October 26, 2015 by Pointes of View

Tree Trimming and Thanking the Garden

I haven’t felt much like writing lately and I took a quick trip to San Francisco this month, which added more craziness to my life, but I feel like things are slowing down again. At least enough for me to knock out a quick post…

In early August, we had our trees assessed by an arbor company. We decided to get a few things done this year, including the (much debated) removal of one of our juniper trees out front (a beastly, overgrown thing that needed to go, in my opinion) and the trimming of our large silver maple in the backyard.

The company was booked until late September, when they came out to do the work. It was $75 to take down the tree and another $50 to grind the stump. We’re going to live with it for a while before deciding what to put in its place. And when I say a while, I probably mean next Spring, since it’s almost too late to really plant anything now.

I would love a flowering plant. One that I can clip and bring into the house when it blooms. We shall see.

They also trimmed our prickly Hawthorne. I totally could have saved the $110 and done it myself if I had a large ladder but the last time I trimmed that tree I got a huge gash on the top of my head (hence the tree’s name. It’s no joke), so I had to leave this one to the pros.

It took several hours for the guys to trim our silver maple (he is hard to see up there – just follow the rope). They said we were quoted way too low ($375, which we actually thought was pricey) for the job they ended up doing. One guy said it should have been more like $3000. Whoa. Glad that was not my mistake.

At one point the guy in the tree let out a startled shout. He said there were a bunch of squirrels living in a hollow branch of the tree. He kept tapping the limb to make sure they all got out before he cut it off. There were five or six of them total. Yikes!

I really wanted to take down our ailanthus tree, which I’ve been told is the reason for most of our weed issues. But that would have been another $1500-$2400 $2400 so unless we can cough up the money by next Spring, I’m going to fight those weeds again next year.

Not super exciting stuff, but I wanted to catalog it. The garden is now covered in Fall leaves and I don’t even, what I call “walk the garden” (check up on all my plants, to minor weeding, fixing, watering) every day anymore. At this point I’m just crossing my fingers that winter will be kind. At least next year I will have a jump on Spring, with some idea of what I want to accomplish in the garden vs. this year, when I didn’t even know most of the names of our plants.

Shirley’s garden. I have some of those astilbes in my yard now which I planted at the end of the season. I’m hoping they will come back strong next Spring.

A few weeks ago I saw Shirley in her church clothes, walking slowly around her garden, surveying the plants. I went over and said hello and she told me she was saying goodnight to (I’m 90% sure it was goodnight and not goodbye) and thanking her garden. She said she does it every year. Thanks the garden for its beauty, its bounty, its goodness. Until we meet again.

Thanking nature seems so simple, yet so powerful (and so zen, although she is Catholic). Being grateful in general is a practice I, for one, need to do more of. For sure I’m adding this one to my list.

September 2, 2015 by Pointes of View

The August List 2015

August got away from me. I was on vacation in upstate New York for half the month, so I’m excused. But now I have a post to write and all I have is spiders. So I’ll start off with that and see where it takes me…

1) We’ve had a terrible amount of spiders this summer. All the landscape and plant shop people have confirmed this. We’ve already sprayed twice (and yes SF, it’s safe for kids and animals), but every morning we walk into new webs. This guy posted up on our back gate. As I opened the latch, I disturbed it and actually said, “oh sorry” out loud. I get that they control the bug population (although not doing that great of a job in our garden!), but they give me the creeps.

2) This flower popped open, giving us a beautiful surprise. I didn’t know what the blossoms would look like when I planted it. It’s a monarda and one of the plants I got from my next door neighbor, Shirley (don’t ask me about the spots on the leaves. I can’t go there).

3) Speaking of Shirley, I was in her garden at the beginning of the month and spied an eggplant growing. I commented on how nice it looked.

You want it? Here. Is what she said and so I had an eggplant. I made eggplant parmesan and it was delicious. Even my husband liked it and he doesn’t like eggplant. I really hope to grow a vegetable garden next year (those darn bugs, though).

I mentioned to someone the other day how it has been hard for me to read people here because everyone is nice. As in cordial, super polite, well-mannered, etc. And so I can’t tell who is actually nice and who is just acting nice. Plucking your only eggplant and handing it to your neighbor without a second thought. That is genuine niceness, people. Take note.

4) This is someone’s actual vehicle. As in, not a working truck, but the car that you would drive to the Yacht Club for a day at the pool. God Bless America.

5) Shoutout to our dog, Sam who is the best traveler. Eleven hours in the car and he did not make one peep. Or say that he had to go to the bathroom 20 minutes after we left a rest stop.

6) I love barns. I’m obsessed with barns. My dream house is a renovated barn. So of course I loved being back in dairy country for vacation. We drove past this barn whenever we went into town and one day I finally stopped to take a couple photos. I would have taken more, but I was technically trespassing and I’m not a risk-taker. In that sense, anyway.

7) While on vacation,we drove to my cousin’s spot on Lake Ontario one afternoon. I do love the quietness of my Dad’s place on Chase Lake, but being on a boat (and jet ski) was so fun, especially for the girls.

8) Remember how I complained about my yard guys last month? I met with our landscape company and went over what I’m going to start taking care of vs. what they will handle. Hedge trimming now falls under me. I’d never used a hedge trimmer before, but it wasn’t difficult to get the hang of.

However, after about 15 minutes, I felt like my arms were going to fall off! Haha. Good workout. (Also, I realize this photo is hideous. I don’t have a better one, sadly. I’d just gotten back from a run and am wearing a stained maternity shirt (why!?! I kept it because it was “cozy.” I threw it away within minutes of seeing this photo).

9) I never heard anything back from the Yacht Club about the letter I wrote urging them to implement a recycling program, but I did see this blurb in the latest newsletter. It’s a start.

10) We got a new orb. Excuse me, magical orb. The old one we inherited from the previous homeowners was silver and in perfectly good condition, but we (my husband and the kids) decided that we needed a new one because something about old magic vs. new magic so… now we have a blue one.

image via missouribotanicalgarden.org

11) I had our magnolia tree treated for scale. Which are tiny little white bugs that don’t look like bugs but that are definitely bugs. Yucky bugs that wreak havoc on the tree. It was $120. It helped. I think. Yesterday I noticed that one of my lilac bushes was covered (I mean covered) with scale. I’m done spending money on the yard this year (budget is spent and cold weather is coming soon), so I’m hoping and praying it doesn’t die. It’s my favorite. Please, please, please.

12) Acorns are already falling. Noooooo! Our neighbors have an oak tree that mostly hangs over our yard, driveway and garage. So plunk, plunk, plunk they go, all day long. When I was out planting the other day, I put a bowl on my head like a hard hat. I wasn’t taking any chances.

Here’s where I say I can’t believe it’s already September, but the truth is that I have been waiting for September for the last couple of weeks. I had the best summer, but I am so ready for school to start and excited for a new season to roll in. Have a great month!

July 31, 2015 by Pointes of View

The July List – 2015

1) July was a quintessential summer month. The 4th was spent at my husband’s Uncle’s house, with family, swimming and hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. If I had been more ambitious, I could have made the day even more ideal with a homemade apple pie. But I brought store-bought guacamole instead because sometimes momma just can’t.

2) Speaking of holidays, there’s one house along Lakeshore Drive that goes all out in the decorating department. Christmas, is of course the big one, but the 4th of July display was definitely impressive (for lack of a better word). The girls call it “the silly house” or sometimes “the crazy house. Indeed.

Sweet pea ricotta and warm cabbage salad. Mmmmm!!

3) I’ve been dying to go to Chartreuse, a new restaurant near the Detroit Institute of Arts, since it opened in late spring. My husband and I made it down a few weeks ago and we were not disappointed. It was on par with our favorite San Francisco restaurants, which speaks volumes, if you know San Francisco. Or me.

From appetizers to desserts, everything was fresh and flavorful and the portion sizes were not too small or too big, something that a lot of places don’t get right. Can’t wait to go back.

4) Our Rose of Sharon is in bloom! It has beautiful lavender flowers (which was a fun surprise – we didn’t know what color they were since we moved in after they had bloomed last year) and is doing well considering its shady location.

However, since it is in a shady spot, it has grown SO tall in its attempts to get sun. So the only way to really see the flowers is from one of the bedrooms upstairs or by standing in the driveway. Might need to remedy that at some point. How, I’m not sure yet.

5) Because I’m a gardener now (HA-ha) and because Shirley told me to, I went to the annual (24th) Grosse Pointe Garden Tour. There were six gardens on the tour and I made it to five. My Dad’s and his wife Lyn were visiting at the time, so she and the girls came along on Friday for three and I went solo the following morning in a nasty rainstorm to see two more (I’m so hardcore).

It was nice to see different aesthetics,which ranged from simple to eclectic, manicured to wild. Like going to a museum, it was inspiring to see these gardens and they gave me some ideas as to how I might want ours to look someday.

6) At the Garden Tour shop, Lyn bought us this cool strawberry plant (potted by Shirley – she’d put together dozens of potted plants for the Tour, including a couple Crocs as planters, which were very cute).

We’ve gotten a few strawberries, but I have to fight the squirrels and birds for them. I ran out of the house one day, shaking my finger and yelling at a little black squirrel who had just scampered up the maple tree with a strawberry. He tsk-tsked back at me with his beady eyes. The struggle is real.

7) I wrote a letter to the Board at the Yacht Club, asking (begging?) them to please plan for a recycling program. The containers you see above (and no, I do not always eat like this. Usually I also get a side of onion rings and finish the little ones chicken tenders.)… that’s what food is served in when you eat outside (not just take-out. And the Styrofoam! I can barely stand to look at it).

Hundreds of these containers get thrown in the trash daily during warm-weather months. The way I see it (thank you, San Francisco) not recycling is pretty much littering. I have yet to hear back.

8) My girlfriend Sara from SF (now living in Ireland) came for a quick visit! I took her to Sister Pie, a favorite spot. Although not a favorite because of the pie.

I know, I know! You love the pie. I don’t love the pie. I’ve tried to love the pie. What can I say. Either I’m wrong (which doesn’t seem possible because I feel like I know pie?) or my pie taste buds are out of whack. Either way, I do love the cookies and this time I tried a coconut lemon, thyme mint, ginger and shortbread. All yum.

9) There are tiny little weeds like this one all over our yard (not bigger than an inch or two). I usually give a pull and that’s the end of it. Sometimes I need the help of a shovel. One day, I decided to figure out where this weed was coming from exactly – how far its roots went and all that. After 30 minutes of ripping up a big section of the garden, I had a bucket full of roots and still did not get it all. Maddening.

10) Most valuable gardening lesson I have learned thus far: when pulling a particularly stubborn weed, keep your eyes and mouth closed. Number of times I have regretted not following my own advice: too many to count.

11) In the middle of a blah part of Detroit (gas stations, fast food restaurants, freeway on-ramps) near the Grosse Pointe City border, lies this pretty little farmhouse. I posted the pic to my Instagram account and people recognized it immediately. It definitely grabs your attention when you pass by. I’ve always wanted to snap a picture of it and got a chance one evening during a break in the rain. I wonder what its story is.

12) I got out on the water for the first time last week on a friend’s boat. It was divine. Lake St. Clair is a beauty. I’ve said this before, but one of our criteria for moving was that we needed to be close to the ocean or other large body of water. In Hawaii, I was 20 minutes away from the beach. In California, five. Here, half a block. If we follow the natural progression of things, we will need to retire on a lake house. Not a bad prospect.

We have another month of summer, but I’m already seeing oak leaves on our lawn from our neighbor’s tree (nooooo!). We leave for a road trip to upstate New York next week, so the blog may be a little quiet in early August. I’m sure I will have a lot to share about our adventures.

July 27, 2015 by Pointes of View

Digging in the Dirt

So, you know I’ve been spending a ton of time in the garden lately. I forget what in the world I was doing in our azalea/rhododendron flower bed (probably weeding), when I moved one of our decorative stones and heard a “clunk.”

Underneath was another stone. I covered it back up. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that buried stone. The fact that it was there, under the dirt, probably meant there were others. And if there were others, that meant only one thing: new garden project.

I couldn’t help myself and a few days later I investigated. There was another stone. And another and another. Over the next couple of days, I dug up about 30 stones.

I’m not the strongest person and it was definitely a workout. I woke up in the morning with muscle aches all over, but I kind of love that feeling (which I haven’t felt since I took kickboxing before my wedding).

So now what? After unearthing all the stones, I let them sit for a day or two and thought about what I wanted to do with them. The most obvious solution was to make a border around our maple, as that’s where most of them were found, presumably a border had been there years ago.

Ta-da! Figuring out which stones to put where was like a puzzle and took quite a long time. I think it adds just enough polish to that area without taking away from the plants. I love natural materials in gardens

(Side note: speaking of gardens, I never used to say “garden.” I’d say back yard or front yard or just… yard. Here, everyone says “garden.” At first I thought it was a throwback to the Motherland (people are quirky here, who knows), but now I think it’s because people actually garden in their outdoor spaces. I really only started to call it my garden once I started garden-ing so that makes sense.)

I also used some of the found stones to repair the outer wall around the maple. It was dilapidated, falling in places and missing stones in others.

Of course once I was almost finished creating the two-stone-high section of wall, my husband came out and asked if I was going to make it three levels, “to match the other part of the wall.” Oh my gosh. Instead of going back and redoing everything, I tapered the wall down from three levels, to two and then one (near the boxwood). Perfect (okay, not really perfect. But I can’t go back).

I also widened and repaired, I guess is the right word, our back stone walkway. I wish I had a “before” pic because this one is a huge difference. The only stones that were there before I started were the slate one. You can kind of see they are darker and flatter than the others.

There used to be narrow pathway of slate (the path was made up of one line of six stones and some were broken and/or missing). More puzzle pieces. I moved some of the slate pieces so that they would flow better with the new stones (although technically the stones I unearthed are probably much older than the slate. anyhoo).

Finally I added a few decorative garden stones (the frog and three circles) that the previous owners left behind. I used to think they were ugly and/or dumb, but I love them here.

I love that yard work is never over. I hate weeding and the bugs (the bugs! three worms per every stone unturned!) and I also hate when you are trimming the hawthorn tree and a large branch with multiple thorns (they are huge) falls on your head. But it also means that I’ll never run out of things to do or get bored.

Case in point: after I stood back and admired my creation, I glanced over to the garden wall just beyond the bath. It was crooked, falling and sections were missing stones. I couldn’t look away. Next up: operation garden wall.

July 19, 2015 by Pointes of View

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I knew our next door neighbor was an expert gardener, because everyone told me so. “Oh, you live on such and such, do you know the ____? She’s an expert gardener.” I met Mr. M in December when he and his daughter were stringing outdoor lights, but I didn’t meet Shirley until a couple months ago.

Naturally, she was tending to her garden. We said a few nice words and I didn’t see her again until a few weeks ago, when she called to me from across the fence. She was in the process of dividing some of her plants and would I like any. Umm…. yes, please.

Shirley’s garden

She invited me to walk through her yard to see what she would be digging up and what I might want, so the girls and I popped over for a tour. She told me the names of the plants, what kind of flowers they had (if any), what environment they liked. I learned that she is mainly self-taught, having gathered a lot of her gardening knowledge online (I still think to a large degree that gardening is a talent, rather than a skill and she clearly has that special something).

Digging up Solomon’s Seal.

After our walk-through, she instructed me to get potting soil and any soil mixture that said “compost”on it and a couple days later, she called me over again. She had already pulled up several hostas, which are perfect for a shady yard like ours, and sedum, which is great for ground cover. I loved the Solomon’s Seal (in the hosta family) for its height and simple lines, so she dug some of it up and I added it to the pile.

Transplanted Solomon’s Seal in our garden. I spaced them a little too far apart, but next year they will have lots of room to grow and multiply.

Shirley’s garden gets a lot more sun than we do (thanks to our two huge maples, birch and other large trees), but I decided to try some sun-loving plants anyway. She dug up a bunch of daisies….

cranesbill (aka wild geranium)…

The cranesbill in our garden

Example of a large, thriving cranesbill plant. Image via chaletnursery.com.

dianthus, a low-growing shrub with pinky-purplish flowers…

and a bleeding heart, which produces tiny rows of pink heart-shaped blossoms in the spring.

Close-up of bleeding heart blossoms. Image via michiganbulbs.com

After an hour or so (she did all the hard work!), I had a wheelbarrow full of perennials. She also threw in a pair of gardening gloves when I mentioned that I had none.

She walked over with me to our backyard, so she could show me the proper way to transplant, and I also wanted her opinion on where to put everything. She made a comment that she’d never been in our backyard, which I was surprised to hear (she and her husband have lived in their home for 12 years and the people we bought the house from lived here for over twenty).

Sedum before and after photos. You can sedum them along the border (haha).

We started with the garbage bag full of sedum. I watched as she planted the first clump. Use a shovel (she let me borrow hers. It was waaay easier to work with than our large man-sized one and a few days later I bought my own) to break up any roots and dig a hole for the new plant.

Close up of the sedum.

After placing the plant in the hole, add a handful of potting soil and a handful of compost mix and cover up the roots with dirt, being careful not to pack the dirt too much (Shirley reminded me that plants need three things: water, sun and air). I asked if I needed to replant all the plants that day. Yes, I did and the quicker the better.

Three hours later, I was done. Towards the end, I was being less and less careful, throwing leaves and flowers into the dirt with the roots. I just wanted to get them in the ground.

Transplanted daisies, monarda and evening primrose (the yellow flowers), in front of a lily plant, which we already had and which I later moved to another spot.

I’ve always loved the idea of gardening, but I haven’t done much of it. I come from a family of ridiculously green thumbs (my grandpa always had the heartiest fruits and vegetables, my grandma the most beautiful roses and orchids and my mom is a natural as well), so I hope some of those genes will start showing up in me.

More daisies next to our dogwood tree.

Initially I was hesitant and overwhelmed about where to begin. But where do I put everything? Shirley told me to think about what I wanted to see when I looked out onto the yard from the patio. What did I want it to look like? And go from there. Can the daisies go over here? Try it. If something dies, you pull it up and try something else. No big deal.

I’m glad she gave me the responsibility of decision-making because ultimately my sense of ownership and pride is that much stronger. About a week after the big planting day, our lawn guys came and trampled over a bunch of my new plants and blew dirt and debris onto many others. I cried. Hard.

The rhododendron I was so worried about (I thought I may have over-pruned it) is slowly coming back.

When we first moved to Grosse Pointe and were living in our rental apartment, my girlfriend Ingrid told me to buy a plant to take care of. She said it would help ground me. Maybe I was so emotional because after a year of feeling so unsettled, I was finally starting to feel rooted to this place.

The beauty of gardening is that if something doesn’t go as planned, you can always start over. That’s also what I love so much about living with seasons – everything is constantly changing, renewing itself, reminding us that life is cyclical. You watch things thrive and die and come back to life seemingly right before your eyes and there’s something so profound about that.

Lately, I’ve been spending at least an hour a day (sometimes hours) weeding, trimming, watering, planting and envisioning our garden in the years to come. And it all started with a chat across the fence. How does your garden grow?

July 12, 2015 by Pointes of View

A New Tree and a Transplant

In early Spring, we pulled up a bunch of bushes that were blocking the view from the kitchen window. We finally decided on a serviceberry tree (formal name, amelanchier) to help cover the utility boxes and make them less of a focal point.

Other options were some type of lattice covering (which I’ve never liked, at least not as a focal point) or an evergreen. An evergreen probably made a little more sense in terms of coverage, but we (meaning me, and my husband let me have the final say) really wanted a flowering tree.

Here are the guys unloading the tree. ..

…and putting it into place.

Initially the tree was slightly crooked, so someone came back a week later to straighten it. Two weeks later (today), the tree looks a tad unhappy, with yellowed leaves, many of which have fallen off. One of the landscape owners came by to look at it and assured me it still looks healthy, and that it’s trying to adjust to its new environment. We do have a one-year warranty on the $400 tree, but we would like for it to survive, of course.

While the guys were here installing the tree, they also transplanted one of our Pieirs japonica trees free of charge. I felt the plant was competing with the rhododendron for sun and space, and I also wanted a plant with more foliage that would cover the drain pipe when looking out from the dining room.

I bought a $50 hydrangea with light purple flowers (the flower in the photo is faded after weeks of being in bloom) and planted it in the pieirs japonica’s spot. Hydrangeas love water and do well in the shade, so I’m told. This plant should grow to about three feet high and five feet wide.

before

after

It’s hard to see in photos, but the Pieirs japonica was moved next to another shorter Pieirs (on the left), that seems to be doing well even in a shadier spot. I’ve been told by several plant people that it’s an old plant, so it is especially vulnerable to being transplanted, but it seems to be doing fine in its new space. I lopped a few hanging branches of the evergreen overhead to give it more sun.

The serviceberry is supposed to produce actual berries in the spring. One of the landscapers told me (after I asked) that the berries aren’t edible (he seemed uncertain), but Mil the gardener says that they are and I’ve found several online sources agreeing with her. I also read that birds often devour the berries as soon as they are ripe, and there are a lot of them around here. Hopefully our tree will survive winter and I will be writing about its beautiful red berries next spring.

Pointes of View

A City Gal's Traversal of Small-Town Suburbia

Gardening

Tree Trimming and Thanking the Garden

The July List – 2015

Digging in the Dirt

How Does Your Garden Grow?

A New Tree and a Transplant

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