The Lay of the Land

My friend Nan expressed curiosity in a comment the other day about the way things are laid out on our property. This post is for her. If I divide my 3 1/2 acre property roughly into ninths, the first "ninth" in the northwest corner has our driveway, house, and pole barn. The house and barn sit atop a hill, and you can walk out of the basement through a door wall into the "valley" backyard. Our house is Cape Cod style, but without the cute dormer windows on the upper level (yet!) A garden, currently attracting many butterflies and bees of all sorts, runs across the length of the front deck. I walked out my front door to the front of my yard and faced slightly southwest to snap the photo above.

Turning slightly more to the south and looking down the hill, is our veggie garden, with the playhouse nearby and a tiny orchard of two semi-dwarf apples, two semi-dwarf pears, and a young peach tree. Four 4 by 8 foot beds are lined up in front of the playhouse. Currently, two are herb beds, one is a veggie bed, and one is home to about 32 wild-strawberry plants transplanted before we cultivated the soil for the larger vegetable garden in the left of the photo. Behind the playhouse, in an area that doesn't show clearly in this photo is the start of the berry bramble, currently home to 14 blueberries and 3 raspberry plants. Some "odds and ends" of vegetables are also planted there in a place that we will eventually plant with grapes (we're taking some time to improve the soil through compost and natural additions first.)

Turning toward the southeast, the fire pit is in the center right of the photo (though you can't really see it) and the rest of the photo reveals some of the wild edges I write about sometimes. The whole property looks a little bit like a "wild edge" right now. Our mower is in need of repair, and without much rain, there is little necessity of cutting grass anyway. Though the grass is brown, thistle and chicory and Queen Anne's lace spring up everywhere. Also in this photo is an area of low-lying marsh, complete with wild mint and cattails. Though it doesn't show much in the photos, a Weeping Willow that Senryu, our 18 year-old daughter, planted a few years ago thrives with its thirsty roots in this wet, fertile corner.

Turning more to the central part of our property, looking toward the back property line is a small pond, home to frogs, turtles and small sunfish and resting place for migrating wild waterfowl. The past few years of drought have left the water level low and the cattails are taking over the pond, so rather than water you just see reeds in the photo. Behind the pond is the lower slope of the "back hill." Wild roses grow there, amid apple trees that time has planted. The apples look and taste like Macintosh or some similar orchard escape, and this year they are thriving more than any of the apple trees that we have planted ourselves.

Turning finally toward the northeast, is the Chinese Elm tree and the little butterfly garden. You might be able to make out, way over on the left, the pale blue trellis, re-purposed from my children's crib, that I've shown in some of my close-up flower photos. This garden used to be in full sun, but as the Elm has grown, there is more shade and the garden is changing, evolving into a haven for shade-loving plants, as well as shade-seeking gardeners. The hill rises again behind the butterfly garden, and a dry-in-the-summer creek runs through the low place that divides the cultivated yard from the wild edges. This little creek runs behind the pond, widens out into the swampy marsh, and gathers itself back into a stream, before spilling over the rocks at the property line in several joyously musical mini "waterfalls."

Behind the creek, the back hill rises above the garden. Early in the morning, the sun rises over this hill hinting softly, to those flowers which close their petals at night, that another day has dawned.

...

photos by Aisling, August 26, 2008

Sunday Stroll - Hiding in the Wild Edges

I had to slip into some of the wild nooks and crannies on the edges of our property to get photos today. The flowers in the gardens are in constant motion with this chilly wind, and every photo I took was just a blur. Ah look, a purple blur... must be a tulip. This white blur? I think it was the foam flower (tiarella.) Finally, I made my way to the wild edges of our property, down in the low areas amid the native dogwood and viburnum, to take my Sunday Stroll photos.

photos by Aisling, May 18, 2008 1) wild strawberry blossoms 2) dandelion 3) looking up from the mossy wetland toward the house 4) moss under the native shrubs 5) chocolate mint in the creekbed, with the blue sky reflected in the water

Wordless Wednesday - Wildflowers from the Wild Edges

photo 1) Sulfur (or Rough-Fruited) Cinquefoil 2) Common St. John's Wort

both by Aisling, June 20, 2007

Wild Edges...

This is my 100th post. In honor of that event, and in keeping with an interesting conversation at Green Inventions Central recently about letting native species grow on property edges, I've decided to list 100 things that live and grow in the wild edges on our three and a half acres of land. These are the things that would be here whether we were here or not, not things I have purchased or brought in. Further, this is just a quick "off the top of my head" list. There are other things that should be on this list, but either a)I don't know what it they are called b) I totally forgot about them while making this list or c) I thought of them when the list was filled. The living creatures noted here have either walked over, crawled through or flown above our land in the years that we have lived here, some of them frequently, though not all actually make their home on our property. Our wild edges truly do provide habitat for a fascinating variety of living things, helping in a small way to sustain biodiversity.

50 Rooted Things:

1) red clover 2) ajuga 3) field daisies 4)blue-eyed grass 5) buttercups 6) boneset 7) wild strawberries 8) cattails 9) jewelweed 10) red-twig dogwood 11) multiflora rose 12) Russian olive 13) autumn olive 14) wild apple 15) maple trees 16) chicory 17) blueweed 18) black-eyed Susans, 19) campion 20) yellow clover 21) dandelions 22) mallow 23) St. John's wort 24) fern 25) trout-lily 26) Queen Anne's Lace (wild carrot) 27) yarrow 28) evening primrose 29) goat's beard 30) self-heal 31) horsetail 32) wild mint 33) willow 34) white pine 35) ash 36) spotted knapweed (star thistle) 37) mullein 38) golden rod 39) New England aster 40) wild mustard 41) milkweed 42) joe-pye weed 43) violets 44) bull thistle 45) shepherds purse 46) raspberries 47) wild grapes 48)birch trees 49) smoothish hawkweed 50) orange hawkweed

50 wild creatures:

51) painted turtles 52) snapping turtles 53) ring-neck pheasant 54) red fox 55) coyote 56) Bald Eagle 57) kestrel 58) hawk 59) robin 60) Eastern blue bird 61) blue heron 62) sandhill crane 63) mallards 64) frogs 65) toads 66) dragonflies 67) damselflies 68) monarch butterflies 69) yellow swallowtails 70) blue swallowtails 71) Pandoras Sphinx Moth 72) seagull 73) killdeer 74) meadowlark 75) quail 76) whitetail deer 77) opossum 78) rabbit 79) praying mantis 80) walking stick 81) lady bug 82) mosquito 83) goldenrod and other spiders 84) flies 85) honeybees 86) yellow jackets 87) wasps 88) bumblebees 89) ruby-throated hummingbird 90) red spider mites 91) ants 92) garter snakes 93) moles 94) mice 95)cardinal 96)bob-o-link 97)grouse 98)bats 99) wild geese 100) fireflies

Also, really quickly, my little nod to Poetry Thursday. Just a few lines I wrote several years ago, about June (that includes two of the plants species in my wild edges list!)

June

Courtship in the meadow has begun;
blue-eyed grass winks at the sky,
and buttercups flirt with the sun.

poetry by Aisling

photos by Aisling 1) Blue-eyed grass, 5/19/2007 2) buttercups 6/3/2007