It’s been a while.  I apologize of course and there’s no one reason for the disappearing act, but lets just pretend it didn’t happen and there hasn’t been an unprecedented two month gap in posts… which has never happened in the last ten years of posting here…  I hope to turn things around, but if the last ten have taught me anything it’s that for as often as I try to mend my blogging ways, it never works out.  So let’s just take a look around the garden to hopefully prove I haven’t been completely lazy!

Last summer’s addition to the yard was the rock garden.  It might be my favorite garden ever and I’m always checking for the tiniest change even if the huge weed on the left speaks more of neglect.

The plan is to keep this post short and just get it done, and that’s probably a good goal since I’m struggling to write anything of interest this morning.  What I want to do is go on and on about every little thing in the rock garden but that could be exhausting for both of us so I’ll do my best to keep things short.  Yeah, keep things short and get it done… but the silly little rock garden has so many cool things to bore you with, assuming  you can look past the huge weed -which is probably a weed but maybe it’s not and it’s something interesting- so perhaps just a few cool things have to be mentioned.

The rock garden sits in the center of the front yard.  A nice focal point, but stale bagels are out there too, and the birds and bunnies enjoy them just as much even if we don’t.

A fun fact about the rock garden is that there used to be a nearly identical bed here when we moved in, which I hated and called the ‘pimple’, since it was this round raised thing covered in red mulch which looked like an infected blot on the front yard.  It was removed, but it appears we’ve come full circle as now it’s back and just as round and raised as before,  just no red mulch.  I guess the antibiotics worked and the pimple is less angry.  The bed was put in last summer and in the 10 months since I’ve been filling it up.  Finally I have a place to stick all those little rock garden things which get lost and smothered in the other beds.

A lewisia (raspberry something was the label) has been blooming all spring.  I love it.  If it survives longer than a year I may fill the entire bed with more and maybe start a lewisia farm.

Hopefully I’m not offending anyone by calling this bed a rock garden.  If there’s a rock garden police they might charge me with planting regular perennials like the blue fescue or trashy annuals like the ‘Profusion Double Hot Cherry’ in a garden which should have obscure erodiums or saxifrage but give me time.  Right now those things bore me a little because they don’t look like much unless grown well, and it’s that ‘grown well’ part which I struggle with.  Actually I kill them so that’s that.

Heh heh, I was probably inapropriately excited to find a dwarf thistle (Circium acaule) at a rock garden sale last spring but I love thistles.  This might be full bloom now and obviously it’s a short and poky thing.

Short and get it done is not happening.  Refocus.  Rabbits.  Besides me actively killing plants there’s also still a rabbit problem plaguing this garden.  A few months under a chicken-wire cover has saved a few of the remaining hens and chicks (Sempervivums) but the rabbits still love to nibble the fescue and graze on the dianthus.  They also love the clover plantings which the rock garden police would have told me shouldn’t be there in the first place but they are.

There’s white clover growing lushly throughout the lawn, but the variegated white clover in the rock garden must be tastier.  I planted it in a crevice.  The rabbits struggle to get down in there, and crevice gardening is very on-trend in the rock garden world, more so for deeper root runs than rabbit protection but it sort of works.

I want to go on about other mucho-cool plants in there but maybe I can pull off a second post this month and not take another break until autumn or whenever, and talk about them then.  Ugh, why did I even mention autumn, it’s June for goodness sake and just about everything looks awesome.  I weeded and planted the potager.  Half of it has turned into a tropical garden with bananas, cannas and angel trumpets (Brugmansia) while the other half has been re-assigned to vegetable planting.  Obviously vegetables should have been out there all along, but flowers are nicer so maybe I strayed a little too far in that direction.

Tomatoes, cabbages, chard and broccoli among other things.  I was quite serious about evicting a few too many other non-edible things which ended up in there.

Who knows what we’re going to do with fresh produce.  Tomatoes can at least go onto a pizza or something, but chard?  It’s so green and we’re more of a sugar and deep fryer kind of family but there’s always hope.  Fake it until you make it is the theory, and a vegetable garden filled with wholesome vegetables is far more impressive than raised beds filled with daylily seedlings and sunflowers even though that may still happen.  But not this month.  These are show vegetables, and they might be planted to make things look more respectable for an upcoming graduation party which will happen in a week in this same backyard for a certain daughter who has finished high school.

Even the waste area is looking repectable.  Last summer and fall some extra topsoil and homeless daylilies meant losing the weeds, and this spring more topsoil and some zinnia seedlings cleared out the rest.  Cardboard and soil on top is so far keeping the weeds at bay.

Next to the waste area is the berm and that’s cleaning up as well.  The steps up to the top were a thing last year, and this year I’m dabbling in finally planting things which might do well on the slope.  Also all the scrap rocks from construction on the addition became little square plinths? which looked kind of unfinished until I found a few concrete pavers to top them off with.  Stone would have been ideal but $adly that couldn’t happen so the cheap concrete had to step in.  I’m quite pleased that I can finally put pots on top and have them sit somewhat level rather than look like a topsy-turvy collection of succulent pots… which will join the main planters once I clean them up a bit and decide who goes where.

Finally a level place for pots!  It’s looking fancy back here in spite of the un-mown grass, and weedy berm.

Short and get it done… the deck is up.  I started filling pots but still need to pressure wash before it’s all put together.  I rebuilt the shade canopy, that was another day of work, but still have to fix a few parts of the deck before the party.  Don’t worry the deck repairs are for aesthetics not safety 😉

Deck containers are off to a good but perhaps slow start.  A bunch of calibrachoa self-seeded from last year and all needed to be dug and potted up since I can’t possibly just let them go.

Once the deck is done all the houseplants can find their sumgo to waste.mer homes.  Many will go up there, many will go out to surround Begonia House.  I think it will be very nice if it indeed happens.

Begonia House on the side of the yard.  Right now it’s derelict but I think this weekend will breathe some summertime life into it and I’ll evict the spiders and mugwort which are trying to ruin my vibe.

That’s where the various projects are at.  Things are moving forward on all fronts except for the bank account balance which keeps ticking in the negative direction despite everything I try, but I’m sure you know that story as well!  Have a great weekend.