I love spring. I love the dramatic hues of new leaves … the bold green grass … dark purple of unfolding nettles … yolk-yellow daffodils. Now that it’s May in Germany the Bauernjasmin (“farmer’s jasmine”) Philadephus blooms and the air smells deliciously sweet and fresh.

As it’s about to hit nearly 30 C (86 F) this week, however, spring will soon be over, so I wanted to share a few impressions of May along Schlichter Weg.

Your trees have made it through two winters! The 50 Trees flourished after a wet November to February, which saw the seasonal ponds on the property again filled and the lakes back to a nearly normal level after several years of drought. But it’s been a dry spring so far, having rained only 2 – 3 times since early March. If it does not rain soon, we’ll be hauling out the hoses. New trees need about 200 liters every few weeks and we’re reaching a critical point where, if it doesn’t rain soon, we’ll have to begin
watering.

That being said, we only lost one tree over the winter, an oak native to Italy and Hungary (Quercus frainetto ‘Forest Green Schmidt’) that suddenly experienced leaf drop at the end of the summer last year.

Here’s a picture of a strange red sap coming out of its branches, and the tree now (below left). Though Quercus frainetto is supposed to tolerate all kinds of soils and be a good choice for industrial areas due to its hardiness, this little Schmidt apparently found the raw pampas of northeastern Germany de trop.

Could it be chestnut blight? Sudden oak disease? That or that it was planted in construction debris from when we dug out the wildflower garden: too dry and too much concrete and clay instead of soil. In any case, we’ll try to find a new Schmidt another spot and hope she adjusts to life an hour from Poland.

With war in Ukraine — Lviv is nine hours from Krumbeck — and after two
years of pandemic, nature continues to give us solace and inspiration, sustenance and occasionally even shade! We fervently hope for peace, for everyone, everywhere.

In the meantime, the plant’s eye view of your trees (the ghostly spires against an almost tropical spring sunset). The juicy green in the foreground is the new growth of Papaver orientale and Achillea filipenulina ‘Parker’s Variation’. From this vantage point all seems right with the world.

A pond is filling!

Three years ago we dug a pond in the southwest of the property. For one glorious hot summer we swam in it. It seemed suspicious that we had to run the water from our well every day in order to keep the level high, but we chalked it up to “settling” and the drought.

It turns out the pond leaked and had to be completely re-dug, re-lined (with blue clay from the nearby town of Friedland), re-compacted, resealed and refilled with water. Karsten Anschütz and his team completed the job in the fall and — cross fingers, press thumbs — the pond seems to be holding. (Vielen Dank, Herr Anschütz!) Rainwater drains from the roofs into the pond through a filtering system, an insane wind keeps the water active and oxygenated. Cranes, buzzards, geese and deer have again begun to stop by Schlichter Weg for a drink.

After two winter seasons on lockdown, we’ve spent most of these cold months in Berlin, enjoying the first cracks of “opening” — Christmas Eve spent with friends, a few dinners at home with other families, the Philharmonik, a haircut or two.

But your trees are not taking the season off! Here is some serious new growth on a spindly red maple — Acer rubra ‘October Glory’.

This tree was a little sapling we picked up on sale a few years ago, planted, wrapped in deer fence and then ignored.

Contrary to what we were led to believe in elementary school about winter, when leaves fall and trees wait patiently to shake off their mantles of snow before growing again, deciduous trees grow all year round, albeit in winter primarily in the roots. (I was anyway most familiar with coconut trees and only plumerias lost their leaves in winter.)

It turns out trees grow in front of your eyes!

The tree in the distance is another Acer, planted as part of your 50 Trees. Its trunk is triple the size of the sapling’s, but the younger tree is catching up quickly, confirming some wise words a gardener friend told me as we were beginning to landscape. Plant the youngest trees you’re comfortable with, he said. They’ll catch up to the bigger trees in a few years and are a fraction of the price.

Our last specimen is a beech planted five years ago. The two oaks on either side were planted at the same time. These trees have now grown into solid Jungs. Their branches have not yet begun to spread out significantly, but they are beginning to shake off the posts installed to keep them upright. (The posts rot in the ground and eventually fall over.) They even, on sunny winter evenings—what are those?—cast a decent shadow.

In the spring we hope to bring up the artist who sparked the idea of 50 Trees to discuss the installation of a plaque or sign with your names on it.

And we hope to swim.

0It’s February and for the first time since we moved in, it’s been snowing!

It’s about -5 C here. The ornamental artichokes in the garden that managed to survive December and January are finally succumbing to the cold. Everything is brown or about to be and one morning we greeted this bizarre scene.

Yes, that’s the moon hanging over our old Christmas tree, heading to bed at 8:00 AM!

The newly planted trees are hopefully cozy in their green Kälteschütz tape wrapped around the stems. The ground is mostly snow covered, which also provides protection for the new roots against the drying cold.

Happily we have seen the sun peek above the horizon on a few days and have seen many migrating birds — though they seem to be heading south, having been surprised by sudden winter.