A jaunt to Maryland's Eastern Shore

From the DC area it's only a couple of hours to the little town of St. Michaels, on Maryland's Eastern Shore. John and I headed over on a weekday, to avoid traffic on the Bay Bridge. We needed a mini vacation, and I thought a short trip to someplace on the water would be nice. St. Michaels is a pretty little town, and quiet on a Thursday. We enjoyed wandering around the town, and spent a peaceful half hour in sunny, nearly empty restaurant on nearby Tilghman Island, overlooking a little fishing harbor. Here I learned from John what a skipjack is - a fishing boat with one far forward mast, unique to the Chesapeake Bay.

I also wanted to visit Environmental Concern, a non-profit native plant nursery specializing in wetland plants of the Chesapeake region. They are housed in St. Michaels, and our trip was planned around their twice-yearly native plant sale and open house. Turned out we were a day too early for the open house, but we were kindly allowed to wander around the campus, after promising we wouldn't actually go in the greenhouses. We enjoyed hanging out at the freshwater and saltwater marshes.

We kept an eye out especially for turtles, one of my favorite animals. We didn't spot any in the freshwater marsh, but found quite an impressive specimen on the grass nearby!

Our visit the next day to Adkins Arboretum was  an unexpected bonus - I knew about this native plant arboretum, but hadn't realized it was only a half hour or so from St. Michaels. What a delight! The marshes near the nature center were teeming with sounds and sights - bullfrogs, snapping turtles, dragonflies, redwing blackbirds.

The meadow  path was thick with common milkweed, and we saw many zebra swallowtails feeding on their nectar. There are several miles of trails, through meadows and woodlands, and we're looking forward to returning for more exploration.

More bees

It did indeed prove too late for the bee tubes I set out. I brought them inside so they'll be fresh for next year. I'll plan to set them out early next spring - March, I guess.

In  the meantime I've turned into a bee watcher. I don't see many butterflies in my yard, but I have lots of bees!  When my Penstemon digitalis started blooming I began to notice that there were always bumblebees hovering over the white tube-like flowers. I began watching more closely, and saw bees disappearing into the flowers, emerging a few seconds later to fly on to the next flower. It became a sight that delighted me: the glove-like fit between the flower and the bee, the idea that each is benefiting from the bee's visit.

Of course, I wanted to get the perfect picture, of a bee just about to enter a flower. This proved to be about as challenging as my attempt last summer to get a really good hummingbird picture. After many tries I've gotten a few that I like, but the quest continues.

Helping out the bees

I've been hearing a lot about solitary bees lately. Unlike honeybees, they're natives, they don't make honey, and seldom, if ever, sting. The females make nests in twigs, reeds, holes in wood, or tunnels in the ground. They'll lay an egg, put some food in with it, seal it off in its own compartment, lay another egg, and so on. The new bees emerge the following spring.

I'm for doing everything we can to help pollinators. So when I read about setting out tubes for the bees to use as nests, I decided to try it. (Paula Shrewsbury's description and photos in the Maryland Cooperative Extension Weekly Integrated Pest Management report really got me going; see p. 6.)  Here's what John and I came up with.

I ordered the tubes online (basically they're just straws made of heavy paper.) The instructions are to place the tubes off the ground and protect them from rain. John made a nice sheltered holder for the tubes out of a plastic container, and nailed it to the side of our shed. I tied up two sets of straws with cord, and we snugged them tightly into the container.

There are plenty of places that sell the bee tubes, as well as more substantial nesting materials such as wood "houses" with holes drilled in them. Some people just drill holes of different sizes in a piece of firewood. Overall, the tubes seemed quick and simple. (Well, simple now that John has the structure in place!)

The only thing is, I think we're a little late for this season; it sounds like the egg-laying is usually in March and April. But we just put out our setup out a couple of days ago, so we'll see. Meanwhile, I've got a lot to learn about bees. A source that looks interesting: the Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation.

A sneak attack: lesser celandine

I was happy last year to see the early blooming, cheerful marsh marigold, Caltha palustris, coming up in my garden. I remembered it with pleasure from my years living and hiking in Michigan, where it was one of the earliest wildflowers to appear in the woods, along with skunk cabbage. My new plant was next to a stepping stone, which must have kept the ground moist enough for the marigold.

Except it wasn't marsh marigold, it turns out, but a look-alike invasive known as lesser celandine, Ranunculus ficaria. I got the bad news via a short article in the Washington Post. I then googled lesser celandine, and came upon a great article that helped confirm what I now suspected: http://www.earthcaretaker.com/alienplants/mondaygarden/159/SS159lessercelandine.html  

In addition to photos, the article lists some ways to distinguish the two plants. I dug up a bit of my plant, and sure enough, it had underground tubers, characteristic of lesser celandine.

The name celandine also applies to another cheerful yellow flowered plant, celandine poppy, Stylophorum diphyllum. Some of my master gardener friends suggest referring to it by its other common name, wood poppy, to avoid confusing it with the invader. Celandine poppy, though native, is considered by some to be somewhat invasive. It has been well-behaved for me, and I have it mixed in with the lovely native Virginia bluebells, Mertensia virginica.

Native groundcovers for the Mid-Atlantic

I've been trying various groundcovers, mostly those native to the mid-Atlantic region, for different parts of my yard. One of the tough spots is on a slope under a large silver maple. It gets some eastern sun in the morning, but is mostly dry shade. The Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica) I planted a couple of years ago is doing well and starting to spread. It is a pretty little grass-like plant that grows about six inches tall.

Last year I added Sedum ternatum, also native around here, and it has come through the winter well.

At the native plant sale at the National Arboretum, I picked up some Pachysandra procumbens after one of the vendors told me her sister had good success growing it under a large tree. I believe it is native a little further south than where I live in Maryland, but it will sure beat the non-native pachysandra, which I have plenty of in other parts of the yard. It's still dormant right now, so I'll have to see how it does.

Lahr Symposium on native plants

The annual Lahr Symposium on native plants was held this past Saturday at the National Arboretum in Washington DC. I've gone for the last couple of years, and for more years than that to the native plant sale that accompanies it. It's a great event, and it's held at a great time of year - when spring is just getting underway. I always look forward to seeing the massive cherries in bloom at the Arboretum. Yes, I know they're not native, but aren't they magnificent?

This year two of the speakers, Darell Morrison and Bill Cullina, spoke about aspects of designing with native plants. Morrison, a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, talked about some of the large-scale projects he has designed using natives. Cullina talked about different botanical features of plants such as color, form, leaf variegation etc. can be used to advantage in the garden.

The third speaker, Kim Winter, talked about attracting wildlife to the garden. It was particularly interesting to me that she mentioned solitary bees. I had just recently read a short article about using small cardboard tubes as nesting cavities for these bees, and so it was already on my mind. She gave a link to a website I'll be exploring: pollinator.org.

I also got to go on a guided wildflower walk at the Arboretum's newly renovated Fern Hill wildflower garden. It was a chilly but sunny day, and many things were just starting to poke out of the ground, while a few things were already blooming, including Dutchman's breeches, trillium (the red one, I think commonly known as wake-robin), and one of my favorite shrubs, spicebush (Lindera benzoin) which has little yellow flowers and emits a spicy smell when the bark is scratched. Wish I had a place in the yard for one of these guys!

Tree Repair

We followed advice from the arborist and bolted the fig tree's torn limb back onto the main trunk. It required my handy husband drilling a hole through the limb and the trunk, and then fastening the bolts on while I held the limb up as tight as I could against the trunk. It looks pretty good! My only question is, as the trunk grows, do you need to remove the bolt, or do you just let the trunk grow around it? Perhaps it's just like a human having a piece of metal holding a knee or shoulder together.