Crossing permaculture with #phenology?

Minnesota has several wildflowers of the Gentiana family. The Minnesota Wildflowers web site lists five Gentiana and three other "Gentians" that bloom in September. The plants in our front flower garden are, we think, bottle gentians, but don't hold us to that. Our listing of Chisago County wildflowers includes only two Gentianas, but also has two "gentians" from the Triostium family. This has possibly been a classic exercise in why scientists rely on Linnaean rather than common names.

bottle gentian(?) in September

Photo by J. Harrington

The leaves on the remnants of the black chokeberry bushes left by our local whitetail herd have started to change to bright orangey-yellow instead of the reddish-purple (purplish-red?) many cultivars are listed as producing. Perhaps it's the lack of full sun that's altered the color? We're now thinking that, instead of transplanting some of the existing bushes, maybe we should buy more and see if we can convince the deer to leave at least some of them alone? The photo shows a partial yield several years ago from one bush before the deer discovered them.

a rare harvest of black chokeberries

Photo by J. Harrington

We discovered on-line this morning a resource we'll check more thoroughly over the next few days. PERMACULTURE 101: AN INTRODUCTION TO REGENERATIVE DESIGN may, or may not, offer helpful suggestions on dealing with the pocket gophers, rabbits and whitetails that seem determined to help themselves to "our foods." Actually, the real problems is each of these critters, in their own way, tends to kill the geese that lay the golden eggs, if we may thoroughly mix our metaphors. Pocket gophers have eaten the roots of most of the fruit trees we've planted, and replanted. The results are dead trees. Rabbits and deer browse on the bushes to the point that few flowers and no fruit is produced, and several of the branches die from browsing. It's hard to share the yield of a dead or non-producing plant or tree. Mr. Frost, Robert, not Jack, certainly seems familiar with our trials and tribulations.

Good-bye, and Keep Cold

By Robert Frost

This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark

And cold to an orchard so young in the bark

Reminds me of all that can happen to harm

An orchard away at the end of the farm

All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.

I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,

I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse

By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse.

(If certain it wouldn't be idle to call

I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall

And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)

I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun.

(We made it secure against being, I hope,

By setting it out on a northerly slope.)

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;

But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.

"How often already you've had to be told,

Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below."

I have to be gone for a season or so.

My business awhile is with different trees,

Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,

And such as is done to their wood with an axe—

Maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night

And think of an orchard's arboreal plight

When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)

Its heart sinks lower under the sod.

But something has to be left to God.

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