This is being posted in 2024. This post was drafted last year, but languished on my computer following an accident.I am dating this according to when the photographs were taken so that the posts land in the right spot in the timeline.
So much for August. August brought rain, causing some plants to sulk and wait for drier days. September is feeling more like August—a lot of dry, sunny days with pleasant temperatures.The Japanese anemones budded a little late, but bloomed the first week of September, as usual. They had—I kid you not—flower stalks that are pushing 4 feet in height. I did not have to bend over to get photographs of these flowers, which just started to bloom.
A Japanese anemone soaking up an early morning sunbeam, with dozens of flower buds behind. Photographed on September 5, 2023.
It all started when I was taking out the compostables Saturday. The ground had finally frozen solid! I dumped the compostables into the bin and took a brief prowl around the yard to check on the rabbits’ depredations. They mostly come out at night, so sometimes I see them sitting under the willow-leaved Amsonia or eating safflower seed that has been flung about by the finches when they careen into the feeder when I am cleaning up after dinner. Yes, rabbits eat safflower seed, on top of everything else.
So far this winter, they have eaten the parsley and nibbled on the garlic. They have mowed the blue-eyed grass and tried the Iris cristata, which they have never bothered before.
The Iris cristata looked enticing enough to the rabbits for some cautious nibbling. This appears to be the only damage. Photographed on January 15, 2023.
September 2021. Pawpaw volunteers are a fact of life. About three weeks ago, I was admiring the stump sprout dubbed Phoenix that is replacing the pawpaw I cut down. Genetically, it is the gone pawpaw, and it has all the resources of the full-grown root system that was left behind. Continue reading “The Secret Pawpaws”
I’ve been eying my bigger pawpaw nervously since last August.
By the end of March, I was sure it was leaning more, and it was leaning too much. It had to go. I’ll figure out what to do with the space later. The best time of year to remove a deciduous plant that you want permanently gone is right when the buds are starting to swell—all that new growth uses up the plant’s reserves—and the buds were starting to swell.
On April 4, I took out my limb saw and cut off all the limbs as well as the main trunk, as high as I could reach on a ladder.
The pawpaw really was leaning more. Photographed on April 4, 2021.
Now I had that trunk glaring balefully through my kitchen window. My bow saw seems to have disappeared. I suspect it got mixed in with some stuff I had hauled out of my basement. I really didn’t want to tackle it with my limb saw. The teeth are way too fine for this job, and the blade is rather short.
On the other hand, I had that dying trunk glaring at me, and a very sharp saw that cuts on both the push and the pull stroke, with a comfortable handle, and the tree was leaning quite a bit. There was no question of where it would land.
It took two weeks to talk myself into using the limb saw. I took the trunk out very carefully, because it turned out that the trillium are multiplying under cover of the Dutchman’s breeches, right in range of the saw tip. I tried not to wreck them. I mostly succeeded—you can see a couple to the right of the stump and just below its near edge.
In the end, I pushed the trunk over and walked and rolled it out of the way.
The end of the leaning pawpaw. Photographed on April 18, 2021.
None of the remaining plants get any shade at this time of year because pawpaws don’t leaf out until May, and the silver maple above everything is just leafing out now. My current plan is to go through this calendar year and see what changes need to be made. Trillium really like shade, so I will watch them closely.
The other pawpaw seems to be fine, so I will leave it alone. They are neat trees. Unfortunately, there will be no pawpaws without a second tree.
I believe that if this were an apple tree, with an apple tree’s superficial and small root system, it would have been completely ripped out of the ground by this storm. Pawpaws have taproots, and I think that’s what is holding the tree up.
Using a level app on my phone, I see that the trunk is leaning roughly 17° off vertical, and the big cluster of pawpaws at the top are pulling the top section to horizontal. Just add adolescent raccoons…. If the tree were to go over, it would probably land on the blue fescue and whack the western edge of the oakleaf hydrangea.
The heavily fruiting pawpaw is leaning badly after a couple of inches of rain at the end of August. Photographed on August 29, 2020.
It has a very heavy crop ripening, mostly just beyond the upper right-hand corner of this photograph. The lower branches form a tent you could hide in. I will be even more careful about where I stand under this tree.
I have to assess it this winter when I can see the trunk and branches. I may be removing both pawpaw trees in late winter. There’s no use keeping one—they are not self-fruitful.
Somehow, it’s August. Not only that, l spent last week, one of two between-semester weeks off, cooking, paying bills, catching up with my accountant, weeding, mowing, rearranging a few plants, and having meetings with mixed success. I did get a few things done towards a drawing that is, so far, a year in the making.
I knew that my garden was fraying, but it really didn’t sink in fully until I realized that I had completely forgotten about an empty spot right by the back door that I would have to deal should have dealt with in the spring—of 2020. Last week I realized that spot had taken care of itself. It’s not subtle in bloom.
Rudbeckia hirta, self sown and in bloom. Photographed on August 12, 2020.
The pawpaws have been dangling, to the ground in some cases, since the end of September. Back at the end of May, I saw small clouds of the flies that pollinate pawpaws for the first time. They apparently did a grand job, because both trees have had plenty of fruit this fall. The pawpaws on the eastern tree are even larger than usual this fall. I ate the first one September 30—they are weighing in close to a pound and a half.
Big pawpaws on the eastern tree. Photographed on October 11, 2019.
The business of spring is reproduction. Pawpaw flowers open at the same time as the trees start to leaf out. The dormant buds look like tiny pieces of fur, and the flowers remain surprisingly furry as they expand.
Pawpaw flowers and leaves appear together. Photographed on May 14, 2019.
