essentially been neglected for almost 50 years. It was overgrown with weeds and brambles. The stone edgings around the beds were found buried in the soil. Janet said, "Oh, how I hated the Star of Bethlehem even then." So this leads to the conclusion that it was very likely planted by Gene.

Now I know I am fighting an invasive bulb that has had its own way for 80 years. Puts the battle into perspective! I am definitely the underdog now, but am determined to win this war.

Shake the Shed

Another step toward restoration of the garden shed was completed today. Notice the new shake roof. It replaced an asphalt shingle roof which was not original.

The young man in the picture is a skilled craftsman and laid the shakes himself. I had a better picture of the shed, but he was partially hidden behind a tree in it. Since he said his grandmother would look for the picture online, I had to use the one with him in it.

What's blooming?

The woods are glowing with the large white blooms of trillium grandiflora, but if you look closely you see a mottled trillium with a greenish yellow bloom or a trillium with a deep maroon bloom. Both are commonly called toadshade.















Then there is a small stand of camassia lily in the woods near the Garden Shed, with blooms ranging from light blue to white.




















Sprinkled here and there, you can't miss the brilliant color of wild larkspur.



















Nor can you miss this Big Jack.

What do these pictures have in common?

The bearded irises are just starting to bloom.















The shade garden in bed 18 is starting to fill out.















Twin-leaf leaves (and that is not redundant) have appeared. They look like they are ready to flutter away or adorn a nicely wrapped Mother's Day gift.

So what do these pictures have in common other than they were all taken today in the Tame Garden at the Gene Stratton-Porter Historic site?

The beautiful flower of the Star of Bethlehem is in each of them. The iris photo best illustrated the condition of the garden today. The S. of B. are blooming like crazy while the foliage is starting to yellow and die. That means the prime digging time is over and soon no one will know that a few inches beneath the soil lies millions of tiny bulbs, gulping up oxygen in the soil, taking room, competing with the garden plants.

Garden and Wildflower Walk

I read somewhere that gardeners tend to say, "You should have seen the garden last week." Or else they say, "Oh, the garden will look so much better next week when (this or that) blooms." I vowed not to fall into this trap, but just enjoy the garden as it is in the moment.

All this by way of introduction to our second Annual Wildflower and Garden Brunch last Saturday. I didn't say either of the above statements, but I sure thought them. In the garden the tulips, daffodils and other spring bulbs have wilted; in the woods, the Dutchmen's breeches, trout lily and toothwort blooms are gone. In the garden, there were fat buds on the wisteria, bluebells, columbine; in the woods, there were fat buds on camassia lily.

So Ed and I smiled and looked at what was there. In the garden, primroses, trillium, lilies of the valley and wild oats were the stars. In the woods, the trillium were breathtaking joined by marsh marigolds, rue anemone, ragwort and various violets.

I was even able to put together bouquets for 9 tables from what I thought was a meager source. It is amazing what you see if you look closely.