The TG gets some visitors (or so I hear)

The TundraGarden has really greened-up in the past couple of weeks.  It went from this:

Snow in the TG on June 15.

to this:

June 20

in the space of five days, while I was on a quick trip to upstate New York taking my daughter to spend part of the summer with her grandmother!  The willows are green and the dwarf and Arctic buttercups are in full bloom.

Iridescent buttercups

And a good thing, too.  There were a number of people who had been attending the Arctic Imperatives conference and were now touring the Arctic.  They flew into Barrow and were given a bus tour.  My husband was acting as tour guide, and must have mentioned the TG, since the participants demanded that the bus be detoured so they could see it.  Apparently people were enthusiastic and many pictures were taken.

A bit of clean up

The last bits of snow from last winter

The garden is finally snow-free.  The snowbirds (snow buntings, but everyone here calls them snowbirds) & other small birds have been snacking on the seeds in the pods as they emerged through the snow.  We feed the birds commercial seed, but it seems like they should be able to eat their normal diet.  They seem to have finished what there was to eat, so it was time for clean-up.  I spent a while this afternoon trimming dead stalks from Artemisias, Potentillas and Ranunculi, and things look much better.  I put one of the pinwheels out again, too.

I also picked up the new plant markers project where I left it last fall.  I’d written on markers with a Sharpie, and was then using a label maker to make tapes to put on that would be easier to read.  The new markers are aluminum, and the ones that were out over the winter already had signs of corrosion from the salt air here.  I had to use steel wool to smooth them before putting the labels on.  We will have to see how long they last.

Green-up!

We had a lot of snow this past winter, and it has taken forever to melt.  The drifting over the TG was different than usual, with a storm that cut a tunnel near the windows, so this year the main part of the garden is melting out before the pond.

The TundraGarden makes its appearance.

The dried grass & willow branches have been showing for a week or so, but now they are out and signs of green are starting to show up.  The Artemisia arctica is just starting to send up shoots.

Artemisia arctica shoots.

Giant-flowered willows!

The willows are in full flower.  Since willows here are pretty tiny, growing horizontally rather than vertically for the most part (although they seem to be trying to grow up a bit as the climate warms), the flowers really stand out, since they are about twice as high as the plants themselves.  I’m not sure they are really any bigger than flowers on willows elsewhere, but they are definitely more noticeable.

Once you notice them, it turns out they are really quite beautiful in their own quiet way.  The light was great this afternoon, a high bright fog, so I took a few pictures.

A veritable forest of willow flowers.

Willow flowers from ground level (with a couple saxifrages in bud for variety)

Bug's-eye view of willow flowers.

Another type of willow in close-up.

Close-up of willow flowers.

More & better buttercups

It was a nice sunny day, and the buttercups were really spectacular. So here are a few more pictures for the buttercup fans out there.

Pigmy or dwarf buttercups.

Buttercups in the sunshine

Buttercups!

Buttercups & Summer

On the Solstice, the snow buttercups (Ranunculus nivalis) were just opening.  They are always the first flowers to bloom in the TundraGarden.  Usually they are bit earlier, but it is a late melt.  Not really Solstice material.

Snow buttercups on Solstice

It was cloudy for several days in a row, so they opened slowly, but by yesterday they were open, although it was still pretty cloudy, so they aren’t as spectacular looking as they can be.

Same snow buttercups on July 25

Next up are the pygmy buttercups (Ranunculus pygmaeus), which are really tiny little things.

Pygmy buttercups

Spring is here!

Finally! The snow is melting fast, which is pretty much making a mud hole out of the “gravel” parking lot at work. It’s driving Maasak, the maintenance guy, nuts, because all he has time to do is sweep up the mud coming in on peoples’ boots.

Monday I was lucky enough to get 3 geese from friends who had been very fortunate on a hunting trip. Up here we like spring geese best, and the season closes soon to let them nest & raise the goslings in peace. It was nice, almost no wind, so I decided to clean them outside. It can be a bit messy, so I put on stuff that could wash easily, and ended up sitting outside in shorts & a sweatshirt plucking geese for a few hours.  I put my chair in the snow (to keep the birds cleaner if I dropped them). It was actually quite pleasant and sunny, with almost no wind until the very end, when a breeze came up and blew down back at me, pretty much covering me from head to toe.

In the process I dropped a couple of wings I had trimmed, and didn’t manage to pick them up, since I wanted to get the extra birds vacuum sealed and in the freezer ASAP.  Yesterday I got some more pictures of the TG, and the wings are visible in the one below, next to the grill.   That whole area was snow-covered at the beginning of the week.

I managed to get a couple more pictures.  The first just shows the sad state of the bathtub/pond with the Arctophylla.  It was nailed by someone clearing snow with a front end loader last winter, and clearly something needs to be done.  It means a lot of digging, and I think I’d like to replace it, but getting a preformed pond of any size up here is proving a challenge, and I’m not sure that the pond liner route would work too well in unstable gravel, since I’m not sure the edges would stay covered too well.

The garden is starting to grow a little, although most of it is still in snow, and it needs to be cleaned up a bit once that thaws.  I did get two pictures of new greenery.  The first is Ranunculus starting to come up.  I’m not sure which one; I’ve got two.  The second is buds on the willow just starting to break.

We really do have a lot of snow…

I was just looking for pictures of the TG from around this time last year. I found a couple, and they really confirm that snowmelt this year is slow.

Here it is (from a slightly different angle, since my back is messed up and I didn’t feel like going outside) today. Big difference. The bathtub hasn’t moved, nor have the logs, so they should orient you.

We did have a huge drift there this winter. The picture below is from February, when it was probably the biggest.

Spring is taking its sweet time getting to Barrow

By now, patches of tundra should be showing, and the Tundra Garden should at least be peeking through snow cover. Instead, there is still lots of snow everywhere, at least 3 feet on the TG! Birds are here, and expecting to make nests, but there is nowhere for them to put them. I’m not sure what they are going to do if it doesn’t melt pretty soon.

Despite that, there is plenty of mud, getting tracked in everywhere and making life tough for janitors and moms. The roads are a mess, with deep potholes all over, sometimes hidden by huge puddles, some of which are big enough to be ponds, at least. Driving is a nightmare, with trucks breaking tie rods and axles, and people getting jolted all over. A fellow I know had a couple of kids with him, one of whom apparently unbuckled at a stop. He hit a big pothole before she got buckled in, and she flew up, and smacked the window with her head hard enough to break it! Amazingly, she’s OK, with just a little egg.

Well, it was looking like spring…

…until it started snowing sideways. It’s blowing 30 and is supposed to keep it up for a couple of days. There is only about 3.5 feet of snow on the TundraGarden now, and there are huge puddles around NARL, but it’s pretty wintery by most standards.