Outside

Violets

There are three main types of violets growing in my yard. If I was a better blogger (or at least one with more time on her hands), I would look up their Latin names.

Instead, though, I think I'll just post their portraits.

Here's the yellow Canada violet. It's native to woodlands. This is, I think, my best violet photograph.



Here's the regular purple violet that everyone knows and loves.



The most populous violet in our yard is the white violet shown below. I tried to capture it's essence in the photograph, but it didn't turn out right - the focus is poor on the top two petals. Oh well. You can still sort of see the beautiful purple lines and yellow center, which a casual observer can only see when getting right up close and personal with the plant. (The little purple flower in the background is a creeping charlie flower.)

Seed Company Links Updated, Plus MN Native Plant Sources

Ruth, fellow Minnesotan of Nature Knitter fame, gently asked if I would provide links to the seed catalog companies I listed in my last post. As a blogger, I was terribly negligent in not providing the links in the first place, but when I wrote the post I was feeling lazy and didn't want to look up all the sites. Now, it's fixed - all the links are provided in the post.

Also, Ruth pointed me to another Minnesota provider of native seeds: Prairie Meadows Native Seed. Thanks, Ruth!

Because there are so many good providers of native plant materials here in the state, I will be purchasing the natives for my garden from within a 100 mile radius of home (30-50 miles is even better). I know that some people are very strict about where their seed comes from. I don't feel as strongly about it, but since I'm able to get everything in a fairly small radius, I'll do it.

Here's my short list of Minnesota native plant and seed purveyors, all within 75 miles of my house.

Outback Nursery: This is where I will probably end up buying a lot of stuff. A few years ago I met the owners and I really like what they're doing. Plus, their selection of trees and shrubs is the best I've seen. Nice selection for all habitats. Within a reasonable driving distance for me.

Prairie Restorations: I think they're the oldest, biggest and most well-known here in the state. Everything for prairie, wetland and woodland. Seed mixes available for various ecosystems. Not so many trees and shrubs, though.

Landscape Alternatives: They used to be right in St. Paul, which I thought was cool because they grew a lot of stuff right in the city. I suppose taxes got too high or something, because now they're way out on the Wisconsin border near Taylor's Falls.

Prairie Moon Nursery: A very nice catalog with tons of seeds and a good selection of plants. A little better on the prairie plants, not as much selection with woodland and wetland.

Prairie Meadows Native Seed: Ruth's recommendation. I'll have to check them out.

Minnesota DNR's list of native plant suppliers and landscapers is here.

We're Certified Now!

A few weeks ago, Pam at Digging posted about how Austin, Texas is trying to become certified by the National Wildlife Federation as a Community Wildlife Habitat. I remembered having plans to one day do this myself (just for my yard, not the whole community!), and decided to get myself moving and do something about it.

It turns out, though, that I didn't really need to "get myself moving" - I just needed to fill out an online questionnaire and give them my Visa number.

Yesterday, my shiny new sign came in the mail. I'm not yet sure where I'm going to put it, but I will definitely make sure that it's visible to my neighbors. Maybe it will inspire a few more of them to put away the fertilizers and pesticides.

Mid-Summer Life at the Pond

Last weekend, I took this picture of the swamp milkweed (asclepias incarnata) growing next to our pond. It's a very pretty plant, with coloring and flowers very similar to Joe Pye Weed. The grasses growing with it, although nice looking, are actually the evil reed canary grass, a very invasive grass that likes wetlands. It needs to be removed, but there are only so many hours in the day, and at the pond we've allocated those hours to removing the buckthorn first.

Anyway, as I was snapping away at the milkweed, I noticed a pretty butterfly perching on a willow branch. I hastily took a few pictures, but I didn't expect much. Whenever I use the zoom on my camera, I get blurry shots - between me moving and errant breezes outdoors, I never seem to be able to get a good zoom picture. But voila, I actually had one that worked. If anyone happens to know what type of butterfly this is, just let me know in my comments.

Then, I noticed movement on the pond, and suddenly a female hooded merganser and her 9 ducklings appeared. They were swimming very fast - probably spooked by Spouse and me tromping around at water's edge - but I managed to get one halfway decent photo, seen below. We had seen the male and female earlier in the spring, but this was the first time I had seen their offspring.

But, sadly, this little family is minus one duckling. On Wednesday morning, as Brix and I were in the yard for his morning constitutional, I watched as the merganser family headed out onto the pond from under some brush. As they were appearing in the sunlight, a hawk (probably a broad-winged hawk, as they are most common on our pond) swooped down from a tree above and grabbed one of the ducklings. Mama merganser did a lot of flapping and anxiously gathered up the other ducklings, but there was nothing to be done - Mr. Hawk had his breakfast.

Yet another day in the life of the pond.

Volunteers

Each year I seem to find more volunteer plants in my vegetable gardening area. This spring, I have three types: wild geranium, wild columbine and dame's rocket.

The geranium I let be, because it managed to site itself perfectly. Here it is against the west-facing portion of the fence. It looks like I planted it there purposely. In fact, it's this plant that has given me the idea that I should purposely plant more flowers through the gravel mulch around the edges of the garden.

The columbine is a bit more problematic for me. Although it looks quite pretty this time of year, by July it will look ratty and insect-ridden. Columbine leafminers take over during the summer, tunneling white lines through the leaves. It doesn't kill the plant, but it sure looks yucky (to use a technical gardening term). I tend to spend the summer debating with myself about pulling the plants. I never do, though. In the meantime, this has got to be the most flowers I've ever seen on a wild columbine:

Lastly, I have dame's rocket in my garden for the first time. When I've seen it in neighbor's yards in past years, I always assumed it was woodland phlox, but I was wrong. Dame's rocket is highly invasive in a woodland setting, so this is a plant that has to go before it sets seed. I have two plants, one I was thinking of keeping before I figured out what it was, and the other I was definitely going to pull. The one I was going to pull is pictured here - it's just not well-sited with the irises.

What plant volunteers do you keep? How do you decide what stays and what goes? Do you keep the invasives or the ones that look bad as the season progresses, or do you ruthlessly yank them out?

Help ID my little oak trees

Who can help?

I'm not quite sure if these are little bur oaks or little swamp white oaks. (I've ruled out red oaks because their leaves are very pointy.) These little trees don't have acorns, so I can't use them to help in identification.

The large bur oaks have already turned plain brown and lost their leaves. These little trees are turning red and still have their leaves.

Swamp white oaks have this shape of leaves and turn crimson in the fall, but I haven't found any adult swamp white oaks in our neighborhood.

Puffballs

One of the strangest fungi I've ever seen is the giant puffball. Until last fall I had never seen one before, but now they seem to be growing throughout our wooded neighborhood.

I tried to use Dexter to give the thing some scale, but it didn't really work. This particular puffball was about 12" across, like most in our neighborhood.

I did a little reading on the web, and I guess they are edible. However, I'm just nervous enough about eating wild mushrooms that I think I'll pass.

Fall is coming

It's as if a switch is pulled on Labor Day. One minute it's summer, and the next it's fall. The leaves of lindens - native basswoods and others - are just starting to turn yellow and fall. The season is turning.

There's a hint of red in many of the trees and shrubs.

The wildflowers along our road are at their peak in early September.

The late summer wildflowers are blooming everywhere.

The first few weeks of September are melancholy. Summer is slipping away, and winter seems as if it's just around the corner. But after awhile, you realize that fall is one of Minnesota's finest seasons, and that you've got another few months of glorious cool weather and beautiful fall colors.

A Tale of Shame and Redemption

I have been living with a monster in my own backyard, and since moving into our house in 1999, I have done very little about it. Sure, I've talked about it, worried over it, been ashamed about it, and even made a few stabs at taming this monster. But until last week, the monster reigned supreme. Then, when the red oak fell down, an opportunity for redemption presented itself.

What is this monster, you ask? Buckthorn. Lots and lots of buckthorn. Shown below, my friends, is solid buckthorn covering an area about 80 feet long, 15-20 feet wide and up to 15 feet tall.

Because the buckthorn was next to the pond, I've resisted using chemicals. One idea had been to cut down the trees and use Roundup or VineX just on the stumps, which would greatly reduce the chance that any chemicals would get into the pond. However, even if there were 0% chance of water contamination, we still had no idea what to do with all the brush. Plus, we'd be left with half a yard full of stumps.

When the tree guy came to give us a quote on taking away the fallen oak, we also asked how much it would be for him to pull out and haul away all the buckthorn. The price was right, and after just one morning of work we were left with this, a yard without buckthorn.

Below are some more before and after shots - click to enlarge. The first two show the view from the living room window - this is the panoramic view.

Here is a view that shows just how impenatrable buckthorn is. In the "before" picture, you can't even see the pond just a few feet beyond. We looked, and there was not a single other species of plant growing in the buckthorn forest. Not another tree, no grass, no other plants of any sort.

The remaining trees near the pond are mostly green ash and weeping willows.  In my perfect world they would all come down and I would plant a mini-prairie. However, Spouse likes trees, so the deal we have is that they stay if he helps with controllingn the weeds (although I'll keep working on getting rid of the messy and non-native weeping willows).

So, since the willows and ash aren't going anywhere, we have a savanna. Next spring (or maybe even this fall), we'll purchase a native seed mixture specific to our site, probably from Prairie Restorations. They are the closest native seed purveyor, and if you can, it's best purchase seed that has been collected as close as possible to your location.

Step by step, our yard gets closer to the vision in my head . . . .

When "Natural" Becomes a Bit Skanky

The weather has been hot and we're 3 inches behind in rain. That means the pond is not looking its best. Luckily, the green you see is not algae - it's duckweed. Duckweed is a tiny floating plant, and it doesn't smell like algae can.

We haven't done any shoreline restoration yet - except to just not mow - so the plant diversity is not high. However, we do have some native wetland plants. Below is swamp milkweed. (There were several monarchs flying around, but none landed in just the "right" pose, so this will have to do.)

Here's a nice picture of blue vervain. Two years ago there was just one plant, and this year there are three.

This year we have arrowhead (aka duck potato) growing in the pond. In the seven years we've lived here, this is only the second with arrowhead. It grows from a tuber that's eaten by ducks and muskrats. Native Americans and early settlers used the tubers like potatoes. The photo shows that something has eaten a lot of the leaves - I'm not sure what, though. I thought I saw some deer hoofprints the mud.

Our pond is kidney shaped. In our half of the kidney, there is very little arrowhead. In the other half of the kidney, though, the pond is filled with it. I've never seen our pond look like this before.

Last week one of our neighbors stopped by while I was outside and said that we should put in a fountain, or call the city to "do something" about the pond. There are things that could be done, I suppose, but the pond supports a lot of wildlife and I don't want to tamper with it. We have ducks, egrets, herons, lots of birds, frogs, toads, insects galore, bats, raccoons, deer, foxes, rabbits, owls, hawks and more. Why would I want to get rid of any of them?

Look closely, and you'll see a damselfly perching on a stem of grass.