• The Alumni House Garden at Coe;
• A half-acre vegetable garden on a small farm adjacent to the Wickiup Hill Outdoor Learning Center near Toddville (a garden typically identified as the Wickiup garden);
• The gardens and landscape at Buffalo United Methodist Church, a small church not far from Mount Mercy College;
• The gardens at my home on Elmhurst Drive in Cedar Rapids.
This Kalendar constitutes about 50% of my journal entries in the first quarter of 2022. A map of the Alumni House Garden map is posted on the website’s “map” page; here are links to simple maps of the Wickiup vegetable garden and the back yard garden on Elmhurst Drive. As for the italicized quotations inserted between journal entries, they come from Tony Lord’s Best Borders (Penguin, 1994), an excellent garden book I read in the winter of 2022. Because of the length of this document, the complete Winter 2023 Kalendar is posted as a pdf. ~Bob
Why does a picture of plants grouped together have so much more beauty than the individuals plants alone? Is it the interplay of colors or shapes, the bold contrast of foliage textures, or the way the plants are lit by the sun? The answers to such questions are the key to inspired gardening. ~Tony Lord
2 January 2022. The first entry of the new year and everything feels out of sync. I’m writing this entry in the morning in my Garden Studio, not late at night in the sun room. Even more disconcerting, I’m writing with a gel ballpoint, not my preferred Lamy fountain pen. I just finished shoveling a path from the house to the Garden Studio through 6"+ snow. My fingers are too cold to type–in fact, my right hand is struggling to hold on to this pen. Yesterday it snowed all day, accompanied by a vigorous wind, so the snow is quite deep in some locations. Yesterday’s temp hovered around 10F, but last night it dropped well below zero, and my Garden Studio thermometer informs me it’s now -2F, but there’s enough breeze out of the west to keep Leon’s whiligig spinning and the cowbell in the stumpery clanging. Fortunately the electricity is working and the Studio was a pleasant 63F when I arrived. The temp is now 65F, and my fingers are becoming more functional. It’s time to turn on the computer.
5 January. This week I’ve started a new project, developing a comprehensive system for organizing the garden photos. I’ll continue to organize them by month, but I’ve now started a second arrangement grouping them by subject. One goal is to create a comprehensive photographic representation of every flower, shrub, and tree species in the Alum Garden and put that information on the website. Perhaps it will be an alphabetical catalog of plants with a brief slideshow for each species, showing photos at different times of the year and in different years. I’m also sorting photos for veggies & herbs, sculpture and furniture, greenhouse and tools, shrubs and trees, grasses, weeds, insects, animals, and views of specific beds. This photo catalog could provide website visitors a more comprehensive view of the garden than what’s currently available. [I worked on this project in the month of January, going through about half of my garden photo collection. Once spring gardening weather arrived in late February, I set the project aside. I hope to make sufficient progress in the winter of 2023 so a substantial portion of this material can be posted to the website.]
11 January. Warmer today, temp into the upper 30s, sunshine, but I did no outdoor garden work. In the morning I sorted and edited photos from November and December of 2019, identifying photos that I can use for the comprehensive garden survey. It’s a slow process, looking at hundreds of photos, many virtual duplicates, such as my many, repetitious photos of tall stonecrop seedheads. Fortunately, there are photos that capture a new detail or convey a fresh perspective. I was particularly pleased with the December 2019 photos of seedheads, dried leaves, and flowers, including a wonderful series of closeups of foliage on a Lamb’s Ear.
Today I spent over six hours in the garden studio. I drafted a new Monday Morning Garden Report (MMGR) for the end of December and edited the Fall and Summer Kalendars. The Fall entry should be ready for posting. Even if it’s not done, it’s time to call it “done.” The Summer Kalendar will need more work, but the basic text is done. It’s now time to focus on the spring/summer seed orders.
14 January. Snow began this morning after sunrise and it’s still coming, though tapering off. It’s been windy so it’s hard to estimate the total snowfall but probably 6-7". Temp in the 20s but it will drop tonight, approaching zero. Another polar express. This morning my first task was going to the church and posting four new messages on the church’s electronic sign, the first time I’ve done it without A’s assistance. Somehow it went smoothly, no hiccups. I was thrilled. I then walked around the church property, trying to estimate the number and location of trees we should plant this spring. I came up with the following possibilities:
• Two large trees along 30th street between the burgundy maple and the property line.
• One large tree southwest of the shed.
• One large tree between the shed and the church, replacing the lone, emasculated tree that survived the derecho.
• Two large trees along the north fence.
• 4-5 small trees (probably evergreens) in the corner of the property behind the wind chimes.
• A line of 4-5 small trees along the north property line (perhaps cherry or serviceberry) and a comparable line on the south side along the fence of the old parsonage.
Graham Thomas’s color theory of “the omission rather than the inclusion”;
he explains, “One border has got no pinks, mauves, or purples, the other has got
no oranges, reds or yellows, and that, I think, is the way to do gardens.”
PDF of Garden Kalendar: Winter 2023