We have some amazing hickory trees on our property. They are good looking trees with edible fruit. The hickory nut is sweet and I personally think comparable to a pecan in flavor. It’s unfortunately much tougher to crack and mostly consists of shell.

Anne often collects these hickory nuts and spends some time every year cracking and eating them with her dad. There is something very satisfying in the cracking of a hickory. The sound of the splitting shell inspires us to crack more. The hickory nut tastes like inspiration.

This year, I got to looking at some nuts and thought they deserved their own little photo shoot. So I took some pictures and then didn’t really know what to do with them. I could just load them to Flickr and forget about them, I thought. Or maybe, just maybe, I should load them to Facebook and share the hickory nut message with all my hickory friends.

But if I’m going to do that, I better make the messages really blatant and also include disclaimers, warnings and general words of caution (look closely for these). Inspiration is, after all, 90% stinky.

Violent wind/thunder storms came through Tama and surrounding counties early Monday morning while we were sleeping. Winds were so strong we could feel the house shake. We are still without power and water and are sad to report that we lost about 15 trees. Trees we planted ourselves in ’07 and ’08, many of which were showing such potential.  Those who have visited know that our house and gardens are located in a mostly treeless area, except for the large Ash tree next to the house. On a side note, we recently learned that this tree was given as a gift to Emil Seidel (former owner of our house) by one of his daughters. We are very happy this tree was not harmed as it provides wonderful shade.
The loss of so many young trees is a big one, both for the shade they were on their way to making and because I now love trees so much, perhaps even more than flowers. I have recently come to the conclusion that watching a tree grow over a 4 year span is more rewarding than watching what a perennial does in that time.
Pictured are but a few of our losses.

Jonathan Apple. Not going to overdramatize this loss. This tree was already weakened by borers and scab. All future apple trees will have good disease resistance.

We classify this one as our biggest loss. This young redbud was full and beautifully shaped. And used daily by birds.

Second biggest loss- the other beautiful redbud. For a slow growing tree, they have not proven to be very strong around here.

Ornamental pear. Not such a big loss now that I am becoming a tree snob. Didn’t really like its columnar shape. Had gorgeous fall color though, and as I stated above any tree around here will be missed.

Another huge loss is the Toka plum we posted photos of this Spring. This was one of the very first trees we planted when we arrived in ’07. The fruit, tasted for the first time last year, was out of this world and the Spring blossoms were intoxicating.

This poor honey locust wins the “fastest grower” prize. Curly willow is the absolute fastest, but won’t be included here since all ours emerged unscathed. Yep, I plan to plant many more curly willow as it has proven to be fast growing and tough.

And finally, the huge old red oak on our hillside sustained major limb damage. And a huge old hickory (not pictured) in this vicinity went down

In 2009 I visited The Oregon Garden in Silverton, OR. What I saw there made me want to rush home and do a large scale planting in that style. The Oregon Garden designers use mainly trees, shrubs and ground covers that look good all season, and very few ephemeral flowers- and they are obviously geniuses. If you ever find yourself in Oregon, Silverton is not a far drive from Portland and in my opinion, the gardens are much more interesting than anything else you’ll find in the area. Plus it is also a resort- a sort of Disneyland for people like me. Pictured below is my Oregon Garden-inspired planting. There are a few blooms here and there, but it is more about the contrast between high and low, leaf shape and color, and texture. It is proving to be much lower maintenance than our other perennial beds.

Anne sometimes likes to call this the crazy bed. The weeds and grass (and potential snakes in the weeds and grass) drive her crazy at times.  The bed is also home to a haphazard collection of shrubs, flowers and a growing number of trees. It seems to be the go-to bed for items that do not fit in other beds. Most of the trees in the crazy bed are very small at this point. But they too are crazy. Anne plants Redbuds like some people plant tulips — they can be thick. It totally makes sense though (in a crazy way) — the Redbuds are small and can hang out with a lone day lily, a dogwood, large swaths of euphorbia, winecups, primrose, wild mulleins, and dozens of others.

click the image for a much larger view.

I like the crazy bed for it’s unpredictability. Always a new species to be found that I didn’t know existed. Anne says there isn’t much going on there right now, but I say there is always something crazy going on. In time I’m sure this bed will have a new name. Maybe it will become the Redbud bed.

I know it rained some in April, and by the looks of our blooms it was a decent amount. Yay, it’s May! Always so much to do in May with cleaning up the garden and building new garden and rearranging old garden, that the blooms sometimes escape capture. They can be missed in our hurry to prepare for the next series of blooms. Anne and I often play the did you see game where someone says, Did you see the species tulip in the bed outside the door? And then someone replies, Yes, it’s awesome! Did you see the little mini-irises next to Buddha? Yes, how about the daffodils down by the bridge? They look great this year.

Images on Flickr

And now as I type this Anne tells me there is a new bulb, a fritillaria, open next to Jane Magnolia in the front bed. I’ll need to check it out in the morning. Sure enough, there it is.

Anne often wins at this game.

It may be cold and dreary around here, but our Leonard Messel magnolia is blooming away as if temps were in the 50s. Despite numerous worries, the blossoms seem to be holding up alright in the rain, strong country winds and low temps. I like magnolias so much that I planted 8 different varieties last year, which means that there are now a total of 11. In 10 years we should have quite a spring show.

Though Magnolia x Loebneri ‘Leonard Messel’ looks a lot like the mature and often wonderfully gnarled magnolias you see blooming in Cedar Rapids, IA in April, it is a different cultivar altogether. These older trees, Magnolia x soulangeana, are rarely seen for sale in nurseries anymore. My guess is this is because they are more slow growing than the ones widely available nowadays like Leonard or Jane (Magnolia liliflora ‘Nigra’ x M. stellata ‘Rosea”) and it takes them 8 to 9 years to bloom! Jane is the first magnolia I bought and she bloomed a year after I planted her when only 2 feet tall. She has been reliably packed with blooms each spring ever since. The furry coats are just beginning to fall off her buds. She’ll probably start blooming by the weekend.

Our magnolias are blooming, but the flowers are fleeting. They are a magical sort of tree/shrub.

I had not heard the term hoarfrost before moving to Iowa. I suppose it existed elsewhere in the world and no one told me. Did the world think I wasn’t to be trusted with such a word? Maybe. And perhaps they had good reason.

It turns out the Internet has information that explains the phenomenon of hoarfrost. I like this one that appears to be from a site titled snowcrystals.com (though the address is really from Caltech). As the title suggests, the site also has fascinating descriptions of all the different crystal forms of snow.

As for the hoar in hoarfrost — according to my friend the internet, it is a reference to its white/gray aged appearance. A bit of a let down in terms of interesting etymology. And yet it makes for really nice winter photos.

Now, as I am typing this post, the frost is gone;  A big fat robin is hopping about the dry grass, and geese can be heard as they fly overhead.

Have begun harvesting curly willow branches and wanted to post a shot of these beauties before I have to cut them up into 8″ pieces to make more. Unfortunately I don’t yet have enough stock to be able to use them as ornamental branches, but that is in the works for next year!  As soon as the ground can be tilled, Alan and I are going to do a large scale planting of our most ornamental varieties.  Pictured from left to right are: Coral bark curly willow, Scarlet curly willow, and Yellow curly willow.