Posts Tagged ‘natural ground cover’
Spring Progress
Or lack thereof… We are sorely lacking in the warmth and sunshine department but spring growth is beginning to emerge, not all of it desirable. We are already seeing a growing collection of sediment beginning to fill in where we dug out dirt last year to improve drainage in front of Cyndie’s perennial garden.
Two steps forward, one step back. -_-
The water pressure in the saturated ground pushes up little geysers in random places and that flowing water is carrying topsoil from the farm field just uphill from us. Just lovely.
The forest floor is about to burst forth with trout lilies along our paths.
These are the earliest of the wild ground cover that carpets certain areas of our woods. Soon to be followed by bloodroot.
Delilah and I walked through the back pasture to get a closer look at the new grass sprouting. Cyndie wants me to wait for the blades to get more than six inches tall before beginning to slowly give the horses access to grazing green grass.
The only thing we are missing is heat and sun. I know it’s out there. We just need to be patient. There is a reason dull things get compared to watching grass grow but seeing the steady progress every day in the spring is joy to behold. A dull joy sometimes, but still… joyous. 🙂
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New Trillium
This time of year the ground in our forests comes alive in response to the sunlight available before the leaves open fully to block much of it out. We have tried transplanting Trillium from the lake place in Hayward with hopes of establishing a thicket of self-expanding sprouts in the groves of trees closer to the house.
In the eight years we have dabbled with the project, the results have been a little anemic. Some seasons there have been encouraging numbers of flowers blossoming on the plants we relocated, but other years there haven’t been very many. During the first few years after transplanting, I was satisfied just to see the leaves show up in proof the plants were still alive.
Now I am more interested in finding some natural expansion of plants to offer some promise of achieving our goals. Just yesterday, Cyndie made an exciting find. Can you see it?
The interesting fact about that single flowering plant is that it showed up somewhere that we didn’t plant a batch.
Today we plan to audit the areas where we planted sets of three individual plants in little triangles to see how those are coming along. If they are flowering, it is easy to spot them. If not, the leaves can be easily overlooked among the variety of other ground cover thriving under all the sunshine temporarily available.
In a surprisingly short span of time, the forest floor will be predominantly shaded under the canopy of tree leaves that will be fluttering overhead.
Speaking of shade from trees, Cyndie also recently captured this image of a great shadow pattern of leafless branches from this young maple tree by the barn.
That view will be morphing very soon to a much less defined depiction of the branches.
The springing of spring is well underway. It makes the brief appearance of trillium blossoms all the more precious. Once the heat of summer arrives, the trillium tends to disappear from sight. At that point, hopefully, the colonies of rhizomes will be busy at work expanding under the leaf cover of the forest floor.
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Relative Something 