A little bit weak this week, mostly because I’ve been doing many other things (among them throwing up, but that’s passed now,) but also because not too much new has crossed my plate. I have some video clips that should be along shortly though.
The property is home to several groves of bamboo, mostly out onto the island on the back side of the pond, but also encroaching into the upper part of the yard. At some point in the past, bamboo became popular as an ornamental plant before people understood how unstoppable it is, and this property was one of the victims. We have no intention of eradicating it entirely, which would take a couple of days with a bulldozer I believe, but we (meaning me) are intending to keep it in check, and this past week was apparently sprouting season.
These sprouts are roughly 30-35mm in diameter and 150-200mm in height, but for that, they’re still unsubstantial and easy to break off, though I imagine that this state lasts not more than two weeks, if only a few days. I also know that it isn’t the sprouts that you want to kill, but the roots, though I didn’t have a spade or hatchet with me while getting these pics, so I simply kicked them down after I was done.
Like the hosta that served as last month’s abstract, I don’t believe this is dew at all, but moisture that the bamboo exudes at night instead. At some point, I’ll pick one to observe and perhaps do a time-lapse series to show how fast they grow – it appears I’ll have plenty of opportunities. We’ve noticed that there are, at least, two varieties growing here: the thick ones like this that can get very tall (at least five meters) but are easy to break off at this stage, and thin, spindly ones that remain roughly the diameter of a pencil and grow slower, but are much tougher for that.
Out in the greenhouse, things are developing apace.
This is the ‘Pink Panther’ variety of foxglove (Digitalis x ‘Pink Panther’) that we obtained a few years ago, which is definitely pleased with spending the winters in the greenhouse. As far as I’m concerned it should have been moved out by now, but every time I think the weather is amenable, I check the forecasts, and within the week the temperatures are predicted to drop below 10°c overnight again, and so I put it off for another week – that’s been going on for at least a month now. This frame isn’t half-bad for being shot totally blind, you must admit, holding the camera down below waist level because the crowding in the greenhouse wouldn’t allow me to crouch into proper position.
This one, however, was from out in the yard:
When growing up in central New York, we had several huge lilac bushes on the farm, and I wanted to have some down here but those varieties won’t grow this far south. This is one that will, though I did not get the particulars from the nursery that recommended it – based on the appearance of the blossoms, I’m going to brashly call this the ‘Palibin’ (Syringa meyeri) variety – certainly a much weaker color than what we had in NY, but they smell the same. This bush got transplanted last fall right after we moved in, hoping to get it established early, and since this is the first that it’s blossomed, I’m going to say that it worked. To all appearances, the soil here is much better than at the old place.
And I just reminded myself of another, from several days back.
This is a tree growing at the edge of the property, and because of the lighting conditions and the number of other trees around it, the blossoms went unnoticed until I was checking out the yard by headlamp one night. This is a black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia,) which also explained the seed pods that I’d been finding, believing they were from a mimosa tree that I hadn’t yet located. That’s vaguely disappointing, because I would like to get a mimosa established, but the scent of these flowers is fabulous, just about like candy; immediately after smelling them that one night, I went in to get The Girlfriend to check them out, and she agreed.
There are several magnolia trees here that are getting ready to blossom, and the buds from the pond lilies are developing, plus some kind of a water iris I believe, so more will be along eventually. The cardinal flowers that I planted in the fall (or was it winter?) have made no sign of appearing though, which is annoying yet par for the course.