A ladybug in happier, warmer days, a good diet of aphids ahead

I brought in only three plants from the veranda in late October before the snow set in, trying to help them through the winter. Last year I brought in a dozen, to the dismay of my family, who tried to live with my efforts to keep moving dismal-looking potted plants to catch the elusive winter sunlight in our dining room. Everyone tripped over them and grumbled, including me.

But I’ve worried about the reappearance of nasty little aphids just as my three plants start to look healthy again, which is what happened last year. The small beasties appeared en masse and went after all the green shoots. I used sprays, which I had hoped to avoid, and spent most of the winter nursing back my plants so they would survive moving outdoors again in spring. It took them until September to look good in our mountain clime, at 1,100 metres altitude, so I had to rethink my wintering-over strategy.

I kept wishing I had hunted for ladybugs and brought them indoors before the first blast of 2009 cold.

You can imagine my pleasure last week at finding a little ladybug on a shade near the plants. But just one. Then my husband found another and to my great pleasure he gently moved her closer to the plants.

And then today, I found another, a tiny little fellow, on the bathroom wall tiles. I moved him into the dining room as well.

Now we need just the right number of aphids to make them happy and provide a decent diet, but not so many that my plants lose their pep. Fingers crossed.

Oh, the worries of the winter gardener!

Chores left undone: blackberries not trimmed, weeds not pulled, some potatoes still underground

No more garden chores! That’s the bright side, as winter lays its first mantle over a sadly neglected garden, covering the debris that should have been cleaned up, the flowers that were never dead-headed and even the weeds that were still arrogantly poking their heads out of my vegetable garden. Never mind that the lawn did not get scarified. In a moment of serendipity last weekend we pulled out the lawnmower for the last time and it vacuumed up the leaves we hadn’t raked.

This was the worst gardening summer I can recall, a combination of confused weather patterns and family problems that included my husband the digger and manure bearer having knee surgery, putting him out of garden action. I’m ready to pull down the blinds over a summer that brought me just one strawberry, five raspberries and not a single apple or cherry or pear from several fruit trees.

Occasional bursts of flower color from plants that survived drought and inattention from The Gardener sadly reminded me that most of these perennials are meant to be good neighbors, always there when you need them.

Snow white, rose red

I’ve learned two lessons from this unhappy year of unplenty. Firstly, that if you leave them to get on with life most garden plants and the rough company they keep, those nasty weeds, are charming even as they go down. And secondly, each season ends with the promise of a new one, bursting with goodness.

Here is a visual catalogue of the final days of 2010, before the snow wiped the slate clean. We had a sudden burst of rain and warmer weather mid-October, so 17 October I rushed around the garden snapping shots of each bit of color I could find, before they disappeared. The garden then fizzled out very quickly.

Last weekend, 19 November, we had one day of gardening weather and I pulled weeds and dug up potatoes, stripping down to a t-shirt. The weather was so mild before the sun went down that I didn’t bother to bring in the red weed bucket.

Silly me. The next day it was covered in snow. This weekend, the bucket is still out there, the snow deeper, and it has been well below freezing, with a wintry wind blowing. Brrrrr.

More photos in the album: Alpine garden 2010, the last hurrah

Errant camomile that I dug up 3 years ago keeps slipping into bed with the strawberries

Wild thyme, 100 small plants, were my one gardening success this year: planted on slopes in areas close to the farmer's fields, to spread and prevent weeds

I cleared a space under a tree and transplanted strawberries but forgot to water them during a dry spell, so no strawberries - but these violets started cropped up instead

These pink climbing roses looked bored and finished for the season and then along came some warm air and rain: party time again!

I’ve never found an answer to this and I’d love to know: why did nature choose purple and orange for autumn flowers? So many of our most spectacular late-season blooms are these colors, mostly in deep tones. The sun is lower in the sky, and in the mountains this means it leaves deeply angled streaks of light, which these richly colored flowers pick up beautifully, creating an outdoor cathedral when the light hits them.

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Too busy planting and cleaning out flower beds to write much, but the warm weather has brought a gorgeous explosion of colour to the garden, starting with these irises and bleeding hearts.

I couldn’t resist putting the closeup lens on the camera.

I used to think our slopes, warm days and cool nights in the mountains were perfect for irises until someone burst my bubble by telling me they grow just about anywhere.

That’s a good thing in the end. They are gorgeous!

The milking hour

Spring comes slowly to the mountains, but when it arrives it does so with a bang and there is suddenly a massive amount of post-winter tidying to do: clean out the dozens of iris clumps, cut off dead flower clumps caught in bloom by November snows, remove dead leaves from the fruit trees that have snuggled into every nook and cranny. And, of course, weed, turn over the soil in the vegetable patch and put in the early plants.

But a bonus while doing all this in the mountains is that we have farm animals who are turned out to the pastures at mid-altitude (1,100 metres) for a few weeks. My garden has pasture on three sides and the beautiful Val d’Herens cows are out there happily chomping away all day, bells ringing. Late in the afternoon the older cows drift towards the barn and there’s more agitation in the air. Take a look at the photos. Definitely the milking hour!

Sheep about to be lifted over the fence to stay in a field with a dauntingly steep slope

We have two charming heifers in one of the fields, young and curious and when I go outside to work they trot up to the fence to say hello and watch for a while.

This week the heifers had another distraction, and they couldn’t take their eyes off it. A Swiss-German farmer from Brig puts a herd of sheep with tinkling bells in a field across the road from us and from the cows. He arrived one afternoon with a ram, with gorgeous big horns and a deep booming voice. The cows ran over to watch as he was put in the field, then stood transfixed for an hour, observing the sheep.

Before I knew it my chores were nearly done. Nothing quite like a good distraction.

Cows join me for a day of gardening, to the tune of Swiss cowbells

Val d'Herens cow in my neighbour's field, May 2010 in Valais

I’m beginning to realize just how blessed I am to have a garden at 1,100 metres above sea level, after reading in the New York Times about the latest rage among lowland gardeners.

Growing plants upside-down seems to cure a lot of plant ailments and get rid of many pests.

I have to confess that while the tomatoes might taste good, having made it to adulthood with their roots pointing to the sky, hanging them from the clothesline doesn’t do much for the landscape, and that’s one of the things I enjoy about my garden.

Photos: while out gardening like mad last weekend, two young heifers from the farm next door came to see what I was doing. We happily spent most of the day together.

I was weeding and planting 150 tiny wild thyme (serpolet, as it is known in French) plants among the raspberries to keep down the weeds that swagger in from the farmer’s field.

The young cows were keeping down the now-flowering meadow. Their brass Swiss cowbells clanged away as we both worked, pleasant music to my ears, along with the soft crunch-scrunch of grass and flowers getting chomped on.

Did you know this about cows: they have no upper teeth.

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Swiss cow, checking out the gardener

Let's get a good look at that gardener

Tulips, Swiss Alps

Flower shops filled with tulips in the spring always surprise me, because I almost never cut my tulips to bring them indoors, and I forget that other people fill vases with them and set them around the house.

I think I’m lucky to have streaks of gay color from them spread around outside, brightening the view from every window. The Dutch have done such a superb job of taming them that we forget these are magnificent mountain wild flowers. My favorites are red ones that tumble down from the top of the field next door, true farmer’s tulips.

I plant more exotic varieties and a lot of colors, but these are more susceptible to the cold, and the temperature can dip below freezing until at least mid-May, sometimes later, at 1,000 meters altitude.

Tulips bending from beautiful blooms' weight

Last weekend I was enjoying this particular variegated group when I noticed that one, a lovely flower, had a broken stem.

The cold at night weakens the stems and when they are top-heavy with luscious blooms they tumble over, sometimes breaking the stem.

I took it inside, put the single bloom on its side in a small wooden dish, no water, and it became our centerpiece for two days, giving off a deep perfume while we admired its elegance indoors for a change.

The color and perfume remained far longer than I expected, reminding me that for all their delicate beauty, tulips are pretty tough! I don’t cut the stems of mine – there are far too many – and I don’t dig them up, just hoping they will make it through tough winters. I do divide them when they multiply to the point where the flowers start to get smaller, once every 3-4 years. Gardener Doug Green has some sound advice on caring for tulips. One especially good tip: don’t water them after they’ve bloomed.

The fallen tulip finds a home inside

Back out in the garden, another spring treasure was the sudden blossoming of the strawberry plants, We’re a good two weeks below the gardens down the hill, on the plain, but I’m happy to wait: I’d wager our strawberries are among the world’s best!

Alpine full-size strawberries give us these charming flowers a month before the berries are red and ripe

Tadpoles fight over the bacon bits (white) in my pond

I’m new to the frog business, having unwittingly swept them out and over the edge of our pond for a couple years. It’s fed by an underground stream, then has a little waterfall on the lower end. Last year, to my astonishment, I discovered that the blob of little balls floating on the surface was frog spawn. Don’t ask how well I did in biology classes.

I rushed to the Internet and friends to learn more and, in the process, I fell in love with these funny little creatures who fill our pond in the spring. Last year they happily reached the tadpole stage and I think I spotted one tiny frog later, but they mostly just disappeared.

Shirley Curran, who writes the GenevaLunch book blog and creates our new crosswords, is a general knowledge marvel, and she told me that at a certain stage they need a little meat to survive. I had visions of every cat and rat in the neighbourhood coming to nibble on bits of meat left at the edge of the pond.

Then yesterday my husband, busy preparing our Sunday brunch, decided to toss a couple snips of raw bacon into the pond.

They loved it! The tadpoles spent the rest of the day going after those bacon bits and by evening the little creatures already looked bigger to us.

Now to see if we get any frogs. It’s a jungle out there, next to the farmer’s field.

Bernex, canton Geneva

Saint Prex, Vaud

Pink in Versoix!

I wrote earlier today on my Among the Vines blog that a Petite Arvine I’d tasted has a nose of wisteria, and if you aren’t sure what this smells like, step outside because it’s in bloom.

I also wrote that it’s generally pink – only to step outside and see purple wisteria everywhere today! Do step up, close your eyes and breathe deeply.

Passion in the ponds

Frogs in Jura pond (photo, ©2010 Shirley Curran)

Late April at 1,100 metres, they are still just tadpoles (photo, Ellen Wallace)

The surest sign of spring at 1,100 metres altitude is not among the flowers, where the bees have been busy, or among the trees, filled with birds: it’s in the pond.

We watched the odd balls that hold spawn as days grew longer and warmer. About two weeks ago tiny, tiny tadpoles began to appear and the balls began to self-destruct.

The tadpoles grow by the day, have become more vigorous, and we are waiting to see if some will turn to frogs and stay with us. Every year in May they head downhill with the bisse (mountain irrigation) stream that feeds our pond and provides a small waterfall, and we rarely see the frogs before they disappear.

Shirley Curran has shared photos from her warmer, lower altitude ponds, where tadpoles have become charming, active and amorous frogs already!

Click on images to view larger (best viewed large, great detail!)

Frogs in Jura pond (photo, ©2010 Shirley Curran)

Frogs in Jura pond (photo, ©2010 Shirley Curran)