Damned cold day

It's a clear, sunny day and the air temperature has soared from 0 to 5, but that's on the Fahrenheit scale, so for the rest of the educated world our high temp today is -15 C. That's cold! It was a great weather sequence, starting Friday evening with freezing rain, so Saturday starts out ice-coated and it's one of those you can barely see it coatings of ice. TPP slipped down his own front steps, while being terribly careful because it was obviously slippery, and the newspaper was out there somewhere, but it was slippery-er than was imagined, and fortunately no physical damage was done beyond slightly spraining a thumb. Then riding in on a blast of Arctic air a layer of snow was deposited on the ice. Actually at this low a temperature, it's way less slippery now than 24 hrs ago.  Tonight may well be our coldest temperature of the calendar year, and the '16-'17 winter season; the temperature is expected to be 3 to 4 degrees below zero F (-20 C).  
Plant-wise this is close to the hardiness limits for a number of plants so come spring, TPP expects some die back.  For example, one species of beauty berry is less hardy than the other and Callicarpa  bodinieri may well die back to the ground level.  Last time it took it two years to recover and flower again (this year), so the clock will get turned back again.  TPP worries about his big leafed Asch magnolia, endemic to the Florida panhandle.  It survived 0 F last year without damage but 3 to 4 degrees colder pushes the  envelop a bit further, so to help out it was heavily mulched and the bit of snow will also help. The Sinocalycanthus is also a worry at these temperatures.  This is no where near how cold it could get here, and twice in the past 40 years the low temperature has hit -19 F.  The neighbors have a very tough mimosa tree, and it may well die back and come spring they'll just have to wait and see where it sprouts, and then prune back accordingly.  
Yesterday was spent in part making currant-cherry-berry jelly, outstanding taste and bright red. Currants tend to ripen when it's too busy to make jelly, but they are easily frozen and then wait patiently for our attention. These are from the 2015 season. 2016s are waiting. 
Today will be a soup-making day - parsnip, sausage, and lentil will be a good choice. 

Cagey response for a wildlife friendly garden

The Phactors have a large, urban garden that contains not only a surpising amount of plant diversity, but also the sort of food, shelter, and water that attracts wildlife. For the most part things are amicable. Just 10 days ago, winterberry was a featured plant showing fall color; the berries are now all gone having been transformed into wildlife fodder. Fine, although if the display had lasted longer that would have been fine too. Sigh. In another quick change, a witch hazel went from fall color to flowering in 2 weeks. However one component of our garden's wildlife does not really play well with our plants during the winter: bunnies. In the dead of winter, the bunnies turn to browsing, and our shrubs' and trees' bark bear the evidence. When heavy snow filled the privet hedge, the bunnies gnawed all the bark off the stems from 18 to 24 inches and up, and yes, girdling stems did kill the plant above. Without the snow pack shoveled from the driveway to clamber on, bunnies can't reach the younger, gnawable bark. The bunnies also crop the beauty berry bushes back to 12-18 inches every year. In these cases the hedge needed re-juvenating and a heavy pruning back to 12-16 inches did the trick, and the beautyberry flowers and fruits on new wood, so it should be pruned back each spring anyways. However, in many other cases the outcome is not so good when you find a pricey new shrub gnawed back to the ground. Last winter a cage tipped over and a Korean azalea, a very hardy and most excellent plant (R. mucronulatum) got eaten back to the ground, but fortunately their ability to recover is quite amazing and it may even flower a little if the cage stays in place this winter. So yesterday, the Phactors spent a most excellent November afternoon moving relatively unabtrusive wire cages from herbaceous perennials to trees and shrubs for the winter. And so the cycle of cages goes from herbaceous perennials in the spring and summer to trees and shrubs for the winter. Also for some reason the cost and desireability of any particular plant is directly correlated with its tastiness to bunnies, or so it seems. Eventually most trees develop heavy enough bark as the get larger, but shrubs remain more vulnerable. Run-of-the-garden hostas, meh, but fancy new variety of hosta and it'll be rabbit salad by morning. Just wish the top predator component of wildlife were a bit more common to balance out the herbivores. Great opportunity for red fox, and the year our garden was visited regularly, the bunny problem was minimal although a few partial corpses had to be disposed of.

Still looking good, here and there

Except for tree leaf color, which hasn't arrived at its peak just yet, the gardens begin to look pretty drab in the fall. Quite a bit of color still can be found lurking around our gardens here and there. In one shady nook best observed from our neighbor's dining room a couple of azure beauty berries are aglow with shiny purple berries on the gracefully arching branchs. This is a terrific low shrub for shady places, and since it flowers and fruits on new wood, it doesn't matter when the bunnies nibble it down. The beauty berry has several clumps of monk's hood/wolfbane growing up behind it, and it regularly produces clusters of blue-purple flowers on its 4-5 foot tall stems in October. Also a good plant for shade although the stems may need some support. The hydrangeas look great, still flowering like fools until they get frosted which could happen within a few days. A new varigated Diervillea sessifolia, dwarf bush honeysuckle, looks great in spite of the drought and is still flowering, much to the bees' delight, and it will also handle some shade. 

Friday Fabulous Flower - Little things in small packages

Nice little things come in small packages, but we often over look the small flowers around us because so many of our ornamental plants have been chosen and selected to have big flowers.  Here's a flowering shrub whose flowers hardly get noticed because even in axillary clusters they are a pretty small display. 

An individual flower is only 2-3 mm across.  This shrub flowers on new wood, this year's growth, and sequentially from bottom to top of the branch.  Long time readers have actually seen this before because TPP featured it way back in 2008, but in October when it's fruit display was at peak attractiveness, and long after it had flowered.  With summer flowering generally diminished by the drought, these flowers were getting plenty of attention from insects.  Fruit eating migratory birds like these shade tolerant shrubs' fruits a lot.  In the tropics you see more bright blue-purple fruit colors than in the temperate zone.  By now you've probably figured out or check the link to discover this is an azure beauty berry (Callicarpa dichotoma).

Plant of the week - October 21, 2008

Azure beauty berry

Callicarpa dichotoma (Verbena family).

Generally when it comes of fall color you think of plants whose leaves turn a nice bright color. But the beauty berry has the neatest electric blue display of fruits in September and October. This particular one holds a cluster of fruits above each leaf axil on a gracefully arched branch. What could be nicer. This particular fruit color, bright blue, is pretty rare among temperate zone plants, but more common in tropical forests. This Chinese species has more cold hardiness than American beauty berry.

Small light purple flowers preceed the fruit, and while nice enough, are no match for the fruit display. Flowering and fruiting are on new wood, so the bush is cut back to 12-18" every spring, or you let the bunny rabbits do it for you over the winter. This low shrub grows fine in light to medium heavy shade. You might consider placing it where it could be viewed from above, so next to walkways or below windows.

Now that frugivorous birds are migrating through, the berries are beginning to disappear, so the display definitely attracts some species. This is one of the nearly 150 species growing in my personal arboretum.