Akebia quinata

I love looking at the intricate detail of the akebia's blooms. With both male and female flowers separately growing on the same plant and a pollinator whose zone does not stretch beyond horticultural zone 7; it is safe to say I will never see the fruit of my akebia. 

While it flowers I would not be without it. Its mounding foliage separates a neighbors kitchen window from my bedroom and side yard.  My allowed six foot tall fence doesn't quite do the job.

It is not until July I will need to police the vine from scampering 20 feet up the arborvitae.

Python in My Garden!

Well, sort of...

It was thirty feet long, slithering along the fence.  It blended in oh-so-carefully with the color of the soil. It slithered through the fence and into the neighbors.  I grabbed it by the tail in a feat of sheer strength, agility, and bravery.  In all there were actually three of them (all 30'+), making their way quietly along the fence with similar intention to the unstoppable snakes of the movie "Anaconda!"

I clipped three fistfuls of the thing, curling its length into large loops.

Discovered while patrolling the Long Border for the perennial young thugs shoots of quack grass; I discovered the shoots of the akebia quinata a good thirty feet from the mother plant.

In its place it is a beautiful and vine. It typically mounds up on top of my fence, blocking the view from my narrow side yard to the neighbor's breakfast table, a feat a mere six foot tall fence can not accomplish. In northern Illinois it is nearly evergreen.  It laid siege to my garage there and actually came inside for the winter-- dormant and having dropped its leaves outside, while indoors in an unheated garage, it was doing its best to impart a balmy, tropical jungle effect.

In bloom, in mid-May, a couple years ago in my garden

Previously, it has tried to colonize a nearby arborvitae, but it seems to know I am wise to that plot and did not attempt that last year.  This was a new and very bold.. and a tad scary incursion.

Beware the akebia quinata coming bearing beautiful flowers!

Dear Infidel Western Gardener....Proof of Life

"Let this be your Prook of Life Infidel Western Gardener! We have the fair beauty 'Krasavitsa Moskvy'.  Our tendrils have scaled her fair frame in several places blocking her light!"

 Dear Infidel Western Gardener:

We here in The Garden know you have grown fat and lazy with your recent success and acclaim from your capitalist Master Gardeners Garden Walk.  You think you can sit back and read glowing thank you cards and full page write-ups in beautiful full color in your week(ly) capitalist press.   Now is our time to strike!  We, the Wine Grapes, Othello and poor dumb B who is known by a number only, have organized the other thug garden plants.

"We have also clambered onto cherry 'Lapin'.  He is young, we may yet convert him to the True Path!"

"Here we show you we have 'Honeycrisp', too!  Easy prey for us as our hearts are true and our Evil Plan for World Domination will not be denied!"

"We have lived with you for years, fitting into your landscape design, learning your pruning and weeding ways!"

"You may think you foiled our evil plans when you cut off two 25-foot sections of akebia quinata which had taken the arborvitae twins hostage, but we will not give up!  More of our brothers stand ready to sacrifice their tendrils in the name of our Holy Cause!"

"Meanwhile, our brother-in-arms Gooseneck Loosestrife, A.K.A. Lysimachia clethroides languishes in your gardener's prison, contained between your house and a stone path!"

"Wormwood 'Oriental Limelight' A.K.A. Artemesia vulgaris Janlim also struggles in nearly full shade positioned in front of a mirror!  Who has heard of such crazy gardening ways!"

We demand you release our brethren plants!  There are more plants in The Garden which will join our cause!  The seedlings of catalpa overrun your beds and with the last week's heat grow mighty in their resistance to your ways as do grass turkey foot, quack, and our loyal friend walnut! 

Campanula horribilis launches her own evil plan giving us a two prong attack; and her minions are legion!


Lily of the Valley may yet come over and join with us in Our Cause.  Those fancy daylilies may yet see The Light!

We saw you out there on hands and knees ignoring us in your garden beds and borders, hand-pulling our brother turkey foot and crab where your dumb dog has made your lawn weak and willing to allow our take-over of your institutions.  The time you waste mowing the lawn works for us in our Evil Plan for World Domination.


We demand you free our brethren, lay down your pruners and join us on the True Path!!!

Simply continue your lazy ways.  We will yet triumph!

(signed)

The Grapevines Othello and poor dumb B known as a number only

Last Friday in April

Akebia quinata, no signs of growth...yet..

Friday morning and it has been three days since we have had snow on the ground and rain or snow falling here in central Wisconsin.  I would be doing the Happy Dance if this was March.  As all of you know by a quick peek at the calendar, a handful of days remain until May. I think that is "may", as in, "May I go out and play in the garden Mother (Nature)?"

I have been continuing to prick out and move seedlings into bigger pots and that starts to lead to problems with room versus light.  Dr. Darrel Apps confessed to me he has the same problem in his basement grow room which is three time or more the space of my attic space.  He also said for the garden walk he is thinking blue (the full page story on the up-coming July county garden walk was in the Spring Garden section of the local weekly newspaper)...and that he had to remove his dogwood (verticillium wilt) (EEK!) and that he has a cardinal nesting in his blue spruce ("See!  But oh, so low Pam's (feral) housecat will get them!")

Darrel was busy raking out his front border where he thinks the daffodil 'Tete-a-tete' will bloom in a week.  This is a short, floriferous, very early, quickly clumping, natural looking daff suitable for drifts or woodland planting, appearing very native-looking.  He has it planted in a envious drift across the width of his entire front border which also had a redbud tucked back by the house and stoloniferous dogwood, blue spruce, and a second dogwood alternifolia.

It's a great show from my front porch.

He also confessed he has been out to one of the secret Amish nurseries in the area.  Secret, is sort of code.  All the gardeners pretty much know where they are, but they don't advertise or have a website or phone.  They have nice things though, so gardeners KNOW.

Top pruning on my "dwarf" malus 'Honeycrisp'

Late last summer, I noticed what long shadows my apple tree was beginning to cast on my potager.  It's funny how some plants can be just the right size and then in a season, they are too big.  My apple tree 'Honeycrisp' is supposed to be a graft on dwarf root stock.  I guess, not so much.  I wish I had made the cuts late last winter, rather than this; but regular pruning each year has come to my apple tree.

My forsythia has yet to show any sign of life so if Spring has finally arrived there is very little to show for it yet.

Just 78 days until the Garden Walk...

An Unexpectedly Nice Day-- Weatherwise!

Akebia quinata in full bloom , 2 1/2 weeks late!

Today is Graduation Day at Wild Rose and many other small schools here in central Wisconsin. One year from today, my own son will join those that have passed across the dais and join so many others as alumni of my home town, something like dandelion fluff blowing on a May breeze.

I went to today's ceremony. Never before have I been so connected to so many of our graduates. I wish them all the best. Unfortunately, nearly all of our very best and very brightest will leave here, unable to make the sort living for themselves to which they aspire.

There are few choices for careers here, and we are so unconnected here. Internet is slow, at times unreliable. Cursing cell phone coverage and carriers is a daily travail of tears. The only reliable television comes through an extremely pricey cable or via satellite with contract lock-outs and channel blocking. The "local" television and newspapers do not cover activities in the area, and we are served only by a weekly newspaper. Radio transmissions fades in and out.

If you want to know what is going on prepare to be well-connected to gossip, or increasingly, Facebook (although there seems to be no end to the service glitches with Facebook either). Getting a cup of coffee at the gas station or the breakfast and lunch only restaurant might better serve the purpose for finding out the local news.

And here in the village, increasingly the population is senior citizens.

Yet, this is my native earth. When I divorced my son's father, I felt he would need strong male role models, and a good environment to feel rooted. My parents live here, my brother and his family nearby. Men I went to school with have been my son's coaches, his "sports fathers" (important for a boy who would not have his dad around on a daily basis).

My son has thrived.


My son at his Spring Concert. Yes, my jock son (starter for his Varsity Basketball team) also does geek and nerd(High Quiz Bowl and Honor Roll every quarter of high school) really well.





And while espalier has worked really well with my 'Lapin' cherry and my privet hedge has taken to my pruning style; my son has been a bit more difficult to train. Yes, as a mother desiring an easy path for her only child, I did attempt to persuade him to play trumpet, but to no avail.

Like every gardener who learns from their plants, I have learned my son is not my clone; I've allowed him to be his own person.

Besides, at 200 pounds and nearly 6'4", if you would like to discuss his flute repertoire with him, be my guest.