A Little Death

The sun was out but still the day felt more like January than March in Seattle. The swollen brown buds on the ceonothus and the red-flowering currant clearly said spring.

Standing on the patio, I did a half circle trying to decide what area needed work the most. A small brown wren tussled the moss beneath the smoke bush. Winning a clump it flew off carrying its size again in stringy green stuff to pad its nest. Definitely spring.

I was just about to attack some weeds when I heard that unmistakable sound. There was something not quite right about it. I turned just in time to  watch the little green creature fly behind me. Pirouetting, I saw it struggle to rise over the cedar fence atop the wall that binds the west side of my yard. Horrified I watched it fail to make the height, smash into the fence and fall down into a tuft of grass between the black railroad tie that tops the wall and the fence beyond.

Tip toeing over so as not to startle it, I leaned over to see behind the grass. It seemed to stand on its tail, wings spread, chin rested against the rough wood with its long narrow beak pointed to the sky.

White downy feathers shook with the force of its breathing. I thought of rescue – sugar water and warmth. Inching forward I saw the the reason for its weakness. In the center of the little forehead was a single red-rimmed puncture. There was nothing on the fence that could have caused such a wound. The creature had been in obvious distress before it connected with the grey cedar.

So I leaned there against the wall. After a number of minutes the rapid breathing slowed and then finally stilled. And I stayed there with the little hummingbird until it died.

Later, discussing the incident with a bird scientist while watching a banding demo, I learned that the wound had probably been incurred during a fight with another hummingbird. Despite reading about how territorial the birds are, I have never actually witnessed a fight, just the aftermath.

Things That Creep

I slid the edge of the box along the rubber mat in the tub and he scuttled towards the drain. There wasn’t room to cut him off so I angled the box closer to the drain. He switched direction and headed for the side. Moving cautiously, freak them out and they damage themselves, I slid the cardboard up and under him and he did what I wanted, jumped to the edge. When I tipped the box upright he slid neatly inside. I released him out back near the border of the driveway hoping he wouldn’t end up back inside the house.

By fall standards he was a little guy, maybe  a centimeter long in body with similar leg extension. Often the quarter size spiders show up inside this time of year. The larger they are the less likely they are to survive a relocation attempt. For something that so many people are terrified of, spiders are remarkably fragile.

I confess, I don’t try to relocate every creepy thing that shows up in the house. But I try to when I have the time. Similarly, when working outside I exercise some caution. When bags of compost leaning against the wall have small snails stuck to the hidden side, I pick them off and set them on the ground at the base of the wall.

Digging up weeds or holes for new plants turns up worms and ground spiders. Knocking the soil surface with the trowel sends the later scurrying away. I pick up the worms and put them in a shady are beneath a plant where I am not working.

Gardening makes you aware of the allies you have in the smaller creatures. Whether its composting, aerating the soil or eating other less welcome bugs, those tiny things do some heavy lifting.

I still get the creeps when one of the those huge spiders goes streaking by. How is it that they are always in your peripheral vision, never right in front of you? But I have learned to check my fear reaction to many things.

After getting stung as a child I had a pretty extreme fear of bees. The fear worsened when I lived in first one place infested with carpenter bees [not actually likely to sting but the things were two inches long and when they thumped on the windows it sounded like a hand] and then in another place with attack wasps.

The native bees in my garden have taught be differently. They fly from bloom to bloom and are more than happy to maneuver around me when I am in the way. One flew over my head and down into its hole in the dirt right next to my trowel. [I left a few weeds there so I wouldn’t disrupt its home.] Even better, as their numbers increased with the number of blooming plants over the years, the number of wasps has diminished. They used to build nests all around my back deck. This year there was only one small nest.

Many creatures who are the protagonists in horror shows are now things of wonder. Last Halloween I spent an hour standing guard over an orb weaver during an event at the zoo. I explained to the visitors that she didn’t need glass around her because she never leaves her web, that the only reason for glass would be to protect her from us.

That’s why last summer when I needed to remove a yellow jacket nest from a deck chair, I waited until the cool of night and then went out with a long pole to knock it off. I still ran for the door as they buzzed angrily on the deck. But as I slammed the door behind me in case I had been followed, I knew I hadn’t taken out any friends with pesticide.

Plant Problems

Anyone who has spent any time looking up plants, online or in books, is used to finding information about the problems you might experience with them. Roses, for example,  are notorious for the long list of problems gardeners have to be prepared to manage including black spot and aphids.

Not red-flowering current. Look up Ribes sanguineum. All the native plant sites practically wax poetic about how easy the plant is, how universally lovely it will be, how it loves sun and is drought tolerant. A suggestion to plant them in a sunny location with well-drained soil is the only advise on how to care for them.

Over the years I planted three of them in my yard. The first currant, one of the first native plants I put in the yard,  I planted in full southern sun in the back yard. A few years later a second went into a partially sunny location in my front yard. The final one I planted in the back but shaded for the later part of the day by a large ceanothus. That one receives the least amount of direct sunlight of the three.

All three leaf out and then bloom profusely in spring. The hummingbirds visit morning and evening moving from one to the next. Come summer, it’s a different story. As summer progresses, more and more of their leaves brown along the edges giving the shrubs a worn look. Up until this summer it was limited to the outer edges of the leaves. Then this summer, the oldest one died. When some leaves turned completely brown and fell off, I tried several things to save the shrub. More water, less water, fertilizer. Nothing worked.

The remaining ones are holding their own but I am worried. Ribes is supposed to be a long-lived plant. I would like to know what is causing such stress each summer before I lose another. Searching on Ribes yields nothing but expositions on how care-free these shrubs are. Put the word “problem” in the search query and you will get a page describing how some other plants has problems while currant has none.

I am not the only one experiencing trouble. I power walk the hills in the neighborhood a few times a week and as I do so, I inventory the native plants along the way. Ribes is a popular plant locally because it is one of the native species that is easy to obtain. Every specimen along my route has the same brown-tinged leaves by mid-summer. Not one resembles the verdant images in Pojar or on the King County Native Plant site.

It is interesting that the two survivors are not in the sunny spots the plants are supposed to love. Both get sun but are shaded for the hottest part of the day. However the one that died is probably in the best drained soil of the three. The back yard has a high quantity of sand in the soil whereas the front yard has a lot of clay. Yet the one in clay survives.

Over the winter I will continue my research in the hopes of finding a solution. Meanwhile I am happy that there are two left as those red flowers are the first to lure the hummingbirds into the yard in the spring.

Colorado Habitat

I spent a long weekend in Glenwood Springs, Colorado visiting my brother. Happily I got to see some wildlife and habitat from alpine meadows of the Western Rockies to the high mountain desert of National Monument.

Aspens at Maroon Bells

While the fall color is coming late to Seattle this year, there were entire stands of Aspens  at higher elevations that had already dropped their leaves. I have read about Aspens in their fall color but never about the trees in winter. They are astonishingly beautiful in a way that is very alien to someone who has lived in the Northeast and then the Northwest. Row upon row of perfectly parallel trunks, all the same color like the bristles of a brush. Only at the tops, where there is a real density of branches arching away from the trunks, do they blur into a furry masses like fur brushed off some great sled dog.

On the southern and eastern sides of the hills, mountains and plateaus the aspen form large groves or are mixed with conifers. On the northern sides, where in the winter the sun penetrates for only a few hours at most, there are thicker stands of pines. The ground plants are, in early fall, mostly brown and dry as are the grasses.

Up on the mountains the forests are bisected by flows of rocks and flows of water in about equal proportions. As impressive as the rock falls are, frightening swaths of boulders, you can still find  places where their path is diverted to one side or the other by one unyielding tree. At the higher elevations the rocks echoed the chittering of pikas scurrying about as they prepare their winter dens.

There was a thin blanket of snow beneath the trees on a particularly steep north facing slope and deer tracks crossed from the nearly emptied crater lake into the trees.

The most prevalent bird was the magpie. Almost as ubiquitous as the crows are in Seattle, they were everywhere in town, always in pairs. Though similar in size to crows they are very differently colored and possess a longer and narrower tail. Despite that, when walking on the ground, their movement is similar to that of crows, staulking about purposefully and they have the same tendency to stay on the ground until forced into flight.

When I see hawks in the city they are either perched or soaring high above. All the ones I saw in Colorado were flying down near the ground. They would fly for a distance just ten to twenty feet above the vegetation and then swoop down to hug the top of the tall grass perhaps following some small creature trying to reach the safety of their den.

I finally got to see ravens. We were up on Grand Mesa at a lookout called Lands End [very different from the place with the same name in Cornwall!]. There was a thermal just off the cliff and dozens of ravens were coming in from below and riding to it’s end high over the cliff. A great spiral of black birds rose up to the top where they peeled off, two-by-two, to chase each other out and down to pick up the ride again. They are almost as vocal as crows but the sound they make is throaty and not as harsh.

We didn’t see any elk but we did see a pair of white-tailed deer at the side of the road driving back down from the top of Grand Mesa. Shortly after I spotted a buck on a slope below the side of the road looking over his shoulder at our car as it went by. We also saw a moose at the far side of a road-side field when we stopped to investigate why another driver had stopped.

All of those sightings were in the alpine areas. When we visited the National Monument the wildlife was more limited just as the plants were fewer and further apart. I spotted small lizards twice. Both times I saw them moving fast out of the corner of my eye. Each froze when I turned to look their way and stayed perfectly still while I examined them.

The only other living creature we saw in the desert was a small bird tapping away inside the gnarled remain of juniper trunk. Even the signs of life were few. Down in a slot between the rocks there was a bird’s nest, affixed to a tiny ledge in the wall over our heads. Beneath one pinyon, a cone had  been partially pulled apart, presumably by a jay extracting the seeds.

Dead Juniper at National Monument

There are several reasons why there is less vegetation and wildlife than here on the western side of the Cascade Mountains. Less water is the big one. Another reason made itself evident on my last day there when it began to snow in Aspen. At the higher elevations, winter comes sooner and lasts longer resulting in a shorter growing season and more difficulty obtaining food in the winter.

New Birds

There are three of them. They showed up two days ago. I pulled into the drive and there they were. One was on the top of the dual-armed pole that holds two bird feeders. Another was on the ground below and the third was up on the fence behind the feeders.

You couldn’t miss them. The size of crows, their plumage was a mix of the soft dove gray of an elegant suit and the bright blue of a jay.  Their chests are white. A long narrow tail fans slightly when they perch. Despite their coloring, the tops of their heads are smooth with no comb on the top.

I got out of the car. The one on the ground looked up at me and watched me. Unlike other birds who fly to some high spot when I walk through, it watched me calmly and went back to poking at the ground once I had passed. So they are even bolder than the jays who scramble to the treetops when I cross the yard. Had they been Steller’s Jays, the one on the fence would have cried out an alarm when I got out of the car. None of these made a sound.

I did what I do whenever some new bird shows up. I went inside and looked in my bird books. Of course there wasn’t anything that looked like the birds in my yard, not exactly. The closest I could find was the scrub jay. But in all the pictures, scrub jays were much bluer than these. None of the  pictures showed the gray that was so predominant on these birds.

The range of the Scrub Jay shown in the book extends as far north as the prairies south of the Seattle-Tacoma area. I wonder if the unusual heat and dryness this summer has driven some further north? I know that the ranges of many birds and plants are changing.

So I am calling them my scrub jays. They are out there every morning and every evening. I finally heard them make a sound. It was similar to the Steller’s Jay but softer and less abrasive. Obviously they also use it more judiciously than those other bright blue birds. If  I am right, they will return to a more southern place as the weather chills but for now I am enjoying their company.

Favorite Non-Native Plant

Myrtle blooms against the sky by Julie Webster

The Backyard Habitat workshop dedicates a lot of time to plants and much of that time is focused on native species. About three-quarters of the way through the class a woman raised her hand to ask a question. She asked, with some trepidation, if she was going to have to get rid of a plant she really liked.

Heads nodded around the room. Were we going to have sad little funerals as we consigned beloved plants to compost in the name of habitat? I thought of the combination of sadness and righteousness I had felt taking out the butterfly bush in my yard, thinking how I would miss its perfume in August and those royal blue plumes.

The instructors laughed and one stepped forward to say that creating habitat didn’t mean we were restricted to native plants. The only proscription is on invasive species that are detrimental to native habitat. To convince the skeptics, each of the instructors offered up their own favorite non-native plant.

I have several that I like my hands-down favorite is Crape Myrtle. This is a perfect little tree for the urban garden. Mine is in my backyard inside the chain-link fence near the gate. It’s vase-shape mirrors that of the nearby vine maple creating a nice continuity of shape. It sits in full southern sun for most of the day and since its first year has never needed supplemental water.

The leaves are oblong, dark and glossy. In the fall they turn a vibrant red providing even more cohesiveness with the maple. In late summer and early autumn each upper branch is extended by a fuchsia flower head similar in shape to those on lilacs. The
flowers last for weeks and are visited by hummingbirds and bees.

Close-up of Crape Myrtle bloom and leaves by Julie Webster

In the winter, barren of leaves, the bark becomes the focus. Smooth cream bark peels regularly to reveal a rough olive color layer that peels again to display the deepest layer of smooth khaki. Like the coat of a painted pony, it invites you to look for pictures in the mottled surface.

Myrtle bark in the sun by Julie Webster

As with all the best of plants, it is interesting enough to take a stand-out place in the yard and is equally useful in a collection.

Stealth Jay

When I started my garden Stellar’s Jays would appear in the neighborhood two times a year. First they would show up in the spring, screaming at the crows. They would hang around for a few weeks and then disappear until the fall when they would be around for a few more weeks.

A few years ago they began to stick around longer. Last summer they arrived on schedule and stayed. Having them around all year has given me the opportunity to really watch them. Make no mistake, I always know when they are around because I can hear them. Not only that, there is no way their bright blue plumage can be camouflaged by the native greenery.

Every now and then I toss a handful of peanuts onto the stepping stones in the front yard or on top of the wall beside the drive in the back. Sometimes the squirrels find them and sometimes the crows see me putting them out. Often in the back the crows and jays try and outsmart each other trying to get them, all of them screaming and posturing. I think the game is more interesting than the peanuts.

Yesterday morning I put peanuts out by the wall. When I got inside I looked out the window. A jay was sitting on the peak of the garage roof across the alley – quiet. It turned its head to look up the alley and then down. It flew to my chain link gate swinging low to the ground then rising at the last moment in a maneuver worthy of a Harris Hawk. It disappeared behind the rosemary that lines the wall and then a few seconds later flew back up to the gate with a peanut in its beak. Again it looked up the alley and then down before flying off behind the garage.

It repeated this maneuver until it had collected all the peanuts without the crows discovering what was going on. For over ten minutes the jay was absolutely and totally silent. I would never have guessed that a jay could keep quiet for even a minute about something so exciting. Of course if I had to take a bet on it, I would have bet that the crows would catch on before the jay was done. I guess betting on corvid vs. corvid is never a sure thing.

Feed the Plants, Feed the Wildlife

When I got my dog, the woman I got her from grilled me about my yard [was it securely fenced], Veterinarian and plans for training the puppy. Then she talked about what I needed to feed the puppy, how much and how often. When I bought my outdoor plants, each came with a little tag on the pot. The tags describe the plant, its ultimate size, how much light and water it needs. Not one of the tags in my files mentions feeding the plant.

Up until now I fertilized sporadically. I would add compost around new plantings and then spot mulch in the fall. When I thought of it I add some rose food to the roses or vitamin B to tired looking plants.

The one thing I have done regularly, I did out of laziness. In one of the gardening classes that I took, one of the experts told a story about a South Seattle gardener who was originally from Japan. The man had a lovely garden. When asked how he managed that in a neighborhood known for its dense clay soil, he said that his secret was simply leaves. Each fall when the leaves fell from the deciduous trees, he would rake them into a mulch cover over his garden. Then in the spring he would turn the rotting leaves into the surface of the soil. The gardener said that when he started the soil was so hard that he could only get a trowel in about an inch. He demonstrated that after ten years he could easily push a trowel in to its handle.

The garden expert explained that the composting leaves would attract worms and other soil composters to the surface and as they tunneled up the soil loosened. The leaves became food for the plants and the soil was improved at the same time. Over the years this activity loosens the soil allowing easier penetration by water and compost.

It’s been a few years since I began doing the same thing in the front yard. I can only dig a trowel two inches in some places, deeper in others. In every location that is deeper than it would go when I first started the garden. It is also way easier than raking up more than a dozen paper bags of leaves and schlepping them out back for the yard waste truck to pick up. I turn the leaves into the soil when I do the first weeding in the spring.

This week I began to think about fertilizer more seriously because of my columnar apple tree. It is planted in a pot on the patio and has been doing poorly since it flowered. I thought it was because of the early heat. Then, on a whim a week ago, I got out a box of Dr. Earth® All-Purpose Fertilizer, read the instructions and applied it to the soil around the trunk of the apple tree. I went out to check on it after work tonight and the plant is definitely doing better.

So today I resolve to work out a regular schedule of feeding the plants starting this weekend. I am also going to keep up the thing with the leaves in the front because in addition to being east, the robins love the extra worms.

Shapes

When I first started my garden I didn’t think too much about the shapes of plants. I selected plants for location and size. For a beginner that was more than enough to consider. Later I began to think about wildlife. When did a plant flower, did it produce fruit, was it larval food. It was only recently that I began to consider architecture.

Unlike those gardeners who use architecture to create some impression, I began to use it mostly as a convenience. Certain shapes of plants are easier to work around. Grouping similar shapes at appropriate distances results in fewer rescue operations where overgrown plants crushing together have to be separated, roots untangled and emergency first-aid supplied to support damaged plants. Columnar plants that don’t get appreciably wider are best near the house to keep the siding clear. As trees and shrubs matured I discovered that a variety of shapes supports wildlife in interesting ways.

For ease of maintenance you can’t beat vase-shaped trees. These grow up from one to three closely coupled trunks that begin to separate at waist level or higher spreading slowly until, overhead, they branch out into a fuller shade producing canopy. Mowers slide beneath without damaging branches and you can walk around them without contorting knees and back.

The back corner of my yard has three such trees: a vine maple, a crape myrtle and a serviceberry. A purple smoke bush maintains a bushier version of the look against the west fence line. With the maple, it effectively bars human access to the back corner, creating a bird safe sanctuary.

The one place I used shape to solve an aesthetic problem was in the front yard beside the porch. The main floor of the house sits almost one story up leaving a plain expanse of siding beneath the window. Filling the space in required something that would achieve a height of eight to ten feet at maturity. To protect the siding, I needed a plant that would remain compact in width. Several columnar Oregon grape plants fit the bill nicely. They provide a backdrop for progressively smaller evergreen huckleberry, vanilla bush, hosta, salal, frinegcup and solomon’s seal. All can tolerate shade and many stay green year round.

Another shape in my garden is fountain-shaped. These are plants that grow up from the center and then, staying lower than trees, arc over to the ground again. Two obvious ones are ceanothus and the Japanese maple. Getting beneath the ceanothus is a challenge because the branches are strong and rough. I always end up with scratches and little dark green leaves in my hair. By contrast the Japanese maple has bendable branches that can be swept aside to reach underneath.

Some shrubs are pyramidal, staying wider at the base than the top. Lacking the precise shape of the pyramidal conifers, these shrubs sprawl, but like the trees they take up more space at the base as they grow. Inevitably one or more perennial will have to be extracted from beneath these as they grow and take up more space. The Snowberry, Mock Orange and Oceanspray are all of this type.

So how has the variety of shapes benefitted wildlife? It turns out that different species of birds like to perch at different heights. Many of the smaller birds prefer to hide amidst foliage when not moving. The different sizes and shapes I planted provide cover from the ground level to mid-canopy level. Augmented by the tall cedars across the alley in the back and the Douglas firs on the neighbor’s median out front, the winged ones can all find a comfortable place to rest.

Unlike birds, butterflies and bees mostly prefer to stay in the warmth of the sun. The fountain and pyramid shaped shrubs that keep their flowers in the light are where I am most likely to see these insects. One exception is a bumble bee who visits the lavender on the east side of the house consistently in the late afternoon when the sun has finally passed far enough to the west to leave the herb in the shade of the house.

Planting various shapes of plants in various sizes has provided a rich habitat for the wildlife. I think letting the plants retain a natural aspect with minimal pruning makes my yard more appealing to them. It’s a balance between slightly messy natural and cleaned up enough that the neighbors won’t complain. Sure it requires pruning with a hand tool instead of a power tool, but that is more peaceful and better for the environment. Best of all, the birds keep me company.

Memorial – Wallace W Hansen

I just learned that Wallace W Hansen, the founder of the Northwest Native Plant Nursery that has his name, passed away. The news was in a note attached to the monthly newsletter announcement. I knew that Mr. Hansen was ill but the news is still a shock and makes me sad.

I never met him and I never visited his nursery but still he has had more influence on my love of native plants than anyone else. His site was such a wonderful mix of scientific information, real world discovery and ethnobotany. The lovely hand drawings of the plants that he provided often made identification much easier than photographs do because they capture the variability of the plants.

If the garden and web site weren’ enough, evey month he published a newsletter. Each month came a cornucopia of plant information, wildlife news, photos, drawings, recipes and poetry. It put the home and garden magazines to shame and resonated with a true love for the outdoors and the beings we share our world with.

I am happy to know that there are people who continue his legacy, both the nursery and the newsletter.  Do visit the site and maybe order a plant to honor an amazing man. The nursery site is in the links on this site.