Making the best...

If you've been reading my blog for at least a few months, you'll know that this past winter was very tough on most of my bamboos. Although the important in-ground ones leafed back out (whew!) there were several killed culms throughout the garden. In fact, at least four of my less cold-hardy plantings were "top killed", meaning everything above ground died.

That makes for a few dead culms that need to be removed. I've put this task off for a while, letting the dead culms provide support and protection for the newly emerging ones, but I finally decided it was time to start cleaning up a bit.

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The first plant I started with was this Phyllostachys makinoi:

I didn't take a "before" photo, as I wasn't intending on writing a post about this. But once I had a small pile of dead culms...

...and realized what good, sturdy canes this species produces, I decided that I had to do something with them -- they couldn't go into the compost pile.

They're not big enough for anything really exciting, so I started cutting them up into pieces:

Once I had a respectable little pile, the ideas started flowing. Maybe a simple native mason bee "hotel"? 

Hearing the little tubes clink together as I tossed a new one onto the pile though, I thought that some sort of wind chime might be possible too (my bamboo wind chimes use large culms for a deeper sound, but a smaller "tinkling" one would be nice).

I still have many culms to cut down, including the beautiful dark ones from my black bamboo, which should have decent wood too. 

I'll have to start thinking of more ideas...

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