Dedication of Camp Big Island

Here's a nice article in the Sunday Journal Gazette about Camp Big Island or, as the locals call it, Boy Scout Island. It is directly across a small inlet from the site and can be seen from the window in the parlor, which Gene called her "million-dollar window" because of the view. You can see part of the site across the lake in the third picture of the chapel amphitheater. We are very pleased with the conservation of this unique natural place.

The staff at GSP has been hard at work following the mandate to "spruce up" the site in anticipation of the dedication of Camp Big Island this Wednesday, attended by several dignitaries including the Governor. It has been a challenge sprucing up 120 acres, the Cabin and Visitor Center, the one acre garden, and new construction sites with erosion fabric still in place, especially since there are only one full-time, 3 part-time, and 1 every-other-weekend employees. (A year ago there were 3 full-time and 6 part-time employees.) So I better head off to work to trim the shrubs and trees in the area of the dedication ceremony.

Late August Garden

I just gave two visitors from Wisconsin a tour of the Cabin and gardens, and they asked about this blog! I'm glad it inspired someone to visit, as they passed through this area on the way to the renowned genealogical library in Fort Wayne. Of course, they assumed nothing was in bloom because I haven't posted for a while (not really).

This garden totally amazes me sometimes. We have not had rain for weeks and it has been hot. Most gardens are bedraggled, but this garden still looks great. Pumping lake water through the irrigation system several times a week helps, but so does the use of Indiana native plants and heirloom annuals.

Last week we were visited by Kathi, marketing maven from our head office in Indianapolis. She posted several pictures and some information about Gene on her blog. Here's a sample.

Garden Tours during Chautauqua Days

Gene Stratton met Charles Porter on Sylvan Lake during a Chautauqua. Every summer we celebrate Gene's birthday during Chautauqua Days, as celebrated by the town of Rome City. This Saturday and Sunday afternoon, I will be in the garden to give informal tours and there will be free birthday cake in the Vistors Center. Cabin tours will be available for a nominal fee.




















Last Friday, I took a picture of the east garden from the attic of the Cabin. I like the photo because you can see the layout of the garden. The unfinished area in the foreground is where we are preparing to plant a shrub hedge. Gene planted over 400 shrubs around her Tame Garden.



















This picture is the west gardens. There are two symmetrical gardens on the west side. These photos don't do the garden justice, so come see the garden for yourself!

Tragedy by the garden shed door

Under the eaves by the front door of the Garden Shed, I've been watching a robin build a messy nest.

Whoops! What happened? Was she a klutzy mom? Did a predator get into the nest? But then why wasn't the egg consumed? Someone suggested maybe a cowbird replaced one of her eggs. I'm going to have to keep watching.

Wildflowers in Bed 1

Bed 1 in the formal garden (northeast corner) has a collection of wildflowers so visitors can examine them up close. This is a cutleaf toothwort. I resisted the urge to increase the saturation so the violet edges would pop, but this shows their delicate coloring. In the woods they appear to be white.

Another favorite spring flower is bloodroot. This patch is in the garden but they are scattered throughout the woods. The name comes from the red "dye" exuded by the roots.


Can you identify this plant? It's just starting to emerge.
Yes, it is a Jack-in-the-pulpit. I'll try to post picture when it blooms.

More wildflowers blooming

The trout lilies are one of my favorite spring flowers, yellow and dark red with their trout-like foliage. Gene called them adders tongue lilies. I'd rather have a trout than an adder under foot though.

And they carpet large areas of the forest each spring and then disappear.

Sometimes the trout lilies hang out with mayapples.

The previous post showed some wildflowers by the spring. Here's another picture from the same area...a large patch of skunk cabbage.

On the way to the spring is a Virginia bluebell just starting to bloom. There is also a large patch of these flowers on the east side of the entry drive.

What's Blooming Now

This is a woodland anemone, Anemonequinquefolia.
There is a large patch of the wood anemone on the east side of the cabin.

I had not seen marsh marigolds until I started working at the site.


Here is the reason they are called MARSH marigolds. The boardwalk was built over the winter and now it is easier to see the wildflowers growing in the seep near the spring.



The hepatica just started to bloom.

43,560 and I need your help!

The formal garden at Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site is one acre. When someone today asked me how many square feet of garden I tended, I told them one acre, having never calculated the square feet. Well, it's 43,560 square feet. That's a lot of garden for one part-time seasonal employee, especially with this spring challenge. I am so grateful for all who volunteer.

We are having a garden work day on Saturday May 3 from 9 a.m. to noon. Lunch is provided, but you need to RSVP. Volunteers will also be given a tour of the Cabin if requested. So grab your gloves and your favorite hand tools and join us for a fun, productive day.

If you would like to help, but aren't up to the heavy labor part of gardening, we have seeds that need to be put in envelopes and labeled. If you would rather spend time in the woods than in the garden, there will be some grounds projects also.

And a lot of the spring ephemeral flowers will be in full bloom!!

Am I stopping just short of begging? Good.

Talk, talk and more talk

It is cold and snow is still on the ground, but I'm thinking spring. How about you?

If you want to jump start spring, why not come to the Allen County Home and Garden Show at the Memorial Coliseum this weekend? I'll be speaking on Thursday evening at 5:00; my talk is called "Gene Stratton-Porter: Environmental Lessons from the Past."

On March 17, I'll be talking to the Seniors at Huntertown United Methodist Church (in the Third Place) following lunch. Lunch is provided by the culinary arts class from Carroll High School and my son is one of the chefs. This talk is about restoration of the garden at Wildflower Woods.

My next scheduled talk about Gene Stratton-Porter is on May 17 at the Unitarian Church's Garden Party in Fort Wayne. I'll be one of two keynote speakers, talking about "Jewels from the Past: Gene-Stratton-Porter's Formal Garden."

Do you belong to an organization that needs a speaker? Call the historic site at 260-854-3790.

Christmas Walk

Saturday and Sunday was the Holiday Walk. I was assigned to the main Cabin, which was decorated following Gene's description of her 1917 Christmas. Gene decorated with fresh roses and lilies, and she draped Spanish moss from her chandeliers. The result was festive even if we do not think of these materials as traditional. Gene had a cedar tree on the conservatory porch decorated for the birds and so did we.

The Cabin rang with music both days, thanks to Nancy Blough and friends. Mountain dulcimers, harps, bass, auto harp, piano, percussion instruments were played by talented musicians, but Nancy enjoys involving the guests so there was also dancing, singing and keeping time with spoons.

And another Nancy spent both days baking zucchini bread in the kitchen and the smell drew guests right into the kitchen.

I was asked to decorate the garden shed. First, though, I had to pack up the tender bulbs for winter, bag up the seeds collected and sweep out a ton of dirt. Lisa and Carol helped me do that on Thursday. Then on Friday my sister came up and we decorated the Garden Shed tree and mausoleum. Here is the tree decorated with flowers from the garden and bird's nests from the site. (It wasn't possible to stage a good shot because this is a working garden shed and our "stuff" cluttered the background.)
The garden shed was used to make Christmas crafts. This year, Cheri (on the left with one of her helpers on the right) laid out nature items and boy were the guests creative!

Last Blooms of Summer, Part 2

Blogger wouldn't let me post all the pictures at once, so here are some more pictures from November 1, just before our first hard freeze. The first picture is the south end of the arbor where the impatiens have nestled into the rocks.
The bed of nasturtiums always do well in the long bed in the east garden. In the foreground are "cherry rose" nasturtiums and the rest are a jewel mix, one of which is shown in a close-up shot. This is one of my favorite fall beds in the garden.

The last blooms of summer

It is November 1 and the first hard frost will hit that evening, but the day is sunny and beautiful and the garden is still pushing out its blooms. The ageratum, volunteers from last year's planting, hasn't went to seed yet and is a brilliant blue.Of course, mums are the staple of the fall garden and the mum bed, on the west side of the arbor is still going strong, even though it's past its prime. This bed has hyacinths in the spring and iris in the summer.
The dahlias are still blooming and is the only tender bulb I haven't brought in for the winter. I just couldn't disappoint this late season bee.

The garden phlox started blooming in August and there are still quite a few blooming. The scent is wonderful.
The honeysuckle my son transplanted in the middle of summer last year just won't stop blooming. And we were worried that it would be too stressed to survive.

Baskets of Flowers

Sharon works part-time at the site, mostly outdoors, keeping the walks and porches swept, the pond clean, cutting out invasive plants in the woods. Whenever she has a spare moment, she pulls out her needle and thread. Curious, I asked her what she was making and she said she would bring it in. Here it is, partially finished.

I was nonplussed by the beauty of her work. This partially finished quilt is all hand stitched. The stitches are tiny and perfect. Her color selection is gorgeous. Look at how perfect the little hexagons are.

Here is a closer shot of one of the sections. This flowers in this basket are from material that I gave her from my mother's stash. I'm sure my mother would have been pleased to see how her material was used.

Miscellany with a frog theme

There was a little red frog in a bucket in the basement of the cabin this week. I think the bucket was catching drips from the water before it entered the water softener. We released the frog into Singing Waters aka The Frog Pond. Why was it red? Because of the iron in the water. There was one happy fella in the Pond that day.

I am working hard to get the garden ready for winter--digging tender bulbs, planting spring bulbs, removing spent foliage, collecting seeds, raking leaves, digging up wild onions and Star of Bethlehem bulbs. Volunteers are needed desperately since we are down to one part-time seasonal gardener (moi). Call the site for details. I have several faithful volunteers that are a Godsend. Could you be one also?

Speaking of frogs, one of the faithful volunteers, Lisa, adopted the herb beds and was working in them this week when she called me over. "Look at the frog that is colored like a toad or is a toad that is shaped like a frog?" She then spotted his big suction-cup toes and it was a large tree frog enjoying the santolina.

Unusual Fall Bloom

Yes, that is a dogwood blooming its little heart out in late October.

Walking into work

It was a beautiful fall morning and I drank in the beauty of the lake, the light, the leaves as I walked into work today. How did I ever spend 30 years working in an office?

Summer's End

Recently I sat at the picnic table at the north entry to the garden to make some garden notes and glanced up to see the grass and snapdragons in Bed 8 framed by the arbor and Tara Vine.






















We have quite a selection of Arisaema or Jack-in-the-Pulpits (or is the plural Jacks-in-the-Pulpit?). The fruits are a cheerful cluster of bright red shiny berries. I collected one seed pod and planted the seeds in the nursery bed behind the Garden Shed to see how easy they are to cultivate. I've read that it will take 3 to 5 years to bloom.

















The Jerusalem artichoke soars above all other plants, but this stately amaranthus is trying to hold its own.























We turned the compost and the bin in the foreground of the picture will be ready to use next spring. The middle bin is heating up nicely and may also be ready for spring. In the large bin at the end, we are accumulating the detritus from fall clean-up and waiting for the massive amount of leaves that will soon be available.

Hope

One of the more unusual trilliums in the garden is this red nodding trillium, near the wildflower bed under a mock orange. You almost have to lay on the ground to see the bloom under the foliage.

I was delighted last Thursday when I saw a large red seed pod on this trillium, but today I didn't see it when I walked by it several times. Finally, I investigated the situation and found the dead foliage and the stem with an unusual mark at the end like the seed pod had been picked. My heart sank as I was looking forward to propagating this plant. I searched the debris and found the seed pod, half eaten. Even though the remaining seeds were not ready for harvest, I spread them on some soil in a pot. Let's hope it works.

I found this picture on the Internet. Last Thursday the seed pod looked like the one on the left and today it looked like the one on the right.


Update: I just did a little research and found trilliums take up to two years to germinate and then 5 more years to bloom. So I should have titled this entry Hope and Patience. I also learned that moist seeds, like the ones I sowed, germinate best.

Before and After

In April, we took all the plants out of this bed and attempted to remove the Star of Bethlehem invasive bulbs. Here's what it looked like then and now it's in full bloom. There is an old saying, which I have found to be true:

The first year they sleep.
The second year they creep.
And the third year they leap.

If these plants are sleeping now, I can't imagine what they will look like in two more years.


















The "before" of this bed can be seen in the foreground and on the left. Last year, my husband constructed a three-bin compost pile at the site and this is the first batch finished. You can't believe how excited I was over the compost! I'm a firm believer that there is nothing better for a garden than compost (and plenty of water).
















Here's a picture from last May, taken under the arbor, showing the dripping wisteria.


















And a few months later, from the same angle, instead of bloom I see the seed pod.

Which is brighter, the filtered sunlight or the edges of this wisteria pod?

Mid-summer blooms

I took this daylily picture several weeks ago and the blooms are now gone. This is my second summer in the garden and I discovered we have more daylily cultivars than I remembered.













I love lilies. This one is not only beautiful but fragrant. We planted these bulbs in Bed 33 when we renovated it this spring.


















There is a large stand of this lily in the lily bed and at the southern entrance to the garden.

















I love spotted blooms and here is the second orange spotted bloom in today's post. It is blackberry lily. The pods are forming now and when they open, the fruit looks just like a blackberry.










Amaranthus or Love-Lies-Bleeding is putting on quite a show this summer. These are from seeds saved from last year. Now that I know they are viable and come true, I'll collect some for sale in the gift shop. Some of the "strings" are over four foot long.