Published June 7, 2024, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “New growing season serendipity surprises gardener in Cheyenne”.
New growing season serendipity surprises gardener
By Barb Gorges
Every year is a little, or sometimes a lot, different in my yard, and not always what I expect.
The northeast side of our house, where we seldom go, was buried in wind-blown drifts of last fall’s leaves. While removing barrel after barrel from around the huge, gnarly junipers this spring, I realized the area now has more sunshine. The current neighbor and I had the “Tree of Contention” (as I called the disagreement with a former neighbor) removed last summer. Removing some of our scraggly junipers will allow for growing a flowering shrub like Cheyenne Mock Orange—if the ubiquitous chokecherry seedlings don’t get there first.
The plum tree the birds planted years ago in the front yard was very floriferous in May. Maybe it will have more plums this year.
Back in January, Cheyenne Botanic Gardens director Scott Aker explained how to gradually eliminate an extra leader (the main trunk heading skyward) on a tree. You start pruning it over a couple years—starve it—and gradually the other leader becomes dominate and removing the diminished one won’t leave such a comparatively large scar. One of our mountain ash trees has this problem. Left alone, it could produce an area prone to disease, as has happened to the same kind but older tree across the street. But its rotten part is where the red-breasted nuthatches nest.
Every fall I plant more bulbs. Grape hyacinth and squill, both small blue flowers, continue to spread so I don’t usually plant more of those anymore. My tulip orders come in bags of 10 so I plant them in groups of five. Some tulips multiply but a lot of them peter out (the most expensive ones!). Several groups were down to one bloom this spring so I’m thinking I should dig them up now and see if there are multiple baby bulbs that need to be spread out and replanted. I’ve already ordered more bulbs for planting this fall after being overwhelmed and inspired by the blooming tulip fields at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival back in April (see http://www.tulips.com).
Between the dog urine burn spots circled by dark green growth, our back lawn looks a bit sad. I think it’s because Mark spends a lot of time back there with the dog, walking around, compacting the soil. We’ve never aerated our lawn, but maybe that’s what it needs. Also, we should temporarily fence the greatest concentration of burn circles and replant them with sod from good areas that I want to dig out to enlarge flower beds.
Ironically, the main weed in my flowerbeds continues to be grass, as if someone sprinkled bluegrass seed in them. The soil needs to have just the right amount of moisture to pull grass roots easily. In lieu of time to do that, I make sure to remove seedheads before the seeds spill.
I took it easy cutting back the perennials this spring. As early as March, I removed the stems that fell over—mostly the very tall perennial Maximillian sunflowers. Weeks later, I left a foot of stem on many stems still upright, having heard that there are beneficial insects that will nest in old stems over the following year. We’ll see.
Several years ago, I thinned out my irises and moved some to what I thought was a sunny location, but they hardly bloomed. This year is happily a different story. It might have to do with a utility company coming through last summer and again butchering the neighbor’s row of crabapples across the alley—more sunshine. But less bird fodder.
The climbing rose I planted in the wrong place 10 years ago—and thought I should probably move somewhere sunnier—disappeared over the winter. However, the Austrian copper rose I planted 30 years ago has suddenly decided to sprout all over that flowerbed. A rose is a rose, I guess, though yellow and orange instead of pink.
Of my 30 milk jugs of winter-sown native perennial seeds, 20 went to the Master Gardener plant sale. The others, with less germination success, have seedlings I plan to transfer to my little nursery space. I’ve learned to transplant them in rows so I can tell if a difficult-to-identify one is what I planted or something the birds planted for me. I’m enjoying little clumps of violets popping up randomly. I don’t think I could buy seeds for them at a store.
Sometimes, leaving empty space gives you thistles. Sometimes it gives you flowers.
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