Serviceberry in bloom April 29, 2009

Last year, I didn’t get a picture of the “Autumn Brilliance” serviceberry while it was in bloom, and vowed not to let that happen again.

I was all set to make a post showing just how quickly the blossoms fade, and darn it all if they haven’t lasted for the past 5 days!

Unlike last year, when they came and went within 12 hours, the blooms this year have been prolonged by (I presume) the cold and damp weather that’s been alternating with warm and damp weather the past couple of weeks.  They’re just about done now, though, and I hope we still get a bumper crop of berries for the birds come June.

Pond gunk and prettier stuff April 23, 2009

In my previous post about the annual pond cleanout, I neglected to show the nasty pond gunk that convinced me that it was time to get cracking:

Now imagine that you could pull up about 10 times that amount each time you swept a net over the bottom of the pond, and no matter how much you pulled out, the next day there would be even more. It becomes pretty clear that it’s time to clean it out! Now that the cleanout is complete and I’m doing a twice a day bacteria seeding of the biofalls, this was about the worst of it. It’ll keep getting better as it warms up and the bacteria get to work.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the garden, it’s starting to look nice. Not lush, but nice.

The Autumn Brilliance serviceberry looks like it’s about to bloom, although the buds are photogenic as well.  I missed the short window of blooms last year, but I’m determined to get pictures this year.

Pond Cleanout Day April 19, 2009

On Saturday, I had to duck out of a fun meetup with Garden Faerie, Garden Girl, and Mr. Brown Thumb at the Macy’s Garden Show because earlier that morning I found that the pond needed its annual cleanout NOW.

The whole pond looked a little too much like that – string algae was everywhere. Given I had just cleaned a bunch out a few days before and it was all back again, it was time to spring into action.

Here’s the top of the biofalls after we turned the pump off and took off the rocks around the top.

Once you take out and clean out the two mesh bags full of lava rock, you then take out the filters. Their weight was doubled or tripled by the amount of muck clinging to them.

And then there’s the skimmer filter…but see how different it looks after it gets cleaned out!  Note how the dirty filter is sagging and the clean one isn’t: that’s the weight of the mud.

We didn’t try to suck up any of the muck on the bottom of the pond in this go-round.  We’re going to do the twice-daily seeding of the pond with bacteria and enzymes for two weeks, and then re-clean the skimmer filter.  That should really clean things up nicely; if not, then time to clean the bottom of the pond.

Bloom Day – April 2009 April 15, 2009

It’s definitely bloomier than March was, but this chilly April is far from lush!  The good news about a cool spring is that flowers last a long time.

Just finished blooming:

• Crocuses

Now blooming:

• Daffodils (Rijnveld’s Early Sensation and Tete a Tete)



• Hyacinth



• Grape hyacinth



• Marsh marigold



• Scilla



• Forsythia, sort of…

Coming soon:

• Forsythia
• Serviceberry
• Virginia bluebells

Lazy Urban Composting, Part 5: Not *That* Lazy! April 10, 2009

As demonstrated by the dearth of posts in the past year under lazy urban composting, all I’ve done in the past year is to toss stuff on the pile, including a lot of rotten vegetables.  That…was not the best idea I’ve ever had.  I finally dug it out, and there was precious little that had composted down enough to use.  While I banned sticks from my compost pile a while ago, there were a lot of stems and potatoes and other relatively hard objects that survived a year in the pile without doing anything.

So, this year, I’m going to try to chop up anything that’s not a leaf going into the pile.  Cutting back on our CSA subscription should also help, since we really didn’t need it in the middle of summer and would tend to only eat the vegetables we picked out at the farmers market.  And I need to turn it at least once a month, particularly since my definition of turning is “hack at it with a rake for 2 minutes”.  Even a lazy gardener should be able to do that!

Chilly Blooms April 8, 2009

The garden keeps growing, even though we’re in a chilly spell.

The scilla in the front yard look really nice this year. I’m not sure why since we had a hard winter (which should have encouraged squirrels snacking on them), but perhaps they spread last summer when it was nice and moist.

The marsh marigold (Caltha palustris) is huge this spring. It’s just rooted in the pebbles at the edge of the pond, so it’s amazing that the winter cold didn’t seem to affect it. Then again, it’s a zone 3 plant, so a sheltered backyard in northeast Illinois is probably not a big challenge.

Yeah, my photos have been a little crocus heavy, but what else can you do in early spring?

The daffodils are also making a good showing. The hyacinths should be out by Bloom Day.

The Vagaries of Spring April 1, 2009

Big purple volunteer crocuses emerged in the backyard around March 20 and are still blooming.

The native Allegheny spurge (Pachysandra procumbens) has spread considerably, and doesn’t seem to be fazed by the temperature swings.

As is nearly always the case in Chicago, there’s a depressing late snowfall. It happened right as the first daffodil blooms appeared this past weekend. The snow was gone within a day, which is also typical!