Earth Day Reading

Earth Day is a day that is intended to spread awareness and appreciation for the Earth's natural environment. Things are blooming in the garden, and I was invited by Holley at Roses and Other Gardening Joys to participate in the Earth Day reading project, a fun little blog meme hosted by The Sage Butterfly.

Baptisia x 'Carolina Moonlight' (Carolina Moonlight Baptisia)

The rules are simple: create a post linking back to the person who invited you and the original post, list at least 3 books that have inspired you to preform sustainable living or act green and explain why, and select at least 3 other blogs to tag for the project. What a fun idea!

Rosa banksiae 'Alba Plena' (White Lady Banks Rose)

I was excited to accept the tag for this Earth Day post, as being in the environmental field I am always reading "green"-type books. My choices may be a bit different, as they are more about environmentalism and living in harmony with the earth than the modern interpretation of "green living".

(1) Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, 1962

I'll start with a classic in environmentalism that is also a great read about nature. Silent Spring is the epic book that is often touted as the book that started the environmental movement, and played a large part in the banning of DDT in 1970. What starts out as a beautiful passage about the sounds and images of spring, ends with the silence that was brought by wide-spread spraying of pesticides. The book is a mix of science and passion, and describes the effects of pesticides on humans and ecosystems. It also recommends alternative methods, many of which are used today, such as biocontrol.

"We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road - the one less traveled by - offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth"

Anthyrium 'Ghost' (Ghost Fern)

(2) My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir, 1911

If you read my blog, you probably noticed I like John Muir.  I just love his writing style, his descriptions are almost lyrical and can take me to the deepest gorges of the Sierra Mountains in my bedroom. John Muir was perhaps one of the original environmentalists as founder of the Sierra Club, although at his time he was called a naturalist. My First Summer in the Sierra is John Muir's journal accounting his awe-inspiring visit to the place he loved and protected throughout his career. This book holds a special place in my heart, as the following passage was read by my brother at Brian and my wedding.

"No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull, or any trace of that in manufactories is called rubbish or waste; everything is perfectly clean and pure and full of divine lessons. This quick, inevitable interest attaching to everything seems marvelous until the hand of God becomes visible; then it seems reasonable that what interests God may well interest us. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to that plants and animals as friendly fellow mountaineers. Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains - beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken."

Chionanthus virginicus (Native Fringe Tree)

(3) 1491 by Charles Mann, 2005

For my final selection, I wanted to choose something a little different. 1491 is a book I was introduced to when I was a teaching assistant for a forest history class. As the title would suggest, it explores what America was like the year before Columbus's famous trip. While the book has many revelations about what Native American cultures and ecosystems were like, perhaps the most significant one is that the number of Native Americans, their advances, and impacts on the land have been severely underestimated. In fact, at the time the life span of a Native American was longer than a European. However, 95% of the population was wiped out by diseases spread to people and forest animals by the European explorers, and when pilgrims came to America its forest had already been going through a century of successional changes. This book is a great lesson in how land management is not a negative activity as long as it is done with a conscious mind to ecosystem needs, and questions our thinking in what is a truly "unaltered" ecosystem.

"Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact."

Amertia maritima 'Nifty Thrifty'

Its been a busy week, and I was only able to get one blog tag together:
Visit Anne blog at Gardening with Binoculars

If you are hungry for more there are some also great Earth Day reading posts from:
 My Nice Garden
 Its Not Work, Its Gardening!
 Sweet Bean Gardening
 Southern Meadows
 Gardens Eye View
 The Gardening Blog

Dutch Iris (unknown variety)

Baptisia x 'Purple Smoke' (Purple Smoke Baptisia)

"You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers.  So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin.  Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother.  Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth.  If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves."  

~Native American Wisdom

The Great Awakening

The garden has been awake for about a month now, but the magic really starts for me when the native trees begin to leaf out, changing the world from grey to green in a matter of weeks. 

As a lover of trees, spring presents one of those unique viewpoints when across the landscape you can pick out species based on colors: red samaras of the maples, light green deciduous leaves of the tulip poplars and sweetgums, dark green needles of the pines, or the showy white dogwoods and magenta redbuds peaking out of the understory. The two largest trees in the picture above are Tulip Poplars (Liriodendron tulipifera), each about 3 feet in diameter, guarding the stream at the edge of our property.

We are lucky enough to have our little piece of city property back up to an undeveloped easement with a perennial stream.  A rare 3 acre unmanaged tract for being within the Raleigh City Limits, it attracts a wide variety of wildlife and has mature second growth hardwoods flanking the stream. The easement is dotted with naturally regenerated dogwoods, this one (right) is at the back of our property, trying to fight through the wisteria. A beautiful mixture of colors for this picture, I will eventually take this vine down because they are so invasive. The only thing stopping me is that the plant was a sentimental gift to the previous homeowner from our neighbor, but I will have to take it out before we move to prevent it from spreading.

 In the garden things are moving along at an astonishing pace. With so much rain, the plants have been growing steadily, and on a rare sunny afternoon everything woke up. Warm season herbaceous perennials like this native Culver's Root (Veronicastrum virginicum) (top left) are even making an appearance, just peeking over the newly laid mulch. With passing early spring flowers, the Winter Hazel (Corylopsis glabrescens) (top right) popped open its swelling buds to reveal crinkled new leaves. Even the lawn is blooming! Amid the catastrophic chickweed outbreak we had had this spring are common violets (Viola floridana) (bottom left) showing their faces for the first time this year. Although considered a "weedy" plant in some situations, I leave these little guys alone to set seeds for the songbirds. In the shade garden, the evergreen Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum) (bottom right) has recently sent out a flush of new foliage, and with it delicate white flowers with a sweet scent.

 A new addition to the garden this spring, the Easter Rose (Kerria japonica 'Honshu') is getting impatient and looks like it will open its buds before the name would suggest. I always love seeing the first flower on a new plant in the garden, and even the buds are beautiful on this one. You may also notice the pollen grains on everything! It is officially that time of year when the waters run yellow with the Loblolly Pine pollen flight. Although the grains of pine pollen are too large to induce allergies, they do make mess on the outdoor furniture. The rains lately have really helped though, hopefully we will have the same luck with the Oak pollen flight that will happen in a couple weeks, one that makes even me fuzzy headed in a bad year.

 One of the simple joys I find this time of year is watching the buds swell in the spring and pop to unfurl leaves. The Variegated Beautyberries (Callicarpa dichotoma 'Duet') (left), another new addition this spring, have put on quite a show. The yellow buds and variegation on juvenile leaves is especially exciting to watch progress over the days. The Wine and Roses Wigelia (Wigelia florida 'Wine and Roses') (right) always makes a stunning showing in the spring with its purple-tinged foilage and early buds. Providing a complementary background is a white blooming web of Mazus (Mazus reptans).

I couldn't resist including this pop of color, like I couldn't resist planting these Lorapetalums in our front landscape.  A beautiful evergreen specimen plant, these small Chinese Fringe Flowers (Lorapetalum chinensis 'Daruma') only get about 4ft tall, and flush with a purple-maroon growth of foliage as a backdrop for these neon flowers.

Other, less conspicuous blooms are also present in the front landscape. The Rose Glow Barberry (Berberis thunbergii 'Rose Glow') became covered in tiny bell shaped blooms over the last couple days. Even the winter-burnt and possibly disease-ridden Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinado) joined in the fun, offering sparse appearances of white flowers with a touch of violet.

For the final picture I will leave you with the Tulipia 'Little Beauty' that I mentioned in the last post on bulbs. After waiting patiently for 2 days of rain, the budded dwarf tulips opened all at once to greet the sun, and I like to think pose for my pictures too. With more rain in the forecast, and snow for our northern friends, these 'Little Beauties' send spring wishes from our garden!

"It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility." ~ Rachel Carson

Pear Problems

'Bradford' Pears (Pyrus calleryana) are a popular tree in our area for good reasons: beautiful early flowers, high tolerance of stress, and a stand-out fall color on glossy leaves that stay on the tree longer into the fall than most other species. 

However, there are some very important unfavorable qualities in the species: its invasive nature and narrow branching angles that result in unstable limbs. Bradford Pear's are widely planted across the Triangle, including this specimen in our front yard which, judging by its size, was planted when the our house was built. We originally had two trees, planted side by side along the road. Last summer, we noticed severe canopy die back on one of them. Upon further inspection of the base of the tree we found the culprit: circling roots that are slowly girdling the trees! What a tribute to breaking up the roots before planting! We cut one down last year, and this one will too die, possibly this year as its blooming is becoming patchy and frequent water sprouts are a sure sign of stress. The possibility of picking a new full-sun specimen tree is exciting, as there are so many wonderful choices. Two I've been eying are 'Thundercloud' Purple-leafed Plum (Prunus cerasifera) and Golden Rain tree (Koelreuteria paniculata)

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods.  But he cannot save them from fools."  ~John Muir

In The Pines

"If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden."  ~Frances Hodgson Burnett

This is obviously not from the garden, but it is my Longleaf Pine research site, the Harris Tract near Holly Springs, NC.  It was a beautiful warm day, but windy with a storm rolling through, and I just had to share. I always feel lucky to work in such a beautiful place, minus the blackberry thickets.

"A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship." ~John Muir