Spring Wonders

In the small gap between the winter's foot of snow and the advent of unusual April heat in my part of the country, we had spring.

In early March the weather warmed enough to melt the last of the snow, including what was piled at the top of the driveway. The crocus bloomed, the snowdrops struggled to bloom and the daffodils started growing through the winter debris. In the space of two days I could finally clear the front garden beds and cut down the dried ornamental grasses so the daffodils growing in this area could be seen. Six months' worth of collected brush was put at the curb.

Dogwood buds, before they opened and the leaves appeared.
(Margo D. Beller)

I had time to again marvel at how my perennials are able to survive an unusually cold and snowy winter to grow again in the spring without any assistance from me. Then the temperature again became very cold.

That did not stop the plants from growing or the birds from singing in the early morning. The robins, Carolina wrens and jays were particularly active. Woodpeckers proclaimed their territories by drumming against trees. Despite the cold I went outside with Merlin to do a census of what was in the vicinity. (Two days ago I saw the first report of house wren in the area. My husband helped me put up the nest box. A wren came to investigate a day later and I heard one sing this morning.)

Slowly the temperature warmed. The maple tree flowered. The viburnum and pear tree started leafing, as did the lilac. At the very end of the Lenten period there were flowers on the Lenten Rose (hellebore). The dead, brown leaves started falling off the euonymous shrubs, revealing the fresh green and yellow foliage the deer will try to get at through the fencing.

Spruce continues to stand tall and, once again, has put out cones. He hosted some unusual winter visitors this year - a pair of red-breasted nuthatches. I stand in awe of him, seeing how much he has grown since he was planted in late 2007.

However, the other tree planted at that time, the dogwood, continues to concern me. Ever since having more than half of the dogwood cut down I wait to see if the remaining live half will bloom and leaf out. This year I could see flower buds but would they open? Thanks to the heat that came upon us during the last week and a couple of brief but heavy rain showers, the buds have started opening and the leaves are growing.

The apple tree starting to show leaves. It now is covered in blossoms.
(Margo D. Beller)

And then there's the old apple tree. Last year the tree leafed, bloomed and then one big branch went dead. As with the dogwood, I had the dead part cut down. Would the tree survive?

So far it looks like it has. The tree started growing leaves and, as of today, there are blossoms. Each flower is a potential apple. But I am still watching to see how the tree progresses as the season continues. The pear tree, meanwhile, has many flowers in the upper branches I can't get at to cut back. I hope the squirrels get to the fruit because, as I found out years ago, the branches of the pear can't withstand the weight of a bear.

After all the snow the plants appear to be doing quite well despite the current heat. The azalea buds are about to open. The grape hyacinth is thriving in a way I have not seen in years. The lilies and peony are growing so fast I've had to put in supports sooner than expected. 

The New England aster I planted last year is leafing but I am not sure if the lavender has survived, or if I killed the anemone. I've put the anemone in a different pot with fresh soil in what I hope is a better place in the yard. I will be watching for signs of life. If it is alive it won't flower until autumn.

By which time the spring wonder of my garden will have long been replaced by the tedium of weeding and thoughts of putting the garden to bed before another winter.  

Saving the Apple Tree

I hope she forgives me.

The apple tree and I go way back to when we moved into this house. I've been here over 30 years and I estimate that, based on the size of the tree, it was planted about decade before. So it is an old tree.

The apple tree now. You can see where
the cut was made on the right. (Margo D. Beller)

A few days ago the boss of the lawn service I use came over with his chainsaw and cut off the rotting branch of the apple tree. He also, on his own, took off two smaller dead branches, saving me climbing up my ladder with my handsaw.

The result does not look so bad ... from afar. Once I paid the man and he left, I went out to look at the cut. I was horrified to see a large hole, and carpenter ants coming to investigate - or scurrying around after being disturbed. If carpenter ants were in the tree it wouldn't have much of a chance. If the ants didn't dig it out from within a hungry pileated woodpecker would start excavating from the outside to get at the ants. Either way, the tree would soon die.

I immediately drove to the local big-box store and bought limb sealant to cover the wound. 

Once I cleared the sawdust I sprayed the cut and into the hole.
(Margo D. Beller)

When half the dogwood died a few years ago, I had it cut back. The cut was clean, there was no rot in the center of the wood. But I wrapped the bottom of the trunk where pieces were starting to fall off. I must've done the right thing because the tree has survived, leafed out and even blossomed. I have gotten used to the way it looks when I am sitting on the porch. It is only when you go out and look at what was cut that you can get an idea of how much more there used to be.

The apple tree situation is different in several ways. For one, there was that big hole. So I sprayed into that hole to protect what I could reach. 

Another difference - I had the dogwood planted in 2007 at the same time as Spruce Bringsgreen, the blue spruce. So both trees are teenagers compared with the apple tree. 

The apple has survived my cutting down three overgrown, deer-attracting apple trees on the property, and one small apple tree that was killed by too many young bucks rubbing the velvet off their antlers. This remaining apple tree has survived sapsucker drill holes, a gall at the bottom and a hole in the trunk big enough for a chipmunk to hide in. It has produced apples every year, especially after it has been pruned. It has abided the squirrels and the house wren nest box that hung there for 10 years until it was moved to the dogwood. It has forgiven me for walking around with my long pole to whack the branches and bring down enough apples to use.

But I'm not sure it will forgive me this time.

The apple tree in 2023. 
(Margo D. Beller)

Last year, thanks to climate change, we had a severe drought starting in the summer and lasting into spring of this year, at which point we were inundated with an overabundance of rain. The apple blossoms appeared as usual, and then suddenly one-third of the tree went black. The squirrels and I had apples but they tended to be smaller. The apples were done by June 30 and the rotting branch was cut off that day. I should not have been surprised by that hole in the tree, but I was.

"I felt her pain, even though I do not have the problems an apple tree can have," Spruce told me after it was done. "But it was hard to watch."

The apple tree has been stoic. Her leaves are still green and, even with one-third of her gone, she doesn't look misshapen. But she isn't talking to me at the moment.

I hope she lives.

Another Tree Problem

“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”
― Khalil Gibran, "Sand and Foam"

At this time of year things have settled somewhat in the yard. Catbirds fly around looking for food to feed their young. I am serenaded by one singing from my hedge, where I'm sure there is a nest. Less than 24 hours after the wren young left the box, a male wren, possibly a different bird, started singing its territorial song. It was not the only one. On my street alone I've heard three others, one of them two yards over. The male hasn't drawn a mate yet but he is fierce in protecting the nest box.

The dead part of the tree against the living rest
of the apple tree. (Margo D. Beller)

The fledged wren young were noisily following their parents in and around shrubs at the periphery of my yard for a couple of days but lately I have not heard them.

The gnats continue in ones and twos rather than a bagful, and I am still not sure how they are getting inside the enclosed porch. Every day I play whack-a-gnat. There is no longer anything on the porch that would allow them to eat or breed. If they are coming in through small spaces around the windows, I may have to turn to chemical warfare again.

Currently, however, my main attention is on the apple tree.

We had a lot of rain this spring, and the tree was full of blossoms, which meant it would be full of apples. Then, suddenly, one third of the tree died. This is an old tree. It has a hole in its trunk big enough for a chipmunk to hide in. It has a ring of little holes from a yellow-bellied sapsucker that visited a few years ago. And yet, the tree continued to bloom and produce apples.

Dogwood blossoms in 2016. (Margo D. Beller)

When half the dogwood tree died in 2023, I asked the yard man I was using at the time to bring his chainsaw. He cut the dead parts into stackable pieces. I waited to see what would happen. The next spring the dogwood not only lived, it put out flowers.

Last year, the problem was the tree-like house plant that was getting too unwieldy to transport in and out of the house. I agonized over whether to kill the plant, but when it began growing from the bottom my decision was made and I chopped down the top. The two parts growing from the bottom are healthy (see below) and, I hope, won't grow too much.

These are a little bigger now. (Margo D. Beller)

Now it is the apple tree's turn. 

There are no lack of sites on the internet explaining what can happen to an apple tree. Here's what Tree Fluent has to say: "Environmental changes can significantly impact apple trees. Temperature fluctuations, excessive rainfall, or drought conditions can lead to stress."

Well, that sums up life in my area in a nutshell. This week alone we started 20 degrees colder than average and expect to jump to 20 degrees hotter than average by the weekend. A major fire in the New Jersey Pine Barrens in April was finally put out with help from a series of heavy rain storms. But last summer was so dry we had drought emergencies that didn't end until last month.

What else could've affected the apple tree?

Couch to Homestead lists a variety of causes including over- or under-watering, the wrong growing environment, a lack of nutrients, pests and diseases. The diseases have such charming names as apple scab and fire blight. There are also various parts of the tree that can be prone to rot, starting with the roots.

Apples growing on the living two-thirds of the tree.
(Margo D. Beller)

I did not plant this tree. It is the last of five apple trees standing, four of which I've taken down and one taken down by stags rubbing velvet from their antlers too many times. I left this one tree because its apples taste good as apple sauce. (Unfortunately, the squirrels and the deer also like them.) These apples usually have more bad than good parts, requiring a lot of cutting to use. In summer the apple leaves seem to be the first to yellow and fall. I thought this was a natural thing. Now I am not so sure.

My remedy for this problem is to rent a chainsaw, cut down the dead wood and hope that allows the tree to recover and grow next spring. It worked for the dogwood. It worked for the big plant.

I haven't gotten around to doing it yet because it has been too wet, yet again. If this remedy doesn't work the tree, like the diseased ash tree we had to cut down years ago, is history. 

Autumnal Thoughts

As I write, a tropical storm named Ophelia hit the North Carolina coast and will slowly make its way north. While still many miles away, rain and strong winds are currently lashing my northeast-facing windows. The fact it took a very long time for this storm to get strong enough to finally be named while being big enough to be constantly pointed out by local and national weather forecasters is, to me, another manifestation of the, shall we say, unusual weather afflicting us in recent years. 

This pot of coleus will eventually come inside. (Margo D. Beller)

This storm will not be like October 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which hit even my inland New Jersey area with storm-force winds that ripped off one of my window shutters and put us into cold darkness for two days. Sandy was, according to the federal weather agency NOAA,  the "second-largest Atlantic storm on record, and affected the East Coast from Florida to Maine, as well as states as far inland as West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana. The storm made landfall in southern New Jersey on Oct. 29, 2012, battering the densely populated New York and New Jersey region with heavy rains, strong winds, and record storm surges."

Ophelia shouldn't be nearly that bad, and the raw, wet conditions we're facing now are nicer, by comparison, than earlier this year when the wildfire smoke blown south from Canada turned the skies over New York City orange. And then there were the fires in Hawaii that killed hundreds of people, mainly older people. The Environmental Protection Agency, in the emotionless prose of a federal bureaucracy, has even provided a report on the key threats of climate change on older people, including heat illnesses, respiratory illnesses, insect-related diseases (including ticks), water-related illnesses and, my personal favorite, mental health issues.

A couple of the zinnias I grew from seed and
cut for my kitchen. I will grow more next year.
(Margo D. Beller)

So an older person not only has to contend with physical and emotional issues but environmental ones far beyond his or her control. In my case, there is the shortening of the days and knowing at some point there will be leaves to rake, gutters to have cleaned and a garden to cut down and put to bed. My husband (MH) and I now hire people to clear the gutters and get rid of the leaves (tho' I've been known to go after the blanket of pods that falls on the front lawn), but I, however, am the one doing the work on the garden, and that work gets harder each year.

I finally had someone come over with a chainsaw to cut off the dead parts of the dogwood. Two-thirds of the tree was removed. The remaining part is still filled with leaves slowly going red. It is struggling to stay alive. As am I.

What remains of the dogwood. (Margo D. Beller)

In past blog posts I have mentioned walking among the autumn weeds and enjoying the autumnal colors. I've even mentioned the feeling of peace when cutting down the garden. Nowadays I don't feel that enjoyment, likely because as I get older it gets harder and I feel the resulting muscle pains for longer. (MH, having ceded his grass-cutting duties to paid help to spare his balky knees, is much happier.) 

This year's wet summer - not as bad for us as for New England - has been a boon for my flowers, keeping the red spider mites and the white flies away (unlike last year). It has also benefited the weeds, which proliferated until the unusual September heatwave we had subsided and I could go out and pull them. 

I guess what bothers me even more than climate changes I can't control and the aches and pains of my older body is the inevitability of it all. The summer ends. The birds fly south. The leaves fall. The days grow shorter. The plants must be cut back or brought inside from back porch or front yard before the winter cold can kill them. Daylight savings time ends (this year on November 5). The year ends. 

Life ends. But not anytime soon for the world or for me, I hope.