Final Fall Planting

We recently removed what we fondly called the cancer tree, resulting in a large clearing. A void can't last long in my garden, so yesterday I planted the new space. Where there once was one massive plant, spreading into a foreboding thicket, there is now a Full Moon Japanese maple, a prostrate blue cedar, three coralberries, three deciduous hollies, and a mock orange. I will take photos and show the new area in a future post.

It was a lot of work, but I hardly broke a sweat, as I had both my husband and my oldest son helping me. I pointed, and they dug the holes. They transplanted shrubs from their previous locations to new ones. They carried new plants and lifted them from their pots and placed them in the holes. They shoveled dirt and hauled water. I rather liked my supervisory position, which I shared with Autumn the cat. Autumn kept a close eye on things. But supervision is demanding work, and eventually, like all good supervisors, she had to take a nap.We got all the work done in a few hours. It would have taken me much longer by myself.

The weather was warm and sunny, and it felt like a day in May, rather than November. Nights are chilly, though, and we have had a few days with a pre-winter feel to them. Walking through the garden I still see summer flowers, as well as fall foliage and other signs of the season.

Here are some of the flowers blooming this week:Top: Penelope rose. 2nd row: More Penelope blooms; Camellia 'Leslie Ann' was the first to bloom. 3rd row: a stray daylily bloom; Rosa mutabilis. Bottom row: This camellia was here when we moved here in 1985; fall mums.

Zinnias and other flowers are blooming in the wildflower garden, but here one also sees dried seed heads. The red leafed vine is Virginia Creeper, a native that is often mistaken for poison oak but is easily distinguished by its five leaves, rather than poison oak's three:

There may be flowers and butterflies still around, but the colors of fall definitely are dominant in the garden now. We have been raking a lot of leaves!Top photo is Chinese Pistache tree. Below that are shots showing colorful dogwoods in the garden.

Top photo is Beauty Berry. 2nd row: This photo was taken a few weeks ago. Since then raccoons have eaten all the decorative dried corn; These are magnolia seed pods Lou gathered into a bucket. 3rd row: Canadian Hemlock cones; Decorative cabbage.

Top row: Both shots are of changing colors on a forsythia bush. Middle row: a fallen redbud leaf; dogwood foliage. Third row: Variegated artemesia 'Oriental Limelight' is semi-evergreen; Variegated Pittisporum is evergreen. Both are colorful counterparts to all the red and golden shades of fall.

I think this was my final fall planting job. No more work for me till spring! Haha! Who will believe that joke? After all, I am sure Autumn and I will have some more supervising to do!

Chinese Pistache: A Gawky Adolescent Grows Up

"You have got to be kidding."

A decade ago I was looking at a crooked Pistachia chinensis sapling, while the nursery owner praised its attributes. Although it was a gawky adolescent, he promised it would turn into a beautiful rounded shade tree with orange, red, and crimson fall colors. It was drought and heat tolerant and unbothered by disease or insects. It had extremely hard wood, and the deep roots would help it stand firm during storms.

"Nobody wants it," he said. "They don't know what they are missing." Now he was appealing to the rescuer side of me. The plant was doomed to die, withered in the back with the other rejects if I didn't buy it. How could I let that happen?

So I paid a few dollars for the Chinese pistache tree and brought it home. It looked like a tall weed, and my family was skeptical when I planted it in a place of honor down in the lower front lawn, near the entrance to our property.

For a few years I drove past it with an embarrassed look. I pruned it a little, trying to improve its shape. The tree grew over two feet a year and now, finally, is beginning to fulfill the promise made by the nursery owner. A recent photo shows the lustrous green color of my Chinese Pistache tree.Here is a closer look at the leaves. This photo, taken last October, shows the beautiful fall foliage.

My tree is a close relative of the pistachio tree that produces the edible nuts many of us love. The Chinese pistache tree produces fruit which is inedible to humans but beloved by birds. Every other spring, female trees produce inconspicuous greenish flowers, followed by reddish purple berries, most of which are infertile. If fertilized by the pollen of a male tree, the berries will become black. Another good thing is that Chinese pistache pollen is non allergic. My tree has never produced berries, so I am thinking it is male, though maybe it is still too young to produce fruit. Male trees are reported to have better mature form, and many of the Chinese pistache trees available in nurseries are male. So I think that is what I have. Eventually I will know for certain. 

A member of the sumac family, Chinese pistache trees are adaptable to a variety of soils and will grow in hardiness zones 6-9. They can grow up to forty feet tall and wide, and the oval to rounded crown provides medium to filtered shade. It is a very long lived tree. The average Chinese pistache will live over fifty years, but some specimens have lived for hundreds of years.

The Chinese pistache is on a lot of 'Recommended' lists for good reason, but be aware: in some parts of the country, particularly Texas, it is considered invasive. Fortunately, that is not a problem for me, and I am happy to see my gawky adolescent grow up!