A ripping Spring day in January, old friends and ancient blooming shrubbery............

I had a ripping Spring day today despite that it's just the second week in January. The temperatures were pushing 70o. F. I could feel the warm breath of her as she blew all around the ridge top. The afternoon beckoned me to come back outside and get into trouble, so I heeded the whisperings of the fairies, and since Squire was off on adventures all his own with bureaucratic schedules and paperwork and red tape to deal with.

As he drove out the driveway, (I had wisely left the dawgs inside while he left so they wouldn't be tempted to follow him down the long, winding drive to the end of the dead end until he was well over the top and heading truly out) I headed immediately over towards the black cherry tree, because I saw daylight where it shouldn't be.

Underneath the old tree, almost 11 years ago when we came here, I had brought along an old oak whiskey barrel from Jack Daniels brewery that Squire and I had originally purchased intact for $15 about 20 years ago to serve as the rear seat of our Harley Davidson '45 police trike. He had installed inner coverings with handles to form a space for storage and then cut an opening out of the side where we were going to pad the bottom and inner back piece to support me. We sold the trike just two parts before running because he had to return to driving tractor trailer and knew he'd not have time to ride like he had wanted to.

Not wanting to waste a perfectly good solid oak whiskey barrel (when we tapped it to make the cut, after sitting at the home improvement store in the hot sun, and in our back yard for a few hot summer days, the barrel had sweated inside and when Squire got it opened, we discovered about a gallon and a half of the smoothest, aged Jack Daniels whiskey) I stood the barrel on one end with the opening facing outwards on our front porch of my house in Nashville that I'd lived in since 1974, and put a large potted jade plant inside. Then I put other pots of tropicals on top and used it as a plant table.

Through the years, with the barrel being oak, I was able to leave it on the porch and bring the tender plants inside, and when we moved to East Tennessee in 1992, along with the whole yard, front and back that I dug up and brought with me, I also brought all pots, stands, edger's and what-not. Including the oak whiskey barrel.

This had become an old friend along with a few other treasures I've picked up along the way, throughout the decades. It's like I'm some sort of gardening magnet that attracts unusual plant stands and tables and what not. A veritable rolling garden Shoppe!

Once moved into the farmhouse in White Pine, Tennessee, which had a really nice front porch off the front that was high up and ran the whole length of the front of the house unlike my old porch at my house back in Nashville, I used the oak barrel the same way as before. The plants would change, but mostly it served as a nice sturdy display for cactus or tropicals I wanted to place securely somewhere to summer out safely.

When we moved into this house almost eleven years ago, selling my house in Nashville which burnt my bridges behind me, I decided that the days of plant display stand were over for the whiskey barrel and got the idea to lay it on it's side, fill up the inside with soil, and plant little woodland bulbs and plants in there to pop up and surprise me come Springtime.

And that's what I did. I moved the whole perennial garden, again, to it's final destination, laid the barrel on it's side and rolled it over and underneath the black cherry tree, and rested it against it's large trunk. Filled it with humus red dirt mixed with mulch and leaves because I was running out of soil to use, and over the years, have planted a veritable forest of woodland bulbs and perennials.

I've lost a lot of things I've plugged into this soil in the barrel. When someone didn't re-emerge the next year, I'd get something else, and fill in the empty spot in the whiskey barrel's interior. Eventually I had success with Virginia bluebells, a lone cyclamen tuber, a nice clump of Te' te narcissus and now, some rhizomes of perennial begonia.

As I approached the underside of the old black cherry tree, I realized that the life of the whiskey barrel was almost at an end. The light I was seeing were the side slats that had made up the top and the bottom of the barrel originally. Now for at least 14 years of the last 20 in it's long existence (there's no telling how old the whiskey barrel was, since the brewery keep them for decades before they sold them to Home Depot) the sides have been exposed against all sorts of weather, sunlight and temperature swings. And insects. Time has taken it's toll and I saw the demise of an old friend.

I picked up the pieces of the "sides" and tossed them towards the burning pit, and started looking for places to plant the Valley Valentine Pieris I got replaced. The fairies were whispering quietly to me, and the sounds of Maggie, the new kitten discovering the joy of romping thru the leaves and tall grasses with Pester's her mentor and old buddy cat, along with the scratchings and titterings of all the woods birds kept me company as I threaded my way towards the front. Unsure what I was going to start doing, just taking in the fact that I had on a sleeveless top and was comfortable was all I thought about.

The Loripedilum along side the front sidewalk in the western sidewalk bed looked so sad and forlorn, and showed me it was heaving out of the soil, that I decided right there to find a shovel and lift it out and plant it somewhere else. I already had an idea forming. The root ball was a joke. Having originally been a three gallon pot, I had forgotten that I'd just dug a hole in that spot where the Helenium refused to survive, made the hole wider and planted the Loripedilum without much thought. I didn't know if the southern sun would be too much on it or not, but was willing to give the plant a chance to tell me before I let it cook or scald. The small bush was fine except that the great, smothering Blue Enigma salvia that grows at least six foot and flops about, did what it does best. It flopped about and kept the little burgundy shrub from getting the full benefit of the sunlight.

What I was seeing before me was the central most part of the bush successfully still leafed out in dark reddish purple leaves along one arched, thick branch. As I lifted the bush out of the hole, I realized how foolish I had been to have tried to tuck it into the bed in that spot. On either side of the root ball, were the enormous bulbs of my trumpet lilies. They weren't bothered by the smothering branches of the salvia. They shot on up thru them like bothersome grass, or the Herman's pride laminastrum, or yellow Archangel that has made a nice variegated ground cover for everything else. It holds the soil, but the other perennials and bulbs push thru the mat just fine.

Once out of the dry, loose soil, I saw the initial problem at hand. The outer roots were dead, with the inner tap roots still healthy. I was able to tear off the unusable roots and had a nice arched shrub that would look just fine on the opposite corner of the black cherry bed. There is another Loripedilum on the south end corner.

I moved the oversized glazed snail over that I picked up 28 years ago in Colorado that is now in two pieces but still looks like a giant snail, and dug at the corner just outside the bed where Hellebore are sending up new shoots and leaves of this years plant and flower stalks. I knew there would be little rhizomes of the perennial begonia in the soil, but I carefully piled the dirt on either side of the hole, and then nestled the little shrub into it's newer, more hospitable home, top filled with all the black, humus soil I'd taken, and added in a good handful of leaves and beginning compost once I'd firmed the roots in.

Tamp it with my feet carefully, make a mental note to trim it later on after the rains come and go this week and tamp it again to settle it after the moisture. I might even lift a few bulbs and plant them at the feet of the little shrub for company, but I suspect that the perennial begonia's will keep it company just fine.

Now I had a taste for gardening full throttle. Time to get real, and rip vinca. The day was perfect for it, the ground was loose and I knew I could at least get a good start. There was no way I'd be able to do it all in one day, but you have to start somewhere, and I'd already started on it a short while back and gotten distracted and then the weather got cold again, so I had waited for another window of opportunity, and here it was.

I never think, though. You'd figure since I've taken great pains to obtain good gardening tools,of all sorts, that I'd think to rummage around in the tool trugg, pick out a couple of necessary ones that will make my work much easier and get about my work. Oh no, not that simple. I am a spacey old garden hippie. I start out with my hands. Against Vinca major. I am truly insane.

That, and I love the feel of the soil, and I can grasp the cluster of sinewy vines at the center where they all splay outwards and rip out the whole thing, and if it's tenacious, I can wrap the vines around my wrist and provide extra leverage. But as that last sentence soaks into your brain, you and I realize what I just said......for something to be that stubborn and tough to be able to wrap around, it's going to quickly wear me out. I never learn.

The first plants I tore out were so easy, I just kept going. From the sidewalk where I'd taken the Loripedilum, I traced a stray Vinca vine and pulled it carefully out, tossed it to the west end where the BBQ pit fountain/garden is and the porch swing, and then discovered sneaky plants underneath the three landscape timbers at the soil level underneath. They were happily growing thru the cracks of the stacked timbers, up thru the soil and across the bed and over into the soil from the almost two foot height the raised bed was. When I moved all three timbers, I revealed the parent cluster and when I pulled the white shoots, I saw I had gotten the whole plant instead of just snapping the vines at the base.

The soil was dry and loose, but near the bottom it held it's shape to where I was able to replace the timbers and move down the bed, pulling out ALL of the vinca I came across. There was one problem in one spot that I couldn't do anything with. That was where the downspout from the west gutter hooked back and went under the concrete sidewalk around the house, underneath the side yard and down to where Squire had built me those two high raised beds. I've since located the corrugated leech pipe that directs rainfall, but we know rerouting it would be more work than what we want to attempt.

I stood there cursing that one, incredibly healthy, happy and tough ass old Vinca as I broke the vines to just next to the concrete near where the downspout went into the ground. If I couldn't rip it out, then I'd partially disable it. I knew pulling was useless and didn't want to dislocate or tear my shoulder muscle. I was out of shape and had to use sense.

There is now a pile about three foot high of Vinca to be piled up into my yellow two wheeled garden cart and dumped somewhere other than my property...........

As I worked my way around the bed, tearing around the singular Kerria Japonica that had sprouted up thru the vinca, and other plants, I thought I heard the telephone. It always figures, about the time I am really getting focused, the phone rings, or I think it does. As I straightened up and pulled out another clump of vinca, I finally heard the loud bell I'd installed on one phone where I'd hear it, and rushed inside to discover I'd forgotten the tea kettle.......sigh...........fill it back up, check the caller ID and call Squire. He's having a meltdown. Soon as he gets back, I'll have to take over and do that voodoo that I do so well........

So I stayed inside and washed up and waited until he got home. Loaded the dawgs up into the van, and as I pull out of the driveway, I stopped and grabbed the mail outa the huge Farmer's mailbox of ours, turned southwards and captured the incredible view, heaved yet another deep sigh of discontent at being uprooted from what I was so diligently working at, and climbed into the van.

As I was just getting settled and heading for the bottom of the dead end road, I got just past my other neighbor whom I share the hill with's barn and pasture next to the old, old house that was one of the first homesteads to be built around here. It IS the Wine house. When they settled here over

200 years ago, and built this two story house against the hillside facing southwards, eventually at some point, at the bottom of the huge expanse of yard, someone planted Forsythia bushes between the ancient dogwoods.

I had just remarked to my gardening friend the other day when we were returning from a field trip, as we shot UP this dead end road, I had pointed to those huge, perfectly proportioned shrubs and remarked that "well, if one is to have and actually ENJOY Forsythia's, this is the way to have them. Unhampered and with enough room that they can show their tendencies to grow in a vase shape. Look how loaded the branches are with buds. Wait until you see these in bloom this spring. It will knock your eyes out..." We sat there espousing the love/hate theory of forsythia's, me the ever optimist touting the clean yellow bells, if the shrubs were this magnificent, you could take cuttings to bring into the house and the shrubs would be forgiving....the leaves turn the most impressive purple burgundy in the fall and hold until the very last on the branches.....she wasn't buying it, but she did have to agree that they were most impressive, and we made note to slip past one day and take a few cuttings for our vases to force into bloom for drab days.

Well, now I couldn't. Before me was absolute carnage and destruction. C.H. was on his tractor with the blade, and he was working the front of his wife's homestead.....he had completely cut the forsythia's down and was trying to tear them out of the ground. Only problem was, it's really not easy, even with a tractor to pull out 150+ year old forsythia bushes out of red clay soil.

I went through the stop sign there at my corner and as I turned to head out and do the business at hand, I had a sad, sinking feeling. And yes, there were tears. It's so sobering to think that the simple beauty of blooming spring shrubs was missed on an old, crotchety, curmudgeon of a man in his

80's. If his wife weren't in the nursing home, and with Alzheimer's, I'm sure she'd have given him a rash of hell for doing this.... And now it appears just to enable him to be more nosey to the traffic that is coming and going more frequently up the road now. (There is a subdivision about three hills behind us that has been expanding, but it won't come anywhere close to us, as the interstate cuts between it and us).

My other neighbor, Miz Mary Wine whose ancestors were the ones to settle this whole hill and holler area informed me all he did this for was not because he was a farmer and bushes were useless to him unless they provided a service (which was Squire's way of thinking when I told him about it) or boundary, but he did it to be more nosey and because he was in a hateful mood yesterday and was just out destroying because he COULD. I just hope he doesn't get a hair up his keister to tear out the ancient dogwoods. It's bad enough the utility company misinformed our new neighbor's in the woods to the south of us when they were first building their house and had to cut a looooooong driveway along the property line and fence row of the pasture that belongs to the Wines, and took out over 100 white dogwoods that were well over 200 years old and would have made a most impressive display along their new driveway.

They cut them all down, and discovered there was no need. The utility company was under the impression that power lines would be threatened eventually, and were too stupid to realize the trees they told them to cut down were full grown and would never reach the heights of the power lines at all. Just sad. I cried that first spring after they cut them all down, because it lifts your soul and heart to see acres along a fence row of ancient and proud white dogwoods in full bloom. And again as a reminder come fall when they burgundy their leaves and shine with red berries for the birds.

When I got back, he had stopped his destruction and gone inside his old house, and once again it just saddened me to think that this year there will be no incredible display of four fully grown and magnificent Forsythia's in bright fireworks of yellow. Those bushes were spaced about 25 foot apart, so they were in full, glorious form. Never trimmed, allowed to be the shape they were meant to be. (around here the fools trim them into horrible shapes).

I went back to my own destruction of a different nature. The vinca. And before I ran outa energy, I got quite a dent accomplished. Now come another nice day, I'll continue until every shoot of it is removed once and for all up here in Fairy Holler. Thanks for allowing me to share with you. Today the weather turned completely around after a storm moved in across the whole state, I first had thick, dense fogs, and rains well into the morning, and then Mom's Nature opened up her wind bags and the winds shooed the clouds across the face of English Mountain and over into North Carolina with only a few hanging up on the bare tree branches. The skies are blue and white cotton now and it seems the temperatures will be warm again, so with this moisture added to my soft raised beds, I can get even MORE vinca pulled out today!

madgardener, up on the ridge, back in Fairy Holler (no, not Vinca gulley, nor Vinca Holler, FAIRY Holler ) overlooking English Mountain in Eastern Tennessee

Reply to
madgardener
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Excellent, you have an amazing writing style Chuckie in the frozen north, zone 5

Reply to
Chuckie

I am amazed you can move your fingers to type tonite? I am exhausted just reading about your adventures. The old soul probably hated the damn Forsythia all his life and now has no one to take his frustrations out on. How sad. My neighbor has lovely ones but some kid comes to trim them for her and it always breaks my heart to see them in crewcuts. She has had multiple strokes and no longer ventures outside any more. But her Rhodies bloom on and on. Keep em coming, the girls in Alaska love reading your adventures. Betsy

Reply to
BetsyB

lol, thanks sugar. I write like I talk. In detail. Is that a possible "Capricorn" trait? or is it just me? maddie

Reply to
madgardener

my hands WERE sore this morning, but my poor back that really needs a hinge installed was more irritable and peeved at me than my hands. I'm determined to regain the strength I used to have. When I huff and puff lifting a 40# bag of soil for a friend, or a 50# bag of small pea gravel and I get a cramp in my butt......well, it's time to start rebuilding my strength. Last year it wouldn't have phased me! I might be a fat little puddin' bag, but I am capable of way more than I appear to be able to do. And everyone is always shocked when I tell them how much I (shudder) weigh now despite efforts deliberately made on my intake of food. The clue will be burning the few calories I take in. Can you believe it? All that was accomplished on some sweet iced tea (strong tea, though, and not a whole lot of sugar) and nothing to eat as I get heartburn when I bend. And I don't want to be cursing the heartburn as I stoop and bend and tug and pull and offend the fairies!!

you're probably right. Tonight as I take son to work, I will slow down and look in the headlights (I have been up top of the ridge at home and not ventured out all day except in my own yard and driveway) to see if he coppiced them severely or managed to totally remove them. Lets hope the old fool coppiced them, and then in three years, the poor things will recover to bloom. Sadly, no blooms for the next three years if he did indeed leave stumps............

I hate those crewcuts too. And the boxes and round shapes that they're forced into. e-mail me and I'll send you a picture I took of them last year. they were awesome.............

Reply to
madgardener

In message , madgardener writes

I'm amazed I can still move my fingers after scrolling down through 12 screens of unnecessary quote! Twice ;-)

Please can those of you who top post spare a thought for some of the rest of us? I get trouble with RSI if I do too much mouse and keyboard work, so rather than dab and click at just those posts/bits of post I want to read, it is much easier on my wrists to hit the spacebar which takes me to next screen then next post then next thread then next newsgroup. That is, of course, until someone decides to re-post a long post in its entirety and it takes me 12 hits just to get to the next post!

Please - just leave a few lines as context, then snip the rest.

Reply to
Kay Easton

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 16:55:27 +0000, Kay Easton wrote (in article ):

I use the space bar for navigation as well, and I have found it very useful to set up a filter not to download posts of over 300 lines - which I assume the culprit was. You might be able to do the same?

Reply to
Sally Thompson

In message , Sally Thompson writes

I don't necessarily want to skip it on the first reading - it's the second and third presentations I'd like to do without! ;-)

Reply to
Kay Easton

you got it!

maddie

Reply to
madgardener

then snip the rest.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

so when I am in a particularly rambling mood, your filter filters my stuff out, right? oh well.....................it's the way I write...........you should archive search some of my stuff from awhile back !!!-------------------- madgardener

Reply to
madgardener

I appreciate that Kay! (really!!! ) maddie

Reply to
madgardener

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ List Manager: Puregold Goldfish List at

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the problem, dont waste energy finding who's to blame ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I receive no money, gifts, discounts or other compensation for all the damn work I do, nor for any of the recommendations I make. AND I DID NOT AUTHORIZE ADS AT THE OLD PUREGOLD SITE

Reply to
dr-solo

snipped-for-privacy@wi.rr.xx.com expounded:

There is no such thing as a good top posted message.

Reply to
Ann

this > There is no such thing as a good top posted message. really > -- drives > Ann, gardening in Zone 6a you > South of Boston, Massachusetts crazy > e-mail address is not checked > ****************************** :) Lynn

Reply to
Lynn

I love it!!!!

Cheryl

Reply to
Cheryl Isaak

"Lynn" expounded:

Unique messages never drive me crazy ;->

Reply to
Ann
****************************** :) Lynn

I love it!!!!

Cheryl

maddie i so enjoy reading your writings i hope u keep transcripts of your them so that one day u might put them all in a book maybe titled. "Gardening Memories by the Madgardener" or something like that. i really hope that u do something with your writings i for one know that i would be first in line to buy your book:). hugssssss, sockiescat

Reply to
sockiescat

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