Container Garden, June 8

A week after planting, my patio container garden is waterlogged but otherwise coming along nicely. There's obviously been no need to water, except for my basil pots that are on a window ledge under the roof overhang. When severe weather was forecast Thursday night I pulled the pots back against the house, under the same overhang, to help protect them from a pounding by hail, which in the end never materialized.

The sturdy container-size tomatoes are growing well, and the lettuce, chard, radishes and cucumbers I planted as seeds last week have all germinated (cucumber seedlings can be seen below). My hand slipped with the radishes and so I have a veritable forest of little radish seedlings. They will clearly need to be thinned considerably -- and soon -- to allow them room to form proper radishes, but the thinnings can be tossed into a salad. In the foreground of the top photo, in the white pot along with some lobelia, is a cluster of three little marigolds my son started at school and brought home for Mother's Day.

Dandelion Clocks Aglow

On a recent evening walk, I found the glow of dandelion seedheads, or "clocks," illuminated by the setting sun, quite magical. My son, like many children, loves to blow the dandelion clocks. Adults, on the other hand, tend to consider dandelion clocks an eyesore and shudder at the thought of those countless seed parachutes wafting over their lawns. I remember my mother teaching my brother and me to "tell the time" by counting the blows it took until the seeds were all blown away. There is still something compelling about those weightless, silky orbs, if we take the time to notice.

Riverfront Birdwatching - Not So Much

This was the view earlier this week from in front of the building where I work, as Water Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets, and its associated parking lot, are under construction. Usually I can wander over to the the riverfront and easily see what's going on with the local duck and goose population. Now it's something of a no-man's land -- muddy and dotted with miniature ponds from the recent rains. Yesterday I could see large groups of rapidly growing goslings practicing running back and forth on the far bank of the river, strengthening their legs and wings in preparation for the flying lessons that will come soon enough. Today the heavy machinery was back, and enormous sections of concrete pipe are lying in wait to play their part in the infrastructure work.

Beautiful Spirea

For the rest of my life, no matter where else I live or for how long, I think I will associate spirea with Northfield, and Northfield with spirea. The large, lovely, old-fashioned shrubs seen so often in Northfield's older neighborhoods are notable for their gracefully arching stems covered with white flower clusters in late spring. These distinctively arching spireas are Vanhoutte spirea (Spiraea x vanhouttei), and are often called bridalwreath, although apparently this name more properly belongs to Spiraea prunifolia, which looks quite different.

These spirea, along with the tall, lush, many-colored lilacs that grace many of the same neighborhoods, epitomize for me the nostalgic "grandma's house" charm of historic Northfield: lovely old houses, both large and small... big backyards with vegetable gardens and fresh-smelling laundry hanging on the line... stately, mature shade trees... front porches that actually get used on warm summer nights... That's the Northfield I fell in love with when we moved here more than 18 years ago, and spirea is inextricably a part of that experience.

The group of spireas that includes the Vanhoutte (there is another group that bears pink or red blooms in summer) blooms on old wood, so it is important to do any pruning only after it has finished flowering for the season. If you trim it in the early spring, you'll have no flowers, which would be unfortunate indeed. And -- let me be blunt here -- this is one of the shrubs which it is a crime to prune into a standard boring snowball shape, since the beauty of this shrub is in its long, arching, blossom-laden stems. We've probably all seen the pitiful results of spirea that have fallen victim to both the mistakes described in this paragraph: a featureless round blob of a shrub, pruned in spring, so that it bears only a few stray blooms at the bottom where no trimming was done. It's such a sad sight, though I'm sure the tidy-minded property owner meant well.

Think It Was a Cold Spring? It Was!

I just got my Xcel Energy bill, which stated that this billing period was 11 degrees colder overall than the same period last year. 11 degrees! That is a pretty major difference when we're talking about a whole month. I don't always look closely at this feature, and speak up if you have more information about this, but I don't know if I remember ever seeing a larger year-to-year temperature differential.