Yucca, yucca, yucca

    

This is for Merle, whose eighteen month old yucca has yet to bloom.  Of course I noodled my way across the internet, and have pretty much confirmed yucca behavior we observed here at home.

Our yucca is close to twenty five years old.  Jan planted one here in the corner after the sidewalk was laid, twenty five years ago. 

It grew, but never bloomed.  Then another yucca sprang up ten feet away, and then one behind it.  They bloomed.  So did the original yucca.

Our conclusions:

Yucca roots travel and send up new plants until they find their happy place, and bloom.

Yucca are incredible resilient.  Tom is a burn and destroy kind of guy; he will weed whack any area of green taller than his ankles.  This front garden has been relentlessly weed whacked, and only one yucca has succumbed.

All these plants have been weed whacked each fall, so they have a misshapen appearance. The leaves should be at least twice as tall and pointed, not sliced off near the ground. Another testament to their hardiness.

   

(Interestingly, when the kids and I screened all that dirt in this garden, and sorted out the plants we wanted to keep, Hamilton found one lavender plant with a stalk more than an inch thick, with a few puny leaves struggling from the sides.  I planted a lavender bed there twenty five years ago, and it bloomed away for the couple of years prior to weeding by whacking.  The survivor is happily nestled with the new lavender.)

From the net:

All yucca flowers are white and pollinated by moths at night.

A group of many flowers is called an inflorescence.

The flowers appear from midsummer to mid-fall.

The plants grow very slowly to maturity, then bloom. (No additional information of the age of maturity.) 

When a yucca does bloom, it can be expected to bloom the same time each subsequent year.

Yucca can be transplanted in the fall; just slice through the root and move the plant to another full sun location.

The front flower bed faces another face lift in the fall; the day lily bed will be ruthlessly thinned, and the yucca will be moved back from the sidewalk’s edge.  I counted ten additional yucca plants crowded around the original, and another ten around the happy bloomer, the fellow that escaped and now has the tallest bloom every year. Let’s see if I can give them happy new homes in the garden.

Report from the yard

The yucca is about to bloom

The clematis is so happy to have a firm foundation.

I expect the trellis to be covered next year.

The last poppy.

A lily with no name.

Some pinks are left.

From Nina.  It blooms purple.  Lovely.

The lavender.

Another purple flower from Nina.

Hamilton used a board to pound the tunnels down.

They have not reappeared.

It's called Mole Scat Organic Repellent.

The rock remains

I had opportunity to go by my first school this week, Forest Hill elementary, so I took my camera.  I wanted to see if the rock was still there.

This is the school I went to.  Built in 1926, with art deco embellishments on the building that recognized the Indian trail portaging between the Cuyahoga and Tuscaroras Rivers. 

The City of Akron was able to pass a massive bond issue for the purpose of rebuilding many old Akron schools, Forest Hill among them.  In my childhood my school was on the front half of a city block, the play area on the back half.

The new school was built on the back half of the property, where the rock resided.   This is the new school.   I understand some of the art deco is featured inside the building.

The rock remains.  In my day it was closer to the intersection at the corner of the streets; we could squeeze through the fence at the corner to have a go at the rock during the summer time, too.  We spent hours with a small stone and a tin can, chipping gold off the rock.

The school still faces the same direction; the rock remains behind the school.  Now the half a city block playground in front is entirely surrounded by high mesh fencing, with one gate into the parking lot and the main access through the school proper. 

We walked around the school on the city sidewalks to reach the stone.  Hamilton and Emily were on my original errand, so they were treated to grandma’s elementary school before they reached home.  As I walked along I realized the concrete pad bordering the sidewalk was the pad for the playground fence, once.  There were post holes, filled in with dirt, I guess, all along the pad.

There were names traced in formerly fresh concrete in several of the pads and we could make out most of them.  Here we have Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro and Andrea.  I wonder if Joseph/Fidel was in love with Andrea, or if she were a partner in crime.  May be the later; she didn’t use her last name. Such graffiti was way after my time; no one knew Fidel Castro’s name when I went to Forest Hill.  Even the sixth grade boys weren’t brave enough to write in wet concrete in the 1940’s.

The old trees remain.  They aren’t on the playground; no one plays under them these days.  But, like the rock, they remain.

The Great Escape

Elaine, at Pear Tree Log, said they plant Mole Bulbs, which deter those little mole buggers.  Always up for a good read, I moved from identifying mole’s trails to how to send them packing.  I learned a couple of things about moles, too.

Moles simply do not live above ground, possibly excepting my hero, Moley, together with his friend Ratty and their acquaintances, Mr. Badger and Toad.  They live in their mole tunnels.  They do not eat roots.  Voles do that.  Moles eat worms and grubs. 

When mole tunnels are visible on the surface the little fellows are busy eating Japanese beetle larvae. This all sounds like a good animal to have around. Laura, however, would give them an eviction notice just for eating all the worms she saved. I compromised.  They can live in the rest of the yard. 

There are plants that deter mole simply by their detestable, to moles, smell.  Sork, one such, has come to be known as mole plant.  We are one zone too north for another, yellow crown imperalis, but can plant allium and euphorbia lathrys—in the fall.  I have not located a source for mole plant (yet), and am on the nursery’s list to notify when the two bulbs are available in the fall.

In the meantime, a mole mover is available.  Ground up peanut shells saturated with the oils of the aforementioned plants, plus the oil of the plant moles most detest, castor.  At the nursery counter last weekend the clerk explained how to use it.  She tore off a sheet of a note pad, put it on the desk.  This is your yard.  She drew a line around three sides.  This is where you sprinkle the product the first couple of days.  When you see the moles have left—she drew the last line—you close the perimeter.

Hamilton went around the garden with the shells, which don’t smell all that great to people, either, leaving one exit route.  The oils are released by water.  It has rained for three days, including the morning he went around shaking peanut shells around the perimeter of the garden.  It has not stopped raining enough for another application.

Yesterday morning the mound I take to be the escape hatch is right there by the sidewalk.  Hamilton can give the perimeter another dose of castor oil peanuts, then we’ll close off the hatch.  Don’t tell Laura, but we only did half the garden.

Saffron Two Cats

I googled the name Saffron Two Cats because once we knew a girl with that name.  Surely neither her given name or her legal name.  Once I had her card, with a phone number.  She lived in Highland Square, a casual, relaxed, arty enclave of large old homes turned to multi unit dwellings. 

We met her because she wanted to purchase a simple loom.  We were dealers for two loom manufacturers, but had other looms in the studio from buy/sell/trade transactions.  Looms circulated regularly in the weaving community.

When Saffron Two Cats came to the studio we had among our looms an 8 harness, 10 shaft cherry Kyra, 45” wide.  A beauty, and when it came on the market we had to give it a try.  Jan wove a little on it, but it was not a practical loom for us.  When Saffron entered the studio she was drawn right to the loom.  She sat on the bench; she stroked the wood of the beater, the castle.

She had a friend with her who reminded Saffron she was there to find a practical little loom to ease herself back into the world of weaving.  Saffron only said “Is this loom for sale?”  Of course it was, and for the price we paid, $800.  1988 dollars; the same loom today probably would sell for $1200. The practical little looms we sold were in the $400 range.  We realized early on the friend would be purchasing the practical little loom for Saffron Two Cats.

“Can I buy it on time?  I have $50 with me to put down. If you sell it to me, can I come weave on it until it’s paid for?” We made the deal.  Saffron came several times, with another five, ten or twenty dollars, and wove a little more on the warp we left on the loom.

One day she came with her brother and his truck and seven remaining one hundred dollar bills.  We never saw her friend after Saffron’s first encounter with the loom, but I always felt the friend was the source of the last seven bills.

I googled Saffron’s name in curiosity.  Interesting answers came back.  There is a Two Cats book store selling the Firefly les Femmes poster Saffron. Under that google listed a blog about a cat named Saffron before trailing off into feebleness.  But, the advertising block had me riveted. 

I was looking for saffron, google gave me saffron.  Shoes.  Of course google knows I love shoes.  Google swept the world wide web and showed me two saffron shoes. In my preferred style, sneakers.

The political inferences are so ironic.  ‘Nuff said.