From Now On...

I know the Canadian ginger is evergreen under the deep snow...

Sunday I returned home, a monumental occasion.

It had been five months since I had stepped foot in my home.  There was dust everywhere, with the boxes stacked about that my brother unloaded from his SUV, it looked more like an episode of Hoarders than my sweet house.  The dust, debris, items of life strewn about, I have often wondered about those abandoned buildings ghost hunters frequent.

How many years does it take for places people lived in everyday to take on that desolate, dead look?

Not years at all, I find, just a couple months.

Canning jars, the grill from a car, a glue board with worms on it (?), notebooks, overturned furniture, leaves, flowers bulbs, dead flowers in a vase, greasy dishes, and everywhere dust.  Dust, thick on everything.

License plates, fluffy seed heads, worn out shoes, sprinkler heads, plumbing parts, dirty towels on the floor, empty bottles of shampoo, flipped over rugs, furniture, empty boxes, and dust.

Dust and decay...

It is a bit like my life, dust and decay.

I think of the stories, "The Count of Monty Cristo," "Robinson Crusoe," and several others of life interrupted.  I feel those are my stories.

Forty-four messages on the answering machine, before I had telephone service canceled,  And dust.

As I come back into life, I have many choices to make.  I am not the me I was.  I don't think I ever will be again, but this is hopefully a new beginning, not an ending.  Physically, I am not strong.  Mentally, I have taken a direct hit.  My brother says I have become angry.  Maybe angry is better than depression, but I have bathed in that, too.

The last two months I have been taking stock.  I have been trying.  I have been digging deep.  When life gives you lemons, making lemonade.  I have been working all of that.  The first three months of my to-date five month ordeal, was my healing phase.  I am not done healing, but I do need to go forward, even if that forward motion is from necessity slow.

Like all of the United States, for me, this year, Spring can not come soon enough.

I have germinated hosta and heuchera.  I am still a gardener, and will find faith in germination.

Robins- Can Spring Be Coming?

Verifiable sighting of my first robin of 2014!

There have been 48 days below zero, that might be in a row.  We have over 3 feet of snow on the ground.  There is a wind chill advisory for wind chills of -30 to -35 degrees.  And there is ice.

And... I saw my first robin.  Not only did I see my first robin, but I saw ten pairs of robins all huddled up on my trumpet vine against the dark brown fence in the long border as the sun rose bright and sunny in the east at my home garden.  They sat, feathers fluffed, shivering.  They weren't singing about it, but there they were.

I have never seen a robin in February.  I know some people around Madison, WI who will say they see robins all winter long.  This isn't Madison, though, and it has been an unbelievably cold, hard, brutal winter from many perspectives.  Sometimes I will see a robin March 5th or 6th.  The really warm spring of 2012, I saw one March 2nd.

Doesn't this beat all?  Maybe, I have to believe, spring is coming...

Rabbits in the Garden: Life As We Know It

(Photo: www.outdoorhub.com)

Rabbits.

They are sort of fun to watch, but as a gardener I know they spell trouble.  So it was not without some trepidation that I watched a rabbit burrow itself out of the snow from under a spiral pruned Alberta spruce in the parterre garden I can see out one of my two erstwhile bedroom windows.

I watched it for a while.  It scampered happily about as if to be saying, "Oh what to choose!"  It finally hopped over to some long caned heirloom roses and settled in for a snack.  I have seen many a shrub rose girdled and pruned back in just this fashion.  Of all the possible feasts laid out for Rabbit, my odds were on the roses from the start.

So yesterday, being a gardener, I had a lot of angst when, sensing movement in the garden, I looked up from my studying and saw Rabbit yet again.  Rabbit,  with all our winter has hit the outdoor creatures, looked good, healthy; and as temperatures soared to freezing (first time since January 13 for us here) Rabbit looked happy and joyful.  The day was warm.  The garden full of gnawable snacks.  The garden would provide.

And where there is one rabbit, you will certainly have more rabbits.  Or maybe not...

It was not more than a few seconds before I saw a second rabbit had joined Rabbit.  Both rabbits were scampering to and fro, enjoying the warm day, and playing tag of a sort, and I thought to myself they are going to do something for which rabbits are famous, multiply like, well, rabbits.

Being well-versed on the reproductive abilities of rabbits, I know rabbits multiply like rabbits because just being with a male rabbit or buck will bring the female into estrus.  About 30-31 days later, baby rabbits!

So, baby rabbits.  With such a short turnaround and so much snow to melt before I can hope to get to my car unless I hire a plow, in 30 days I will still be here and see yet more rabbits.

So Rabbit and Buck are doing their happy hopping and thinking about doing the nasty rabbit.  I'm watching thinking I should get my camera.

And suddenly...

(Photo: www.witchita.edu)

 
He was so impressive.  I saw him swoop in at an anterior angle, talons out, with his full, nearly five foot wingspan extended.  The snowy white, speckled with rust, downy under belly plumage and bright rust tail feathers, and his size, again I was taken by his size; left no doubt as to the identity of my latest visitor to the parterre.

I craned my head to see if I could capture a better angle of this bird...of prey.  I could not.  He was quick.

Hawk was gone.

My focus returned to Rabbit and Buck.

But... Buck...Buck was no more.  Hawk had been quick.  And life had changed for Rabbit and Buck and the heirloom shrub roses.  And Hawk, who was obviously at the top of his game and feeling the clear blue skies and warming temperatures, too.

And I was struck by how quickly life can change, yet again.

Greetings from the Land of Ice and Snow

Ice crystal, camera flash, and sunrise...the closest I get to Wisconsin's natural wonders this winter.

If you have managed to live your life this year and have not stumbled across pictures of Wisconsin's Apostle Islands this winter, I urge you to follow this link.  There is some incredible photography out there.  Our Polar Vortex has made caves typically visited by kayak off Lake Superior accessible to any hardy enough for the extreme cold hike.  The beauty of this place is surreal.

These natural wonders right here in Wisconsin are beyond words and other worldly, including this picture by Jeff Rennicke which was taken at the Apostle Islands during the Northern Lights.  This photo was chosen as one of 300 semi-finalist shots out of 5,500 entries for the Wilderness Forever Photography contest -- Honeymoon Rock in the Apostle Islands under the northern lights. The finalists will be part of a display honoring the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act at the Smithsonian Institute.

I urge you to take a look!

Carex 'Ice Dance'

Carex 'Ice Dance' is a variegated sedge that does well in dry, semi-shady conditions.  It is early to bloom and sends up its flowering stalk within a couple weeks of the ground thawing.  It spreads through a rhizomatous  root system/  Offset can be separated from a parent and replanted almost any time of the growing season.  'Ice Dance' can grow about 10"-12" tall and spread widely.

Here on the edge of my hosta bed, there is dappled sunlight, but typically dry conditions.  Often I am watering with a mister.  You can see the carex growing right next to some large hosta plantaginea/

Grasses and grass-like plants like sedges do not have a large fan club here in central Wisconsin.  This carex is particularly hardy and very nearly evergreen under the snow.  It has some browning of tips and I trim them up early in the season to have them looking their best as soon as possible.  I have trimmed them to the ground and get a good result with them regrowing pretty quickly.  Another method I have tried is running my fingers through the foliage pulling at the dead blades which also works fairly well.  Cleaning them up early, whichever method you choose, is important.  Once they enter their actively growing period and have a lot of new growth, clean-up becomes more difficult.

This variegated carex brings light to shady spaces.  If you don't grow a carex, this is one to try.