BARTERING FOR SERVICES

SHAMPOO AND UH, HYDRANGEA, ANYONE ?

So one day I walk into this beauty shop in a nearby neighborhood and ask for a hair cut and color. The young girl they assigned to me, Anita, shampooed my hair and as she was trimming it she asked, " Haven't I met you somewhere before ? Do you work around here ?" " Yes, as a matter of fact, I do, I work up the street at the garden center a few days a week and I always walk by on my way to work. "

" I knew it ! " , she said, " That's where I saw you. I'm there all the time. " I want to fix up my front and back yards this year, but I can't afford a landscape designer. Would you be willing to trade services - I'll come to your house and do your hair and you come to my house and do my garden design.?" Well , some two hundred dollars later when I got the bill, I eagerly agreed to trade services.

That was three years ago and Anita and I have become close friends and gardening buddies. Her garden, I'm pleased to say, is the envy of the neighbors. And my hair, I get a lot of compliments. And I don't have to sit in a salon for hours on end, a big time saver for me.

The thing that makes me happy most about our arrangement is the love of gardening that Anita has gained and the pride of accomplishing a beautiful landscape with her own sweat equity.

She and I share a love of hydrangeas ( that's her most recent purchase Limelight behind her ) and a loathing of plant-eating rabbits. The first year I designed and we planted her front garden the rabbits ate it to the ground over the winter , mugo pine and all. I didn't know that rabbits liked roses, thorns and all !

So we've embarked on a war on rabbits. We're trying a product called Plantskydd which is a spray with bloodmeal in it. The difference in this product is that it is emulsed in an oil binder base and is guaranteed for 4 months in the summer and 6 in the winter. Unlike regular bloodmeal you're not suppose to have to reapply it each time it rains. I'll believe it when I've tested it and that's what we're doing right now.

More on our test results later.

A COOL DISH FOR THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER

Naeng-myon , Korean Cold Noodles

Summer is officially here today. June has been more like July with it's high temperatures and lack of rain. Our thoughts turn to light or cool dishes in this heat wave.

Naeng-myon is a very popular cold buckwheat noodle dish in Korea and each cook has their own recipe. Koreans are very picky about what makes a good cold noodle dish . They say that the broth is the most important ingredient of the dish.

The meat for the traditional Korean cold noodle dish is beef brisket, however, you can use chicken as an alternate. As a vegetarian I use tofu instead of chicken and it tastes very good as well.

Here's the Choi family recipe :

Buckwheat noodles
beef brisket or chicken
green onions, minced
2-3 clove finely minced garlic
small white onion
1 tablespoon sugar
cucumbers , thinly sliced
beef or chicken broth
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
Korean yellow mustard, or wasabi
hard boiled eggs
Asian pear , sliced thin ( optional )
Whole cabbage kimchi, chopped

Place brisket in pot of water, add 1 small chopped white onion. Boil for about an hour. Strain broth and chill in fridge or when cool, add ice. Slice brisket on the diagonal into thin slices, or if using chicken, into bite-size pieces.

Cook buckwheat noodles until tender, about 10 to 15 minutes. Rinse with cold water until chilled.

Place cold noodles in large bowl, top with brisket, kimchi, cucumber, chopped green onion, Asian pear slices and eggs.

Add rice wine vinegar, sugar, minced green onion and Korean mustard to chilled broth. Slowly pour broth into the noodle mixture.

Eat and enjoy.

$75,000 PLANT GIVEAWAY

The front garden of this huge apartment building on our street ( circa 1913 ) was planted by a Botanist about 5 years ago. With no lawn or evergreen shrubs the landscape was very barren in the winter.

The Botanist knew plants, I grant you, and filled the landscape with $75,000 of perennials, most of which were spreaders. With no one taking care of the garden on a regular basis you can guess how quickly it turned into an overgrown unkempt yard.

Now the building has been sold and is going condo. The new owners are ripping out all the shrubs and perennials and told the neighbors they could take anything they wanted. As word spread I saw trucks with several workers pull up and dig out huge shrubs, hostas 4 feet in diameter , small trees and perennials. Homeowners also came out and dug plants for their own gardens.

I secured a beautiful blue hosta with white fragrant flowers and some Japanese knotweed for myself.

I met the new owners and inquired about their development plans for the building .They said they were going to bulldoze all the trees and install a new landscape with sod, fountains, small trees and flowers. I pointed out a beautiful weeping Fagus Sylvatica 'Dawyck's Purple " ( Purple leaf beech ) and a Newport Plum that should be saved from the bulldozer.

I also gave them a little oral history of the neighborhood. One of my neighbors who was born and raised on the street said that when the building was opened to the public in 1913 it was a big society event . Now it's beautiful facade will be restored to its former glory thanks to our soon-to-be designated historic Chicago landmark .

LANDSCAPER/HOMEOWNER'S NIGHTMARE

This just might be the most expensive tree in the USA -
Silver Leaf Maple in Fall dress

It's an ordinary tree by any standard and very fast growing. A homeowner in Chicago's northwest suburbs had one in her yard that was planted by her mother so it was very sentimental . The diameter of the trunk was 70 inches so you can imagine how large it was. And then imagine one day she came home and the tree was gone. A big, empty space where once the majestic tree had reigned supreme.

A hospital next to her property was doing construction and the landscaper had marked the tree for removal, thinking it was on their property. Wrong. Oops !

As a landscaper that story made me cringe, but then, as a homeowner , I feel for the loss of that tree planted by a mother in her daughter's garden.

The village ended up compensating the homeowner $26,000. This just may be the most costly tree in America , or the world for that matter. Moral of story : Double check those property lines if you're thinking of removing a tree !

MYSTERY SOLVED

ARCTUIM LAPPA


"Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds with burdock, hemlocks, nettles, cuckoo-flowers" King Lear by Shakespeare

Last week I posted on a mystery plant in my garden this Spring. Blackswampgirl ( Kim ) of A Study in Contrasts garden blog wrote that it was perhaps burdock. And, after doing more research on it, I found that she was indeed correct. Thank you , Kim.

But burdock is not exactly a weed . A member of the thistle family, it is an herb and every part of it - roots, leaves and seeds are used for medicinal purposes such as skin problem, blood purification, etc. And, it's been around a very long time. Even Shakespeare waxed poetically about it, as described above.

Low and behold the other day I was at a potential client's garden and saw it growing everywhere. I winced when she said, " Look at these weeds ! " I didn't have the heart to say they were not weeds. They looked so much better than mine.


I don't think I could destroy it right now because it's about to bloom. On the other hand, because I have a small urban garden, I'm struggling to clear it of invasive plants. I've been totally without mercy in removing Spiderwort, thinning out the Korean bell flowers, blackeyed Susans, etc.

Question is : should I keep it ?