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Showing posts with label bog garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bog garden. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Blackberries, Irises, Horsetails and Teasels in Walter's Gorge

 The lawn mower is broken. The grass alongside the road is getting long. The blackberry is getting out of control.

I spent a couple of hours cutting back the blackberry that was reaching into Walter's Gorge threatening to cover the beautiful flowers growing there. Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) is classed as an invasive species here in BC and it does invade at our place.

Japanese Water Iris (Iris ensata)
Two years ago after Ron and I had cleared the blackberry jungle out of the seasonal stream that flows into the pond, it sat bare until my sister and brother-in-law came to stay. Sister Donnel, who knows a lot about plants (as does my other sister Megan Rae) looked at the site and pronounced "Japanese water irises and ferns." Brother-in-law Walter did the back breaking work digging up and transferring large ferns to the sides of the stream.

We, plus our mother (a phenomenal gardener) went shopping/hunting for the exotic sounding plant and found 2 varieties.
This is the second year of flowers and they get larger each year. They are obviously very happy with the conditions - soil continually moist to flooded depending on the season, acidic soil/water - runoff from the forest up the hill, shade.
I'll have to ask my sister when I should divide the plants up to keep the flowers large.

Horsetail (Equisetum arvense) - behind the iris - has also flourished. The seeds of this ancient plant were waiting deep in the soil for the right conditions. 
It is a most unusual plant as well as being one of the oldest on the planet. During the Carboniferous dinosaur age, horsetail grew a hundred feet tall. The Romans called it "hair of the earth." 
The hollow stems with 'bad-hair-day' fronds are 30 plus percent silica and a valuable source of the mineral for other plants. Steeping the plant in a barrel of water for a few days produces a rich mineral tea for other plants. 
Horsetail is said to be the best product for cleaning pewter and for polishing wood and glass without scratching. That is the silica at work. I have yet to try it. It all goes in compost and teas and hasn't made it inside the house.

With blackberry on the right, irises and horsetail in the middle, the teasel has grown up on the left side of the bank.

Teasel (Dipsacus fullonum syn. D sylvestris)
This magnificent plant grows to 10 feet tall. It is fascinating to look at its parts in detail.

The leaves cup the rainwater and hold interesting collections of things. I have been trying to catch with my camera a frog bathing in the water. This teasel bath has been known since ancient times as the bath of Venus and said to be good for warts among many other things. 
The most well known and commercially valuable part of the plant is the dead flower head. I'll tell you all about that once I have some pictures of the flower to show you.
With all of these interesting plants to observe it is no wonder I get lost for a few hours while out in the garden.




Monday, May 12, 2014

Down to the Bog

I am trying some more dyeing in the environment. 
First I pre-mordanted a wool blanket in alum and cream of tarter but I'm not sure I had to do that.
Then I headed outside, negotiated the right distance to walk around this family without being attacked, and went on into the forest...

...down to the bog.
 I dropped the blanket into the water...

...and stomped on it.

The idea is to leave it for up to a year with occasional liftings to oxidise what is going on.
It is an old Scandinavian technique for getting shades of black on wool.


Monday, April 30, 2012

Outside


During breaks from stitching I wander outside.
Hyacinths (spelling?) break through coffee filter mulch in the cut flower bed. 

This beauty appeared in the forest. 

According to Pojar and MacKinnon, the plant bible on the west coast, it is a red flowering currant, a "harbinger of spring and hummingbirds."

In the bog area that looked like this 6 months ago after my sister cleared out a tangled mass of  20 foot long blackberry canes....

...it now looks like this.

The big plants are skunk cabbage or swamp lantern, traditionally 'famine food' if the salmon were late arriving in the spring - according to Pojar and MacKinnon.
I haven't walked around this area much yet because I don't want to disturb the myriad of other plants just breaking the soil surface.
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