I’m very sorry to have to report that Ginkgo Jr., Blithewold’s fledgling red-tailed hawk died this week. Veterinarians at The Wildlife Rehabilitators Association of Rhode Island treated him for a traumatic head injury which left him permanently blind in one eye and unable to eat solid food. Because he would never have been able to fend for himself and because a lifetime of tube feeding is not a stress-free option for any animal in captivity, a difficult decision was made. I am certain that he received the very best care, that all of the options were thoughtfully weighed, and remain so grateful to everyone who was involved in his rescue.

I hope Ginkgo Jr. is cruising the heavenly thermals with all of the awesome grace and dignity of his species restored; and that his parents, Rose and Ginkgo Sr., will continue to call Blithewold home and go on to rear many more chicks here.

Yesterday morning everyone at Blithewold – staff, volunteers and even a few visitors – ran an emotional gamut from excitement and pride, to awe, to dismay, fear, sadness and around again to hope. All for the love of our resident red-tailed hawks.

Gail, Tara and I could hear the loud squeaking as we made our way the Rose Garden and were amazed to see a young hawk on the front drive, obviously freshly fledged. He/she was crying for food like they do – hawks need to be taught how to hunt but the parents will keep feeding their young until they’ve got the hang of it.

He let us get pretty close and did make some adorable attempts to fly but it became clear to some of us with more experience with birds that he was unwell. (Who knew that Karen, our executive director, used to work with raptors?!) Evidently the first red flag was that we shouldn’t have been able to get so close. Another indicator of distress came with the information that he had actually left the nest for the first time two days prior and should be flying by now. It also appeared that something was wrong with one of his eyes. (I thought he closed his eyes when I came close just to make me disappear, not because of anything amiss.)

I have always been reluctant to interfere with nature and her natural processes (and, yes, I know that’s a bit ironic given my line of work) but I would generally rather assume that the animals know what they’re doing better than me since as a typical human, I am apt to anthropomorphize. So I’m glad that humans with a better sense of hawk’s natural processes were in charge yesterday. Karen made the call to the Wildlife Rehabilitators Association of RI and determined to take our fledgling all the way across the Bay to their veterinary facility to be checked out.

Meanwhile, those of us working in the gardens – who all still thought everything was fine and dandy and isn’t nature wonderful! – were thrilled when mama hawk (named Rose by Karen’s sons; and papa is Ginkgo) dropped like a stone into the North Garden just feet from where we worked. She landed a rabbit and flew off to leave her baby’s next meal draped on a branch high up in the tree where he rested (still squeaking, incessantly and insistently.)

He wasn’t able to “capture” his meal. He did make it up to the branch but the meal fell and he kept crying. Fred and Dan coaxed him back down, and Dan, reluctantly (Rose was circling overhead) caught and crated him.

It’s a good thing that Karen brought him to the vet. Turns out that he had suffered some sort of head trauma which may have caused the damage to his eye. I wonder if he fell hard from the nest… He’s being tube fed and treated with pain medicine and anti-inflammatories. We don’t know yet if he’ll make it. If he recovers from his injury, he’ll still need to be taught to fly and hunt, which may take anywhere from 3-6 months including recovery time. But if he does get better, Ginkgo Jr. (who probably is a male given his present size and weight – though hawks can’t be reliably sexed until closer to maturity) will be released here with as much fanfare as we can muster – along with a naming contest perhaps. Fingers crossed. Talons too.

(click on any picture for larger view.)

In New England we’re allowed call it summer whenever the switch has been flicked from sweater weather to sweaty weather (starting this past Wednesday). As a Rhode Islander, I can call it summer on Memorial Day weekend because lifeguards go back on duty. And as a gardener, I think it’s safe to declare it summer as soon as the scent of beach roses (Rosa rugosa – or as my grandmother called them, Rosie b’grosie) mingled with salty ocean breeze makes me swoon; when the irises start waving their flags; when the oxeye daisies open fresh as … well… daisies; and when we’ve finally moved the tomatoes out to harden off.

But of course I’m not quite ready to let go of spring and luckily I don’t have to. If there are still lilacs in bloom, it’s still spring. Syringa pubescens began blooming a good week after the everyday S. vulgaris. Its individual flowers are much smaller and pretty-in-pinker but the scent packs just as heavy a knock-out blow. Syringa meyeri ‘Palibin’ (right) is another late bloomer across the aisle from our pubescent lilac (at the entrance to the North Garden). I have to admit that until I looked at the tag today I thought was just another cultivar of the other. Palibin’s lilac blooms a titch later – if its blooms today are anything to go by (they’re still coming whereas the pubescent lilac’s are going by) – and a smidge bluer.

Red-veined enkianthus (Enkianthus campanulatus) is another that says spring to me – even though it smells as musty as a root cellar in winter. But any flower as delicately drawn as these, on any plant with as handsome a habit will be forgiven for being fragrance-challenged.

I freely associate Blue star (Amsonia tabernaemontana) with spring (late spring, that is). It’s pictured (below left) with Clematis recta ‘Purpurea’ and although my mind wants to lump all clematis into a summer category, I’ve been reminded this week that a few belong to spring.

Foggy mornings are a spring thing around here but these sweltering afternoons are so very summery. In any case, whether it’s spring or summer, the truth is, all gardeners are on the move. We’re racing against time to get the plants in the ground before the real heat of summer hits. But I was also reminded – and I’ll pass it along here – that it’s very important to slow down and watch your step – to try not to tread upon fledglings (a spring thing) or trip on bamboo shoots (summer thing).

Are you calling it summer or still enjoying spring?

Yesterday a visiting friend and fellow blogger asked me, “What’s your favorite thing blooming right now?” and with very little hesitation (it’s best to answer that sort of question as quickly as possible) I answered, “Crabapples.” Despite having an easy dozen other answers to that question on any given day, crabapples are on the front of my mind right now for a couple of reasons.

One is, I’ve been wanting to buy one for my own garden ever since I started paying a mortgage and am still trying to make up my mind about which one to get. At Blithewold we have a grove of three gorgeous Malus floribunda that are almost wider than they are tall and very dense. We also have a fairly recently planted orchard of Malus ‘Dolgo’. According to Dirr, these will be biggies (30-40′) with a more open branching structure. Our ‘Prairifire’ is still young (destined to be 15-20′ tall and wide) and has gorgeous deep raspberry buds and blooms. (Love that one…) But probably our most beautiful crabapple of all is the ancestral tree at the water’s edge. Nothing is more photogenic than that tree in full bloom.

Do you have a favorite crabapple?

The other reason crabapples are on my mind is because when they bloom is also when the Baltimore orioles come back (-the birds, that is. The baseball team won’t be at Fenway again until next week.) I love hearing their call – louder than the spring chorus of lawnmowers – and seeing their bright orange breasts flashing and clashing against all that pink. I’m not sure what they work on in the crabapples – they are nectar sippers – but they also eat insects. As a matter of fact, they are one of the best consumers around of our most destructive insects and caterpillars. Don’t bother spray because the orioles will be happy to eat all sorts of things like fall webworm, gypsy moth larvae, tent caterpillars, potato beetles, scale, and the sawfly larvae that make lace out of rose bushes.

Male orioles make the trip up from Central America, Mexico, etc a few days before the females in order to stake out their territory and they often come back to the same place every year. And the females construct the nest, which is a perfect illustration for the nightmarish lullaby we all grew up with. (Remember, “Rock-a-bye baby, in the tree top. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock…”?) They suspend a woven pocket-like bassinet miles off the ground at the ends of branches. Gail spotted an old one blowing around high up in a Norway maple this winter – much too high up for a picture, alas. The birds go quiet after mating but keep your eyes peeled – they’ll be eating serviceberry and cherries as well as caterpillars. And keep your ears tuned: sometime in August up until they leave in September, the males sing again.

Did you happen to notice when the orioles came back too? (Here it was Friday the 6th. Click on the photo for a closer look.)

Spiking temperatures in the heat of the sun are making us sweat and bitter winds give us the chills. Add to that the frenetic frantics of  “gotta get the gardens cleaned out NOW!” coupled with a lethargy bordering on catatonia that sets in after a day spent out: it feels for all the world like a fever. I’d say we haven’t acclimated to the season yet except that the season itself hasn’t settled out. Compared to this time last year when we had record floods and warmth, this March – perhaps compared to any recent years has been dry – the ground is actually cracked in places – and cold. We have an April Fool’s snow in the forecast and we’re all beginning to speculate that one of these days maybe we’ll pass straight from winter into summer.

But regardless of the vagaries of March (and April) weather, plants and wildlife are as feverish for spring as we are. Despite the cold winds and the little hints of snow and even the lack of real rain everything is emerging right according to plan – perhaps not 2 weeks early this year like it was last year, but inch by inch, on schedule. A good thing too because regardless of the weather, at a certain point we gardeners can’t restrain ourselves any longer from cleaning winter out of the gardens. Here at Blithewold we have the added incentive of getting everything tidy before Daffodil Days, which start a mere week and a half from now on April 9th (and run through May 1st.)

Gail, a couple of the Deadheads, and I cut back the North Garden yesterday and we know the timing is right because tiny kitten Alchemilla mollis (Lady’s mantle) are waking beneath the scrunk of last year’s leaves, caryopteris and perovskia buds are swollen and as usual, the ‘Ballerina’ roses have even begun to break – sooner than any other roses on the property. Bees are out working the scilla (do you have any early flowers for the bees?), and Gail and I were only willing to call it quits after encountering the largest spider this side of the tropics in one of our tub-trugs. Today the Rockettes cleaned up the Rock Garden where Pasque flowers were showing fuzz, tight whorls of corydalis foliage are loosening, and we all were on the lookout for hidden gems (hellebore flowers  hiding in the old epimedium leaves) and camouflaged creatures. It was a real eye-test to spot the nest inside the spirea. (Needless to say, that particular shrub didn’t get much of a haircut. – Anyone know if the nest would be this year’s or last year’s?)

Are you feeling feverish too?