Studiology

Good-Bye May

The rains came. The garden rejoiced, the weeds smiled. The real race to see who wins has begun. With the mild winter, there are many reasons to be happy. Some tender plants have returned, even as I write this, seedlings are sprouting, among them tender plants that never return from seed. One of them is Emilia javanica or tassel flower, a glorious plant that I already bought as small plants, but a few are returning on their own. That has never happened before. It comes in orange and red, there are rumors of a yellow. This is not an annual that you will find on a the bench at a garden center. An awkward youngster, one has to grow it to know it's wonderful. Emilia is also best with other plants, shooting up its tassel flowers as it lies prostrate, a delightful surprise at it raises its tassels here and there.

My Nicotiana alata was perennial this winter. Already four feet tall and loaded with flowers, the fragrance at night is so nostalgic for me. Plants have returned in my perennial beds and raised beds, loaded with blooms, I'm so happy to see and smell them.

A real shock was the return of miniature gladiolus in my raised beds. For years I have planted them annually as small corms. I have never had flowers before July. This year the buds have already developed and it will be a grand show.

 A black swallowtail caterpillar is on my bronze fennel. The swallowtails feed on members of the parsley family which include carrot, parsley, dill, Queen Anne's Lace and fennel. As host plants, the adult butterfly seeks them out to lay eggs (the only food for baby swallowtails). Finding the chrysalis is a challenge, one I never tire of. This guy is big enough to begin the transition from caterpillar to chrysalis.

 So good-bye to May, thanks for the rain and return of things  I never thought possible. 

Deadheading

The sunny perennial beds are gorgeous, the gardener is busy. It's peak bloom and fading day by day. For all of those flowers, we pay the price, it's called deadheading. We tiptoe, bend, pivot and stretch to remove those flowers that are making a mess of things. The peonies drop their petals in a heap on the ground. The bearded iris finish in a twist of mush, refusing to  drop, instead hanging on and making new flowers look bad. The roses drop petals that turn brown, seemingly overnight.

We drag around wheelbarrow, tarp or other vessel to gather up the finishing pieces. The price we pay for all of that beauty. It often begins with helleborus, spent flowers quickly become large seed heads. The art of deadheading helleborus is best done sitting down, each flowering stem should be removed right down to the ground. The peonies are cut at a leaf juncture, preferably just under other leaves so the cut doesn't show. With iris you have to be careful, the finished flowering stalk is cut, as close to the ground as you can. Bending around in the iris can be tricky, one wrong move and you hear the snap of a bud or open flower that you just detached. I hate that!

With the biennials or short lived perennials, I am ruthless. Case in point is aquilegia or columbine, I not only remove the seed heads, but also the current leaves (they grow back quickly). Especially this year when columbine is marred by leaf miner. A few seed heads are left to ripen, you must keep track of which colors were best to let them go to seed.

Dianthus is best done with scissors, even hedge trimmers will work. Just a quick snip of flowering stems as they sit above the foliage. Some perennials go without deadheading, examples include, brunnera, Dicentra spectabilis or bleeding heart, corydalis and polygonatum. Even more reason to plant them.

This is the 3rd year for some bearded iris I bought from Winterberry Gardens in Cross Junction, Virginia. I don't know if the iris were better than usual, but it certainly seemed so. I am ready to dig another bed and order more. Here are photographs of some of the beauties:

Iris 'County Cork'

Iris 'Once On a Lullaby'

Iris 'Devil's Own'

Iris 'Little John'

 The latter is a gorgeous garnet-purple, my personal favorite, well... like I could pick a favorite.  Iris 'Devil's Own' is a green/yellow with many flowers per stalk. Iris 'Once Upon a Lullaby' was the first to flower and will probably be the last one open, a Don Spoon hybrid from 2011. Iris 'County Cork' has that impressive blue beard, it is a beauty!

Here is the link to Winterberry Gardens:

www.­winterberryirise­s.­com

They're close enough to visit, God help you if you do.  

Horsehoe Crab Spawning

This Saturday we are going to witness a super full moon, closer and larger, the largest full moon of the entire year. Many things happen in the natural world that coincide with a full moon, one of the best events is the spawning of horseshoe crabs. This occurs in May and June in Delaware, high tide and a full moon bring the crabs to shore to lay their eggs. I have witnessed this event for the last three years and am so bummed that I won't be there this year, the super moon year.

When everything comes together and the crabs have managed to get onto a sandy beach, the event is extraordinary. People come from all over the world to watch and dedicated volunteers spend the night at six different beaches to count crabs. Slaughter Beach has had the highest count over the last few years and was always my destination  for the event. 

The horseshoe crabs spawn in early summer along eastern beaches from Florida to Canada. Delaware is a primary stopping point for the threatened Red Knot shorebird, a long distance migratory bird that relies on the eggs of the horseshoe crab to sustain them as they fly to nesting grounds in the Arctic. The eggs are high in protein, critical for the red knots to sustain their strength, finalizing their migration of 9,300 miles. 

It takes eight years for the horsehoe crab to reach sexual maturity, they track back to the same beach they hatched from. Many of these beaches are disappearing as roads might be built near by or large rocks used to keep the shore from eroding. The crabs get stuck in the large rocks, not able to flex themselves or bend to get unstuck or vehicles drive over them (there may literally be thousands on a road after a high tide). The bigger reason for the decline of horseshoe crabs was over harvesting  by fishermen, used as bait to catch eels, minnows, conch and whelk. New Jersey has stopped all harvesting of horsehoe crabs, Delaware still allows males to be harvested. Climate change has also been blamed on diminishing populations as well. How sad for a creature that has been around for 350 million years.  

I was lucky to find a tagged horseshoe crab two years ago. The Maryland Fishery Resources Office coordinates the tagging. Some are from biomedical companies that bleed them, trying to figure out how many die from the bleeding is a difficult process (claims are 15%). The blood harvested from horseshoe crabs is used to reveal bacterial endotoxins, a critical component of the medical industry. If you find one with a tag, you call in the number and receive a pewter horsehoe crab pin and a document that lets you know where that particular crab was captured and released.

Here are some photographs from past spawnings.