Where in the Heck Have You Been????

I know I have been MIA for a little while. I have good excuses! Really!

Saturday the 12th we celebrated my mom's birthday. It was a milestone birthday and so we were in surprise mode. My sister flew in from Kansas and my brother and his wife flew in from Illinois. Our daughters drove in and as did two nephews and a fiancée. Boy was my mom surprised!!

There was silliness-

and Skyler wanted to get into the action-












And of course some wonderful gifts.....my sister did a signature quilt for her--- a true treasure! here is a link to her blog's posting of the quilt.

So the week before everyone came I was cleaning and putting up Christmas decorations. Busy busy.















After we put my sister back on the plane on Monday we headed down to South Carolina. It was time to pick cabinets, countertops, flooring, faucets and other plumbing items. On our way down the highway we got an offer to stay at a lakehouse...instead of a hotel! Sweet deal. It was really foggy when we got to Greenwood, but we did find the house. The next morning the fog was still hanging around.

Not a bad view even with the fog! The only drawback was we were without internet... what a strange feeling! (Tuesday's Trees will be back this week.)

We drove out to the house. Lots of progress has been made since we were there. The rain has slowed them down a little, but it was great to see it shaping up! You can see the water is high on the dock and there is a tree that floated downstream. The tree was gone the next day.

Great view from the lake.

The siding was getting put on and the windows are starting to be installed.

This big picture window is our dining room window, facing west. With all these trees I don't think the sun will be an issue.

The roof is coming along as well.


Sunrise was pretty impressive when it wasn't foggy. It was worth getting up at 5:30- 6:00 AM.


Will be back around to everyone's blogs and try to catch up a little. Time to get into the Christmas mode now!

An Appreciation of What is Growing In My Yard

With my focus on trees and getting pictures of various specimen to use in my tree posts, I have taken a renewed appreciation of the trees in my yard. I have two small Japanese maples. Once they were planted together and neither did very well. I moved one to the front yard and left one in the back, they both liked the change. They are pass a long trees, not named cultivars. The tree in the backyard has just glowed this fall. I wonder, previous years of drought conditions left this tree bare in the fall, it was certainly stressed. This year we are well over our yearly average rainfall. Many trees have held on to their leaves, giving us glorious fall color.

The backyard Japanese maple is green in the summer---

here is morning light

here is afternoon light

and the front yard one is red----

Tuesday's Trees- Carpinus caroliniana

-- Ironwood, American Hornbeam, Musclewood- this tree goes by many names.





My first introduction to this tree was at the Adkins Arboretum along the eastern shore of Maryland. The visit was part of our Master Gardener trip. The group I walked through the woods with had a few Tree Stewards in training and it seemed like we were in heaven.












Many of the Ironwood we came across were very young trees and making the ID with these young trees was primarily with the growth structure of the trunk. The leaves are so similar to beech and birch trees. The leaves are double serrated, oblong, ovate. They occur alternately from the twig. It is green during the growing season and in the fall it turns orange to red to yellow. Quite often the leaves hang on through the winter. Here is a link to Sweetbay's web posting with beautiful fall color.

It is a slow growing tree, reaching heights of 20- 30 feet with similar spread. Typically it is an understory tree and as such has an open canopy. If planted in more sun the canopy is denser. This native tree is hardy from zones 3- 9. Often seen as a multi-stemmed tree, the stems are crooked, smooth and light gray in color. The trunk has the appearance of a muscular limb…. One of the ways we were able to make our identification on a young tree was to feel the base of the trunk. It does feel like someone has a flexed muscle.

C. caroliniana is a monoecious tree with both male and female catkins in the spring. The fruit is a long nutlet and it a food source for birds. Large seed production occurs every 3- 5 years. The germination rate is low. The Silvics manual is an excellent reference guide for this tree.
Common names for many plants are often used for more than one plant variety. I first learned this tree to be an Ironwood, but there is another tree called Ironwood—Ostrya virginiana. Another tree in the birch family, also a crooked trunked tree…but this Ironwood has ridged bark, unlike the American Hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana) that has a very smooth trunk.
Wonderful resources for the Carpinus caroliniana-
MOBOT- wonderful pictures
What Tree Is This site- nice quick reference
UNCONN- concise information
USDA data sheet- great links to other information
NCState- quick list of information, no photo
Virginia Tech fact sheet easy to print fact sheet to carry with you
Forestry Service a great reference


Next tree- Magnolia grandiflora
Sorry for the delay in getting this posted, life happens.