"Junior"

 As I reported here in this blog, back in August of last year, we sadly had to say goodbye to the mature pine tree that we fell in love with when we bought our house.  The arborist that had removed the tree came back in the fall to plant a replacement.

I will admit, we had a bit of a scare after "Junior" had been planted.   We started seeing lots of yellow needles and dropped needles.  For a while, we feared that we'd have to cash-in on the one-year guarantee that the arborist offered and get yet another tree.  We worried was it not getting enough water, was it getting too much?  

As my husband was watering it one day, from the faucet at the back of the house, something suddenly came to me.   We have a water treatment system installed and it was connected specifically behind the water connection for the sprinkler system and the faucet at the front of the house, so it didn't affect those water outlets.  But all the other faucets around the house were supplied via the treatment system.  Great if we wanted to drink clean water right out of the faucet, or have lots of suds when washing the car, not so good for watering plants because the natural mineral content of our water had been altered.

I mentioned this to my husband and from that point on, we started watering "Junior" either from the rain barrel, or from the faucet at the front of the house.

  
 I'm happy to report that "Junior" is doing very well.  The needles stopped turning yellow almost immediately after the change and this spring, it's vigorously putting out candles of new growth.

Of course, "Junior" has a long way to grow--it's currently about 20 feet tall, nowhere near the 80 ft + of the original tree. We just have to be a little patient. According to historic aerial photos of our area on Google Earth, there weren't any trees here about 35 years ago - it was farmland.

So yes, we just have to be patient, although the local bird population is eyeing it up already :-)

 


Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

My last couple of posts seem to have focused on birds... time to get back to the garden... and butterflies!

I showed you a view very similar to this a couple of weeks back.

It shows the border along the back wall.

Notice anything? 

How about the fact that to the right of the tree, the Southern Wax Myrtle, the Rose of Sharon, the grapevine and the Vitex are all bursting forth with lots of growth and greenery (and in the case of the Rose of Sharon, flowers).

To the left of the tree, not so much.

I've complained about this area before.  Here's another view:

Again, you can see greenery, growth and blooms further away from the corner.

But there's that one section up against the wall, right by those three pine trees, where nothing will grow.

And therein lies the problem.  Those pine trees have sent a mass of fibrous roots under the wall and it's impossible to get a spade in the ground there. 

Well not quite impossible -- you can see I planted a few shrubs there. However those shrubs remain the same size (if not smaller) than the day they were planted.  They're fighting a losing battle with those tree roots.

I think the answer is going to be a lattice on the wall and some large containers with climbing vines.  Plan A obviously isn't working.

You may have noticed in the above photos that the tree ring round the pine tree looks different from before.


Here's  what it used to look like -- cheap plastic "stones" (what can I say, I inherited them from an old neighbor), and then there's the fading volunteer sunflower, as well as greenbriar and other weeds taking over. 

I've been wanting to spruce it up for a while.  So, over the July 4 weekend, that's exactly what we did.

You can see the finished result below:

Real stone this time, and although it's not the same as the stone we used for the border, I think it goes well.

The sunflower is still there - I need to pull it and harvest the seeds for the birds before they go moldy, but haven't got around to it yet.

What else is happening in the back garden? Oh yes, there's Milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, everywhere! I purchased a couple last year and they have self-seeded profusely :-)

The butterflies are loving them:

Gulf Fritillary

I wonder,  is the one below a Monarch, or something else? (Sorry I couldn't get a better photo)

That's it for today.  I have some more insect photos, but I'll share those in my next blog post.

Words and photographs by Jayne Wilson, Green and Serene, Jayne's Country Garden.