Self-Planting Garden Residents

Jo Ellen Roe June 11, 2018 0 Comments

This self-planting willow shades our pond and makes sitting beside it more comfortable.

Plants of various types rub shoulders in my garden — perennials, annuals, small trees, veggies, and vines. Most of these I planted. A few self-planting plants, however, I did not. Or in two instances, I planted the plant where I wanted it, and it moved to where it wanted to be. Here are brief descriptions of my uninvited or pushy, self-planting garden residents.

Willow Tree

The biggest example among my self-planting plants is the willow (salix) tree beside our pond. The seed of this tree floated in on the air and planted itself where it still stands. For several years, we cut it way back to keep it small. It, however, as willows do, wanted to grow big. Today, it is about 15 feet tall, and it shades the pond beautifully, making the chairs beside it much more comfortable to sit in throughout the day. We prune it rather severely each year to keep it at this size. ... Read More

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An Encounter with a Hummingbird

Jo Ellen Roe August 24, 2017 0 Comments

Hummingbird looking

While I did not take this photo, the hummer looks very much like the one who looked at me.

Encounter With a Hummingbird

I attend a writing class that meets every other week. At the last meeting, our facilitator, a poet, provided the class with a template to help them write poetry. Then we each wrote a poem using his method.

My poem turned out to be about an encounter I had with a hummingbird. Here it is:

Encounter with a Hummingbird

Walking down my garden path,

Brushing aside tall pink anemones that tickle my cheek,

So I can watch an ecstatic bee

Rubbing its belly across an anemone’s pollen, ... Read More

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Trees: Five Fabulous Facts You Need to Know

Jo Ellen Roe July 17, 2017 0 Comments

The canopy of trees

Trees offer great beauty. For instance have you ever looked at a tree from this angle?

Five Fabulous Facts about Trees

Perhaps you remember the old poem about trees that I learned when I was in elementary school, written by Joyce Kilmer, an American writer and poet born in the 19th century and living through World War I. Critics generally did not think much of Kilmer’s work, calling it too simple, yet I and many others remember at least the first two lines of the poem:

“I think that I shall never see,

A poem as lovely as a tree…”

Even as I think about this poem, I am sitting in my swing, leaning back to look up into the canopy of the maple tree under which the swing sits. Bright green leaves contrast with a spring-blue sky. Black branches and twigs make an intricate pattern. The leaves sway in the wind. A couple of woodpeckers are visiting the two bird feeders that hang on the tree’s branches. All in all, it is a beautiful sight. ... Read More

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Thimbleweed: Native Plant Review

Jo Ellen Roe July 18, 2016 0 Comments

Thimbleweed blossom.

Thimbleweed: Native Plant Review. In this image, a single thimbleweed blossom stands tall on a stem that allows it to sway in the wind.

Going Partly Native

Two years ago, we started a new bed that was all native plants, including a button bush and a thimbleweed that we purchased at the annual native plant sale at Matthaei Botanical Gardens. You may be able to find similar plant sales near you.  (To read about the all-native collection of plants in Serendipity Gardens, see Planting a Native Garden.)

Many references tell us that native plants are the best to plant for a number of reasons. Here are some of them:

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department, plants native to your area will attract more native pollinators. They note that “native plants can [also] serve as larval host plants for some species of pollinators.” ... Read More

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A Winter Reflection: Home in Serendipity Gardens

Jo Ellen Roe January 11, 2016 0 Comments

Swing in fall (1)

This swing is one of our favorite places to sit in summer — and occasionally in winter, too.

It’s snowing today and quite windy, too, so it feels like winter. But this past weekend, the weather was warm enough — and dry enough — to sit outside in the garden. It usually isn’t warm enough to do that in January, but this year is different, compliments of El Nino.

I sat in the swing beneath the maple tree, where in summer a great canopy of shade cools the air below. On this particular rare bright day in a sea of cloudy days, however, only a tracery of branches studded with nascent buds reached to the blue above. ... Read More

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