Plants, puppies and a little bear

Hart, Your photos are great! Jello and friends look very satisfied with one another and don't seem to mind the addition of the cute little bears at all!

The Redbuds are so lovely, something I miss not having here. I haven't seen may apples growing in a number of years. Lucky you!

Stormyla, I have mayapples here if you would like some we can dig them when you come for the swap. I may try and dig some before and pot them. With luck they will come up for you next spring. I should try and get a few small redbuds for the swap, too. Have to talk to my friend Jane she has the Red Buds.

I can save you some redbud seeds too if you like, Stormy. They're easier to grow from seeds than transplants because they have such a long taproot.

Those redbuds are in my yard but the ones growing alongside the roads here are so pretty - like a mist of purple. My mom has two really nice ones in her yard she bought at Meadows Farm. I've never seen such blooms on a redbud - they actually bloom in little clumps along the limbs too.

Here's a closer shot of the may apples for you.

Redbuds--have this reputation for being hard to move but I have had good luck several times before I knew it was hard to do LOL. I can show you four that I moved myself when they were between oh say 2-4 feet tall. And so has my friend who threw one in the back of her pickup and drove it from WV to MD. Just my observation.

The seeds--sprout once in awhile but I believe you should nick them.

Redbuds can be prone to canker which will make a weird dry sore on the bark, a knot on the limb and then the limb will eventually die. I have one being pretty hard hit, in full sun. Two are OK also in full sun but at a school where there are no other existing redbuds. I have one in shade which doesn't canker quite as much. My neighbor has an old tree with lots of canker.

We had the opposite experience. I don't know how many I dug for my mom at my old house, getting as deep as it was possible to dig and descending in sizes trying for success. Every one of them died. The potted ones she got at MF are thriving, though, huge trees now.

The soil probably makes a difference. Rocky soil is almost impossible to dig deep enough because if you cut that taproot, the tree is going to die.

Yes, definitely nick the seeds and wintersow or plant them where you want trees to come up.

Knock on wood I haven't seen any canker on my redbuds. One has probably been there for 15 years or more, the other I planted about 12 years ago. The first one was amazing. The lady I bought the house from planted it as one of those twigs you get from the Arbor people. She had planted it at least 3 years before I moved in and it was still just a twig. Years went by and then it finally rooted down to the water table and grew about 6 feet in one year about five or six years ago.

I wish I knew what variety mom has. They are just astonishing, much bigger than the ones I have and probably 10 times the blooms.

I'll admit , I got mine from my moms clay soil, not rocky like you have, and was putting them in sandy loam (oh it's so horrible here in Anne Arundel LOL) So while they had few roots, I guess they did have their complete taproot.
Even my eleven yr old noticed the redbud this year ,Actually, he noticed it swarming with bees today, as was my burford holly. A nd he's not much of a plant nut. None of my kids are. Where did I go wrong?

You probably didn't do anything wrong, give them time. My daughter never showed any interest at all in my gardening and now she blogs on her gardening.

Bad news, Bec. I just went to the plant files listing for the lilac and it doesn't sucker. It isn't hard to find, though. I got mine at Merrifield in Fairfax years ago. I see that Blooming Bulb has it listed too as something that will be available this spring.

I would suggest starting with a bigger plant if you can - it's a fairly slow grower.

I need a Lilac for my Mom. I'll be getting something good size. I'll admit as I get older I'm more willing to put out the $$ for some larger plants. Not that I don't have plenty of seedlings around here.

Gardeners think they will live forever. Why else would a 90 year old gardener buy 2 Oak seedlings and a hammock. LOL

hart, That lilac is absolutely beautiful - do you think it would grow OK up here? My DIL is dying for a lilac and I think they've got enough sun in their front yard for one. Charles Jolie would be spectacular. They live in Silver Spring, MD (same zone as me, I think).

Did you get yours locally or through mail order?

Holly, LOL about the 90 year old gardener!!!! We are an optimistic bunch, aren't we? ;-)

Sure it would, Diva. Lilacs do fine anywhere except where you don't get any winter cold like zone 9 I think. I know they did really well in my old garden, which was zone 7. BTW, mine at my old house got morning sun and afternoon deep shade and were growing and blooming like gangbusters, so you don't have to have full sun for them to do well, just a fair amount of sun.

I got mine at Merrifield. There are some other dark purple ones so if they don't have this one, ask if they have any other dark purple ones. They usually have a pretty good selection.

That is a very optimistic gardener, Holly. LOL

My grandfather, who was 95 when he died and a retired tobacco farmer, had a tobacco plant growing in a pot in his apartment when he died. No oak trees though.

hart,

Thanks for the info. Maybe the ones I've seen around here are a more northern variety - they seem to struggle, and get powdery mildew, etc., etc. We lived in Newport, RI for a year during DH's Navy career, and I was absolutely amazed at all the lilacs up there - like dogwoods down here, they seemed to be everywhere. It was stunning when they were all in bloom.

Merrifield is definitely easy for us - and I'm sure they do have a good selection, so I'll be checking them out. Thanks again!

If you're worried about powdery mildew, just spray them periodically with baking soda water.

Any plant that's prone to it will have a problem here because of the humidity we have in the summers. The monster old, old, old lilac here gets it but it doesn't seem to be slowing it down any.

They do like it fairly dry. With all the clay soil around northern Virginia, it's possible the ones you're seeing that are struggling are in soil that's too wet.

If the spot where you want to put it isn't well drained, you can always build up the soil above the ground level and plant it in that higher soil. It will dry out faster when it's dry, though.

Joyce lost a dogwood in her front yard and thought it was that disease that's been attacking the dogwoods. I dug a little where it had been planted and the soil was soaking wet - I don't mean damp or moist but more like standing water. It was that sticky, gummy clay that holds water like a sponge and she'd been watering it every day for months. I'm sure its roots rotted.

I dug a bunch of amendments into that spot and raised it a little, we replanted a Kousa dogwood, told her to lay off the watering unless she felt down into the soil and it was dry. It's done extremely well.

Merrifield is great. Expensive but they do have really nice plants.

Oh, so you get suckers from that lilac?? I hate to be a beggar but I'd love to get the 2nd sucker, if you can spare it. I know lilacs need a good pruning every few years, and wonder if the cuttings can be rooted easily? If so, that would be a good way to expand. I am going to try that with my dwarf pink one as it needs pruning after blooming every year. I'm going to load a picture of the ones I have when I get the camera set up.

I see about Jello--I thought she looked like an American bulldog, or a Boxer. The only pit bull I 've actually seen was Spud McKenzie (old Budweiser commericial), and he had slanted almond-shaped eyes and a bullet-shaped head. I thought most of them were white, or white with black and/or tan markings. Of course, now they breed dogs to have any color/markings they want.

Sorry, it doesn't sucker. I looked it up in plant files after I wrote the post to Bec about saving her a sucker. I wish it did so I could share it with everyone.

I will be pruning it a bit after it blooms this year if you want me to save you some cuttings. I'll see what it says in my propagation book.

Pit bulls are actually a mixture of a bunch of dogs including bulldogs and boxers. Jello has a lot more of a boxer snout than Java did.

The come in white, tan, mixtures of white with tan or black, the dark brindle like Java was, blue brindle like Jello or blue, which is solid gray usually with some white spots on the chest and so forth. The blues are newer and more rare.

Spuds was a bull terrier, which is a different breed. Bull terriers really have bullet shaped heads. They just crack me up to look at them - they look like cartoon dogs. That's the dog Patton had in the movie Patton.

Here are some blue pit bulls
http://loyaltybluepitbulls.com/

and bull terriers http://www.inkypaw.com/bull-terrier.jpg

Holly & Hart, Thanks for the Redbud offer. I have to figure out what is wrong here. So far I've killed two Forest Pansies here, one in sun & one in shade. I think maybe it's too much with the wind and the shady spot has too many competing Maple roots.

This is windy!

and an American Bulldog is the dog you'd remember from Homeward Bound named 'Chance' http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&um=1&sa=1&q=American+Bulldog&btnG=Search+Images&aq=f&oq= This breed, to me, looks like a mix of Mastiff and Bullmastiff - just slightly smaller

Oh, thanks for the pit bull clarification. I guess I had them confused with bull terriers, then. The American bulldogs are beautiful, look so alert and on the ready. Those are great pictures, Chantell, and "Chance" is a great name for such a dog. I agreed with Claypa that Jello looks like she could talk. Her eyes do!!

Hart, if you could try to root a cutting from that heirloom lilac after your spring pruning, I would greatly appreciate it. I sort of collect them!! I'd trade for one of mine, too. I'll get their botanical names.

I've never rooted lilac cuttings but I'll see if I can get some to root. If you'd like a double white, that plant suckers. I'm sure we'll be having a fall or spring swap where I can get them to you.

Stormy, I just saw your note. Forest Pansy is much, much pickier than the standard redbuds.

There are a lot of "bully" breeds, all of them related in some way to the old bulldog, which had a longer snout and legs and looked more like an American bulldog or a pit bull than the modern English bulldog.

Jello does talk, all the time. I have said she's the Siamese cat of the dog world.

You're welcome Fox!!

Speakin' of pups - guess who's one year's old today according to his "mommy"??????

Oh, gosh, that's right. Happy birthday, Makwah!! I want photos with his birthday hat! LOL

It's sad to think that a year ago Java was here, though. I was watching a show on animal planet the other night and they had a dark brindle pit bull that looked so much like her, I wanted to reach through the tv and grab it and hug it.

Oh Diane - I'm sorry....I wasn't thinking....hugs, my friend.

Don't apologize! Nothing to be sorry for. I think about her all the time. And I'm very glad her offspring are out there in the world spreading the Java joy.