Beauty in Odd Places, or Fun on Labor Day Weekend

One thing I find about gardeners is their willingness to see beauty in odd places. How many normal people, for example, would look at a well-built compost heap and exclaim in awe and delight? Or look at the caterpillar merrily chewing on their tomatoes and admire the markings before pitching it in the woods?

We've had quite a bit of rain lately, what with Hurricane Irene passing by, and all the moisture has brought out a plethora of fungus. This past weekend, Brian noticed a lovely yellow mushroom on the edge of our spruces so out we tramped to check it out. Here's what we saw.

After consulting with the Audubon guide, we concluded this mushroom is a Yellow-Orange Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria var. formosa). Not deadly, but definitely poisonous. According to the guide, this mushroom may cause sweating, deep sleep and disorientation. Hubby looked at me, shrugged and said "Sounds like a normal Sunday around here."

We had also found a large puffball mushroom a few days before this and took a few shots. The puffball is one of the few wild mushrooms that is both easily identifiable and edible.

Puffball growing next to Paperbark Maple sapling.

After our adventure with the Amanita, we wandered over to see how the puffball was doing and found this:

Good grief! The thing looked like a burnt souffle! Presumably at some point in the near future, the top will split open and allow the spores to escape. I think this one is a Purple-spored Puffball (Calvatia cyathiformis), based on the fact that, when Brian hit one with the lawn mower, he got a cloud of purple spores.

We try to take Gracie the House Monster for a good long walk on the weekends and fortunately there is a great park not too far from our place. Lots of nature trails and it borders the river for a beautiful view. We even found a few shrooms on our walk!

Not sure what any of them were, so we assumed they were all poisonous. Gracie took one sniff then backed away with a look of disgust. Personally, I think all mushrooms should be admired but not eaten, even the ones in the grocery store, so I completely sympathised with her.

In addition to mushrooms, we found some other local wildlife.


Painted Turtle

 I haven't seen a turtle in the wild around here since I was a child. He was a little shy but agreed to have his photo taken. Gracie could not understand the fuss over a moving rock. She was much more interested in reaching the river for a cool off!


River Monster

While she was splashing around, Brian took this shot which shows just how high the river flooded when Hurricane Irene came to town.


The flood waters coated everything with mud!

All in all, an interesting time was had by all. The last thing we found was the stump of a tree, about 5.5 feet tall by the side of the trail. It was a perfect perch for Gracie!

Gracie and me

 

OK, Mom, let me down now!

Hope everyone had a safe and fun Labor Day weekend!

(thanks, Indie, from Red House Garden, for inspiring this post!)

A Productive Saturday and Wasted Sunday

It's certainly been a mixed bag this weekend. Yesterday was lovely and I was able to get one major project completed. Behind the pond is a large ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius'Summer Wine'). A 10 foot tall, 12 foot wide shrub with purple leaves, 'Summer Wine' is supposed to be a more compact variety of ninebark. It certainly is a dense variety and quite beautiful.

In the midst of my renovations, however, I find having foliage all the way to the ground to be more of a  nuisance than anything. It is hard to weed at the edges and several plants were being shaded out entirely. Reshaping this shrub was definitely on my list of projects, so when my darling spouse, Brian, decided to go to the Saratoga track for the Travers race, I pulled out all my implements of destruction and went to town on it.



Before Shrub Surgery

As you can see, there is a cleared area in front of the bush where we removed the sod to stop the encroachment of the lawn. The thickness of the foliage at the intersection of lawn and shrub made weeding a scratchy proposition. Believe it or not, there were actually 3 daylilies hiding under the branches. Poor planning on my part, but I believed them when they said this shrub was compact.


After Shrub Surgery



Another View

I really like the shape of the shrub after the trim. The arching of the upper branches can be seen and there is now room for some shade plants. The weeding and trimming of the plants around the shrub was accomplished for the first time in 3 years!


Shrub and Pond

The 3 daylilies, what was left of them anyway, were relocated to sunnier homes. In the course of removing them, I had to climb around the top of the pond and managed to annoy our resident pond monster. He/She scared the crap out of me by leaping from the top of the waterfall into the main pond with a resounding splash. I almost fell in after it!


Pond Monster

The last bit of wildlife I have to report for the day was a tiny tree frog I found earlier in the morning while weeding over by the woods. We looked him up in the Peterson's guide and he appears to be a grey tree frog. He was absolutely adorable! After admiring him and inflicting an impromtu photo shoot on him, I brought him back to the weeds from whence he came.


Tree monster

The rest of the day was spent lounging on the couch until Brian came home.

Today, on the other hand, has been a spectacular waste of a day. The remnants of Hurricane Irene arrived in the night and it has been nothing but wind and rain all day. We did the only thing we could do - slept in and watched TV. And played with our computers, of course.

We've been lucky and had no damage from the storm. There are reports of a mudslide which took out a few houses in a neighboring town, but thankfully there were no injuries. Wherever you are out there, please take care and be safe!