The Elysian Fields

I am (still) not on Facebook, but those of you who are...

The Philadelphia Orchard Project plants orchards in the city of Philadelphia that grow healthy food, green spaces and community food security. Since 2007, we have planted 17 orchards and have 8 planting events planned for this spring. Check out our website for more information: http://www.phillyorchards.org/

POP has been picked as one of five finalists for our category in the Green Heroes Grant Program (sponsored by Green Works). The first place grant is for $15,000 and runners-up will receive $5,000.

Go here: http://apps.facebook.com/greenheroes/heroes/293_philadelphia-orchard-project once a day (until the 18th) to vote for the Philadelphia Orchard Project...

First up, for those who don't stay up late or scroll way back through lots of stuff, Episode Six of Monday's Thirteen made it up with nearly two hours of Monday left to spare. And today, when updating, it lost the icon and the subject. I think it might be an issue with the older Safari down here. Anywho.

Saturday, there was volunteering and some work - details posted soon. Sunday was Easter festivities - details posted soon, pictures posted here, here, and here.

For the last month or so connectivity has been iffy and getting progressively worse. Thursday was Almost Dead, Friday was Mostly Dead, Saturday was Buried, and Sunday was Unplugged, until late in the day when I found out what it was. Maybe.

Monday, which gets lumped into the holiday weekend, involved Brandonisms and the installation of a new lawn ornament.

Today will involve some online work for the business that I wanted to do last Friday and much of the same for the household which was also supposed to be done Friday. Oy. It will also involve chainsaws and removal of aforementioned lawn ornament.

Before:



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After:



So we didn't win, but we did get some tree down. Although the tree is still standing, and Justin and I are feeling rather challenged in that area... onth again I am tho thor. =)

Saturday, Deb walked in the Race for the Cure - I'm really glad she did that on quite a few levels. She harps on the fact that an 82 year old woman out-competitive-walked her; however Deb far out-competed everyone else in the entire world who sat on their butt and flipped channels during that time span.

That latter group, by the way, included the four of us - during those moments in time. We made up for it later. Rachel chased after Mr. B while Justin and I searched for limbs to try out some new Japanese pruning saws. We made short work of a few dead trees & limbs that my existing saws would have suffered through for longer than it took Deb to do the walk. We also pruned a few live limbs - some suckers that would weaken and endanger the tree if allowed to grow. Quick and clean, they performed very nice and did not rip and tear and make a mess out things like some other saws I've been acquainted with.

Speaking of ripping and tearing, Justin and I practiced our lasso technique, and used it to throw a weighted line over some limbs about 20-30' feet up in the air. The line was divided in the middle by a chainsaw and we took down (and hauled away) maybe a thousand or so pounds of dead wood. The first was certainly for practice - when that tree falls (and there's still 2-3 times as much left above the height of the limb we took down), it won't endanger the house or cars. The second has a lot more that could fall on our house or cars, and is a twin tree, with its equally dead sibling aiming at the neighbor's house and cars. I might be able to get some longer lines - and something to help boost the throwing weight over higher limbs with more accuracy - but I will probably end up calling in an arborist to deal with it.

Sunday, I took the kids to the PA Ren Faire, which you may already have realized if you read the previous Brandonisms post. I picked up a couple pieces of art, but everything else was all about music. Rachel selected a wooden ocarina, Justin a horn (a "blowing horn", to use their technical term), and I picked up a gourd with twin flute-like pipes.

When we sat down waiting for the joust, we noticed another kid with one of the horns, and I tried to get Justin to go to him and tell him how to get a note out of it, but he didn't (I had Mr. B sitting on my lap, so my movement was limited). Just to let any non-horn players in on the secret: you don't just blow air through it like you would a flute or whistle; you need to put your lips together and essentially blow raspberries into it to get it to sound.

When Justin tried them out, the guys running the stand were surprised he hit such clear notes first time out. We teased him a bit about getting multiple notes out of it, especially after we had made fun of the horn players and their definutely-not period-accurate valved instruments ("Valvses? Valvses? We don't need no steeenking valvses!") On the ride home, while we were stuck in I78 Hell, Justin figured out how to use his hand like a French horn player and to change his embouchure to get four other notes out of it, each about a half-step apart. With that, he managed to play parts from The Kraken, several nursery rhymes, and a few other bits and pieces.

Rachel's ocarina is fitted with a cord to wear around her neck ("bling on a string," as per the guy running the stand) so she had it in hand while we were waiting for a table at supper. They were playing old-time country music over the PA, and suddenly she started playing along with the vocal line - and nailing it, with the exception of a few extra notes for ornamentation.

In comparison, on the gourd-thing? We think it will play at least two octaves. The vendor was able to play some nice low notes, and I seemed to hit them in places, but for me it jumps up to a much higher tone. Much practice will be needed. The instrument sounds a bit like a shawm, or maybe a bagpipe chanter, although we're pretty sure there's no reed involved - just the body of the gourd itself, and then the pipes.

I planted a number of native plants today - six, to be exact - and almost got half-way done before deciding to call it a night. The hard part was figuring out where everything should go.

Most of the plants are not centerpieces or showstoppers - in fact, out of fourteen to be planted, ten are native ferns, and they are planted to help increase diversity. Growing in the wild, I've identified at least three species of fern on the property - Onoclea sensibilis (sensitive fern), Pteridium aquilinum (bracken), and - here's where the at-least comes in, as I haven't narrowed it down to a positive ID: Dennstaedtia punctilobula (hay scented fern) and/or Thelypteris noveboracensis (Parathelypteris noveboracensis) (New York fern) and/or Athyrium filix-femina (lady fern).

Today, I added an Osmunda regalis (royal fern) and an evergreen Polystichum acrostichoides (Christmas fern). On an aside, the site all the fern links point to belongs to the Connecticut Botanical Society, and is an exceptional resource for native ferns... specifically to Connecticut, but everything I've been interested in there is also native to Pennsylvania. The royal fern has a prominent location down on the island in Stone Stream, where a Christmas fern I planted last year and some native ferns are starting to thrive. It's between a winterberry that might reach 10' around and a newly planted shrub, but as it can reach 6' tall on its own, it should fit in nicely with that crowd, especially once the river birch, katsura, and paw paws provide a nice ceiling. The new Christmas fern is located alongside Stone Stream above the pair of larger hostas - there's some sensitive ferns and other natives around there, but it will take on a prominent role, especially during the months where the deciduous ferns fall apart.

The other four that went into the ground today were not ferns, all though one wants to be!

The Stylophorum diphyllum (celandine poppy or wood poppy) - a native wildflower - is positioned along Spruce Alley, where the meadow spills down off the sand mound. It should reseed itself nicely there, giving us some nice yellow spring flowers before most of the meadow wakes up for the year and gets going.

Across the stepping stones from the new Christmas fern, I planted a Physocarpus opulifolius (ninebark). It helps finish off the foundation planting, and, unlike most of the shrubs in the area around the porch, it provides a deciduous touch, and it does so with a beautiful peeling bark.

Down near the royal fern, I had tried to transplant some Comptonia peregrina (sweet fern) from the bank a year or so ago. I didn't grab enough root - it spreads by suckers, and what I planted was, essentially, three rootless sticks. As this set of three sticks has leaves and roots, I expect it to do much better. One of the key functions of sweet fern - which is a deciduous shrub - is to fix nitrogen in the soil. It will improve the soil, even as it looks pretty good (like a dark fern with woody branches) and smells beautiful.

The last one I'll list tonight was actually the first one planted, as it went in on the top edge of Bank Island, furthest from the house. It is an Ilex opaca 'Dan Fenton' (American holly 'Dan Fenton'), which is funny, because, as Louise at Edge of the Woods (who supplied all 14 of the plants) pointed out, it's a female plant. Dan Fenton may be honored by the name, but it really would have been more apt to name it Danielle... she should get along well with the male hollies, and make lots of nice berries to supply the birds with food.

I've got a couple of reviews of some new items I used today, and I'll try to write them up later, and then put them in the queue with all the book, movie, and music reviews I'm so far behind on. My goal was to post no more than one a day - but there hasn't been much worry about breaking that envelope. =)

I've also got some music reviews I'm trying to get to ASAP that will hopefully get done tonight - julianafinch's How to Take the Fall (which is currently playing, on The Wind that Shakes the Barley, a beautiful rendition of one of my favorite tunes!), tewok (and wife!)'s Na Bi Gòrach (as Port Righ; this was playing when I started writing this post! =), and today's arrival, Mythica's new disc Vicarious (which, no surprise, played prior to the two listed above... =). Excellent music - I've know some talented folks! =)

Justin and I managed to get two more steps in on the back bank; hopefully we'll finish the last two tomorrow!

In other news, the mayapple showed up - I was getting a bit concerned that it didn't make it through the winter. Some of the American holly are showing new growth, so that's a good sign. Bunches and bunches of the hemlock are looking good. Still waiting on the sycamores, I'm fairly concerned that the sweetgums aren't going to show up (to be fair, most of them seemed to be the victim of chipmunks or something like that), and the balsam fir and Serbian spruce trees are iffy.

It's really dry out there. The ground is all crunchy underfoot, the exposed bits of dirt - even in the deep woods - are all cracked and rock hard. We're switching to watering-every-day mode for everything planted in the last year or so.

.. quoth the snow. What's the past tense of snow? Snaw? Spring?

Took down half the holiday lights - haven't had them lit since January, but we missed the window to break out the ladder and take them down prior to the onset of Snow in February. The other half will have to wait for aforementioned ladder, which means Light and Lack of Snow, which should happen this weekend. Took them down while Justin was clearing off some cardboard that was allegedly going to be recycled but was left on the porch too long and turned into a sprawling cat bed (complete with decorative decapitated meeses).

Of course, the reason we were out on the porch was because the Musser Forests order had arrived and needed processing (unpack, shake out packing material, wrap in newspaper, put in buckets, moisten paper and add some water). Due to worries of freezing temps, they're down in the cellar - the garage gets too cold. Of course, the cellar has the dehumidifier, which is basically anti-plantlife, so we'll have to watch the moisture and get them into the ground as soon as we can.

Hopefully snow will clear down along the stream where the winterberry holly are going, and along Chestnut Grove where the hazelnuts will be. We're pretty much SOL for the hemlock - those are going along the back edge of the property in the trees, so it's not very likely that we'll be 100% snow cover free.

I have reviews to post - they're halfway between this system and that, and they'll be here. Eventually.

New guitar student starting Saturday - the father of the second student, who wants to make use of the guitar and some musical interest. Also have another two potential students - a guy at work and one of his daughters - that will hopefully be scheduled soon.

Here being the spot about three feet from my driveway and ten feet from the garage wall; there being a spot about thirty feet across and ten feet down the driveway.

The leyland cypress - about five or six feet tall now, and planted on my birthday a couple of years ago - was the long distance voyager.

With dragonflypug's son's help, Justin and I dug a hole (too deep, it turns out,) moved the dirt across the driveway, out of the wheelbarrow, and onto a tarp. Then we took turns circling the tree with the one spade. Eventually, we could get in there with the transfer shovel and use it to help lift. After a couple more times around, we finally began to be able to lift the rootball out. We carried it across the driveway, discovered the hole was too deep, and had to go bring the dirt back over. This involved all three of us lifting the tarp and dumping three cubic feet of dirt back into the wheelbarrow - my back will thank me for that later, I'm sure. Once we got a few shovelfuls of dirt in there, it sat nicely, and it actually went pretty smoothly.

Now we just have to move the wisteria tree, the crepe myrtle, and the heaths and heathers. I know that the last two are going on the back bank - this will be an improvement as they will no longer compete with tall grass and they will hold the hillside where grass doesn't want to grow. Win-win. The crepe myrtle dies to the ground every year - I'll put it somewhere along the foundation, maybe close to the dryer vent, to help it get some more warmth and more of a chance to flower and survive. The wisteria needs sun and, to keep the tree form, high maintenance - not really sure where it's going to go, though. After they are all moved, I'll be able to let that entire area become part of the meadow, which will greatly simplify care of the meadow and pruning of the wisteria.

Justin and I survived the first round of planting this season - the Forest Farm order arrived on Wednesday and that night I opened the boxes and set the plants out to stretch their roots as it were. They received a nice, gentle deluge, partially sheltered by the eaves, the kiwi trellis, and the juniper. We planted last night. Most of the ground was still damp, so after-planting watering was minimal; just enough to mix the top bit of soil together. Might have been some rain last night, and it's raining off and on today, so that should help them transition.

Last year we focused on the foundation area, this year the focus is on the meadow and Chestnut Grove, with all but one of the planting being in the grove or on the fringe of the meadow.

We had four 1 gallon plants: a Podophyllum pellatum (mayapple, mandrake) that is planted between an oak and the Stone Stream just below the island - I'm hoping the perennial spreads out and takes over the undergrowth of that area, along with the native blueberries, wintergreen, and azalea; a Clethra alnifolia (summersweet)is opposite that on the wet strip of lawn just before the meadow starts - it should turn into a 10-12'-in-all-directions sprawl that will help define the meadow border and drink up the extra moisture so it doesn't ruin the septic system; and two Miscanthus sinensis 'Zebrinus' (zebra grass) that are positioned on the meadow edge and, with the existing one, will form a trio to screen the view of the cement septic access from the front porch.

The six tubes also contained only three species: six Xerophyllum tenax (beargrass) were planted along the Chestnut Grove top corner of the sand mound (which is part of the meadow) - they'll blend with the seeded plants from the meadow, but I anticipate them dominating that one corner; three Asimina triloba (pawpaw) are in Chestnut Grove, they now outnumber the chestnuts in the grove - these are the first of a number of pawpaws I plan on having, as they're key components of the edible forest; finally, one Cercidiphyllum japonicum (katsura tree) was planted down on Bank Island, between the crabapple and the Washington hawthorn - I really like how the one we planted last spring looks, whereas that one will provide shade/color/Autumn caramel scent to the front porch and yard, this one is positioned so that people will be able to enjoy it while walking by.