A valid question...

... But one I prefer not to ponder too hard.

Big Bro: so why can't you sniff if you have two fingers up your nose?

The Colorado Bed

My Australian Gardening Calendar labels July as "a month for garden design", and we've been doing just that.

Last December our huge apple tree fell down, converting a shady garden bed into a sunbaked crust over summer and leaving us with a blank canvas (well, potentially blank), thus:
The prime consideration in our design plan has been that the bed sits on the North side of our deck, so we want something that is both aesthetic and, like the apple tree, tall and deciduous (the usual shade-in-summer, sun-in-winter factor). I am happy to be corrected, but our requirement for tallness rules out most edible plants in a functional form- the apple tree's out-of-reach fruit was just a possum magnet. B and I quickly decided that this could be the spot for our long awaited "aspens".


As I have shown, aspen trees (Populus tremuloides) are for us a pure Colorado icon, as much as the columbine. White trunks, green leaves in summer, red or yellow in autumn, and bare white trunks in the snow.

The only problem with P. tremuloides aspens is that they don't grow at elevations below 1500 feet: they have no chance in Melbourne! There are other aspen varieties, but I suspect they're not really suitable for the small spot we have and besides, they're not "our" aspens.

So on to Plan B, silver birches (Betula pendula). There are heaps in our area, and with white trunks they are quite aspen-ish to our mind. When we were looking for a house to buy a few years back, one came up with a clump of silver birches, and we decided our future garden would have silver birches. In fact, they became a joke between B and I: until the apple tree's demise we would have had to clear some other garden bed for our silver birches but couldn't decide where. When I'd consult B about other garden design issues, his reply has been "I don't mind-I just want my silver birches". So it's quite exciting to finally have them in the works!

The apple tree's demise has sparked quite a domino effect in the rest of the garden. In the first place the soil in the bed is horrid, so we'll be digging in loads of manure and compost. I've already transplanted the long-suffering rhubarb to its third home, and to make room for the birches we have moved the Mexican orange blossom and the port wine magnolia to one side of the bed and the daisy to the lawn border. The two camelias were sent to our South side yard, which will now be an official acid-lovers bed (despite its own problems).

The plan is then to plant silver birches across the bed, so that their trunks will be a feature to look at. The fence will be covered in a creeper (probably Jasmine as we love the scent), and if I can ever get my cuttings to take root, we'll have a Rosemary hedge, which will tie in with the bed on the south side of the deck. I'm also in the process of ordering blue columbine seeds fron an American company, so the plan is to have wildflowers around our "aspens".

This is one of my biggest garden design job ever, so I'm dying to see the finished product!!

A Photo Tour of Colorado Aspens

Aspens (Populus tremuloides, the quaking aspen) were our favourite Colorado tree, and tied up with so many Colorado memories, a few of which I wanted to share. We'd love to have aspens in our garden, but they don't grow at elevations below 1500 feet. They have no chance in Melbourne! So our only way to enjoy them is from our photos.

Summer Aspens

Our Colorado summer involved lots of weekends in the mountains. As the Melbourne winter greys up, I keep thinking of what's happening up in the Rockies- are the snowbound trails thawing? Are the columbines blooming? Is Trail Ridge Road open?

Aspens are tall and thin, with white trunks, and brilliant green leaves. I could never get a photo that captured the feel of the leaves quivering (quaking, hence the name)- it's like a life force is in the leaves, beyond the normal vegetative state.

We visited the town of Aspen on the 4th of July- Independence Day- having driven over Independence Pass (and a couple of days earlier hiked the 4th of July trail), and- not ones to avoid significance- on the way in we stopped to admire the Aspen aspens.

In August we headed to Telluride, in the South West- I've mentioned it before in the context of columbines. On the way there we stopped at Elk Mountain Resort, which is a gorgeous place to stay, set in the midst of an aspen forest... but also (for us) a very bizarre place as we discovered it also houses the Valhalla Shooting Club, which runs tactical shooting courses like simulated terrorist situations. We just enjoyed the forest.

Telluride itself is just amazing in summer (I am holding myself back from just posting a zillion photos of it!)- one of my favourite Colorado destinations. It's a town in a mountain gorge, and on one side is an aspen forest.

Fall Aspens

Aspens come into their own in fall (yes, autumn!) when they turn a shade of yellow to red. Given that aspens are supposed to generally live in clonal (genetically identical) colonies propagated by root shoots I don't understand why red and yellow aspens can often be found close together- maybe a microenvironmental effect? While East Coast Americans scoff at the Colorado fall colours, we thought the aspens of Rocky Mountain National Park were worth the day trip!

This is Long's Peak (a notoriously difficult "16-er" mountain) framed by aspens in RMNP.

The first conference I went to was in Vail, and this was a view of one of the hills, showing the aspen forests which are overtaken by conifers at the more exposed points. The most memorable part of the conference (with apologies to the organisers) was that one evening there was a fire alarm during dinner, and who should be one of the responding fire fighters but thehusband of TV's original Bachelorette!Our final Colorado Fall experience was a hike near Steamboat Springs. We started in aspen forests...

...and ended up at this mountain lake, surrounded by snow by not yet frozen. It was completely magical. And a perfect fall finale.

Winter Aspens

Winter in Colorado was, for us, all about skiing. In our second winter we were good enough to tree ski. This is B amongst the aspens in Steamboat Springs.

And to finish up where I began:

Aspens in Aspen

Secret sand

We have a shady bed in which the previous house owners had planted camelias, which, while not especially happy, were doing well enough that I hadn't paid much notice. However, while doing some digging there this week, I discovered that beauty is only topsoil-deep.

The bed is almost pure sand in places!! Definitely not the local clay- my best guess is that the camelia bed was originally going to be part of the surrounding paving, and for some reason (aesthetic or otherwise) a garden bed was placed there instead. My poor plants!! Plenty of intensive care is now on the agenda- I've added a top dressing of rotting leaves some worm compost as a start. It will be interesting to see the evolution of the soil.

First sign of spring

Today I spotted the first blossom of the year. No idea what the plant is- it was in someone else's front garden. But given it's only 10 days since the solstice, it's an early starter!

Time to think about spring planting!!

Three scenes to make me smile :)

1. Big Bro husking the corn for our dinner on Saturday.

2. Little Bro reading by himself (even better, it was a book that I am thoroughly sick of reading to him!)

3. Big Bro reading to Little Bro (I Went Walking by Sue Williams, which is a lovely book.)

Callistemon giveaway: and the winner is...

Time to draw the winner from the comments for June- thanks everyone who commented, whether it was to win or not! Nice to meet a few new readers :)

So... there were 22 comments in June, so random.org will select one from that... and if it's my comment I'll count back to the last external comment.

And the winner is.......
Comment #9, which was from ANB about her winning sourdough loaf. Callistemon seeds heading in your direction.... enjoy!

Happy new financial year!