A Week of Flowers-Day 4

Dec3

My pink waterlily probably has a name, but having never expected much from her I didn’t pay much mind to the label. She was plunked down in a somewhat shady hole with a plastic liner and no filter, and I thought that as long as there were lily pads for the frogs it was a win. That describes the first year or two, but then construction hit the garden and the ‘pond’ became a catch basin of debris and runoff and overflow trash which is apparently more important to a waterlily than space or sun or fertilizer. Last summer was a nonstop succession of flowers with as many as four open at a time, and although it is likely the first and last year for this to happen I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The pink waterlily. A plump little piglet in her murky swamp of a pond.

Four straight days of posts. I’m proud of myself and hopefully it’s been somewhat entertaining for you as well. I’d also like to apologize for my slacking on the comments. There’s no excuse other than laziness and a love for an early bedtime but I do appreciate it and hopefully someday soon I’ll catch up!

Thanks again to my inspirational host, Cathy of Words and Herbs, and I hope you can check out her’s and other’s posts celebrating Cathy’s Week of Flowers.

A Good Soak

Jun7

A strange thing happened about two weeks ago. Without any warning or cause, the gardener here snapped out of his lazy spell. I think it started out of necessity, with plants that were purchase for next door… and weren’t all that cheap and had to be planted before the heat and forgotten waterings took their toll… but then it took on a life of its own. Weeds were pulled, lawns edged, trees pruned, plants planted. You’re probably thinking to yourself ‘well of course, I’ve been doing that since March’, but here that hasn’t been the case. Here neglect was creeping in. Here they’re hoping this new gardener stays on and the place is brought back to halfway decent shape.

The potager doesn’t look too impressive with its beds of yellowing tulip foliage, but the most rank weeds have finally been pulled and a few legitimate plantings have taken place. There’s even a nice supply of lettuce coming in as a first harvest.

I’ve noticed that the gardener’s ambition rises and falls with the weather. Last weekend was cold, and for as much as everyone else was full of complaints and misery, the gardener here was reinvigorated. “How long have you been out there? Your cheeks are freezing” was the question, and “all day” was the response. Even when the rain was pouring down the gardener was dragging out (way too many) stored bulbs, potting up (way too many) purchased caladiums, and starting (way too many) unnecessary seeds. I think the gardener knows that there are few if any empty spots to plant, but he doesn’t seem to care.

The nicer end of the potager where the gardener would often sit rather than work. ‘Purple Splash’ is finally settling in and will hopefully scale the arbor, but as of this week the gardener still doesn’t like it. He claims it’s very nice, but it’s not “beautiful”, and all roses should be beautiful or at least movingly fragrant.

Even if the gardener is getting some work done, he’s still just as easily distracted as ever.

Calycanthus x ‘Aphrodite’ is more beautiful in a sculptural way than many roses, but like ‘Purple Splash’ also lacks a decent scent. It looks like it should be wafting a fragrant cloud across the pepper and tomato plantings, but sadly the gardener smells nothing.

Roses have been a distraction, and even the lazy version of our gardener was spending a good amount of time planting the new ones and fussing over the older bushes. He misses the scents of iris season, but now when the fruity fragrance of rose drifts by it’s not as bad.

‘Westerland’ is beautiful. I love the color and am thrilled it see it settling in.

The gardener is hoping that 2021 will be his first exciting rose year since the small cuttings and bareroot plantings of the past two years are finally beginning to amount to something. I’ve told the gardener that some regular fertilizing and water would do the roses wonders and probably have them topping arbors within a year, but the gardener is stubborn on top of lazy, and the roses are raised “tough”… which you probably know isn’t a thing, it’s just an excuse for them not growing as well as they could.

The first strawberry foxglove (Digitalis mertonensis) is the one that planted itself right on top of a snowdrop clump. Foxgloves were one of my first plant fascinations btw.

Not to get distracted yet again but the foxgloves are coming, and although they don’t do well for me, even a poorly grown plant looks exceptional.

The first common foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) to survive to blooming in years has me excited, so of course I was crushed to see the wall of foxgloves a friend was enjoying this year… but if seeing nicer gardens is really discouraging I would have quit this years ago!

Of course one lone foxglove in bloom had me imagining all the amazing things the gardener could do with foxgloves so that brings me to the reason I’m enjoying rain while the rest of the country bakes under a bubble of heat. I was distracted. I was fantasizing about the latest offerings from the little Rhode Island Nursery known as Issima. They had a common D. purpurea but with cool grayish foliage and a light fuzz to it, and I hemmed and hawed over D. purpurea ssp. heywoodii long enough that it sold out (which happens rather quickly to this ’boutique’ nursery) so of course I bought other stuff instead.

So I blame indecision for the reason this post has been in progress for four days now. That and a party at our house for a dozen teen and pre-teen girls and of course other stuff. There’s always other stuff and it’s usually good, but not always.

Hope your other stuff is good this week 🙂

Around and About

Aug16

August always goes too fast and this exceptional year is no exception. I blame the puppy. Hours are spent entertaining and attending to little Biscuit’s whims, and even though I’m sure everyone in the household can hear his 4:30am whimpering, it is only the gardener who fumbles for his glasses and stumbles to the door to let him out. We enjoy the sunrise together but the conversation is entirely one sided and repetitive. “Go potty, go potty…. go potty”. Eventually the gardener gives up and heads inside for his coffee, and it’s usually then that the message clicks, and the paper towels and wet vac come out.

Stubborn little Biscuit the Yorkie

Hydrangeas are much more reliable. Even in a sleep-starved state the gardener recognizes how foolproof Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’ is, and as long as it gets some water, a springtime trim, and full sun, the show is always on for August.

Limelight hydrangea along the street. The rain from hurricane Isaias has everything looking much fresher.

Weeds are a problem when the mulch is thin but you never know what else will pop up on the bare earth. I have no idea what a hydrangea seed looks like, but apparently they happen, and if you ignore weeding long enough they can grow up and turn into something nice. They’re entirely in the wrong spot which is not as nice, but I’m sure the gardener will be right on that and have it moved within the next decade or two.

With so much green this seedling has to be a child of Limelight. Three years is all it took, and trust me, even with the neat mulch and greening crabgrass this part of the border is not typically well cared for and these still succeeded!

Hydrangea paniculata and Hydrangea arborescens bloom every year here on the new wood which grows each summer. The colors are limited to whites and pinks but considering it’s been so long since I’ve seen a flower on the big mophead hydrangeas (H. macrophylla) I don’t even remember blues and purples and miss them about as much as I miss unicorns and rational government. Maybe reliable and the tried and true are boring, but there’s only so long you can listen to how great blue hydrangeas are before you realize it’s all just hot air.

I planted ‘Annabelle’ next door and love it all summer, even now in its all-green phase. My MIL prefers the mophead hydrangeas so that’s what is growing to the right. She claims its flowers are blue although I’ve never seen the proof.

Speaking of next door, for some reason the redone potager construction has gained me the kind of street credit which the rest of the garden never did. Out of nowhere there have been landscaping questions and design ideas for next door, all of which will hopefully include pulling out one of the green mounds of hydrangea and not that much extra work for me…. hahahahahaha, that was fun to write but I know it won’t be the case. The conversations also include filling in the pool and “putting one in your own yard because it’s just too much upkeep for me”. We will see.

The potager is still relatively restrained for August. Vegetables are still visible and a few unwatered pots of succulents hopefully class it up a little… even if all I did was take two pots off the deck and drop them right into the blue planters.

I hope it’s understood that a pool will never go where the potager beds stand. The vegetables and flowers may not be as refreshing as the deep end of a pool but they’re still inspiring in other ways and probably less work. If we actually ate more vegetables that would probably help, but even if all the tomatoes become pizza and all the zucchini gets deep fried that’s a start I guess.

So far so good for the sand paths. I probably rake them more than I need to, and I’m sure next year they’ll make awesome seed beds for weeds, but today they look great, and I’ll just take today.

Since the potager is under decent control I figured it was still hot enough to clear up the mess I refer to as the compost pile. Moving mulch in the heat is fun, but moving compost adds all kinds of spiders, worms, and centipedes into the mix so in some ways it’s even better. My new policy on all things gardening is to do less, so for the compost pile this means putting less on via hiding pulled weeds and trimmings under plants, throwing anything you can onto the lawn and (eventually) mowing it up, and also using one of the raised beds in the potager as a dump for all the local trimmings and waste. Eventually the plan for the raised bed is to coat the debris with some soil from another bed and just plant on top of that. If you want to be fancy I think it’s called sheet composting or hugelkultur, but I’ll just call it a saved trip from across the yard and to the official compost.

A much tidier compost area. I won’t dare show the before photo but just consider that I found a bench, several pots, and a few sections of fence under the mess so it was definitely past time for a cleanup.

I don’t know if you noticed, but outside the compost area is a new planting of nekkid ladies, aka surprise lilies, aka Lycoris squamigeria. They were previously in the potager and after 10 years I would guess I’ve seen all of three flowers come up, so I think they like the new spot. All this in spite of the March transplanting after their foliage had already started to come up. Usually they hate transplanting and out of principle don’t even come up the next year, but six stalks in the one group and two more in another and I’m thrilled. I think they also like the deeper soil and summer shade here as well.

Lycoris squamigera looking perfectly fresh in the middle of August.

I’m hoping the other Lycoris I planted last year do nearly as good as these. They were from an excellent source, perfectly packed, and looked freshly dug but still wouldn’t humor me with a single bloom last summer. At least they sprouted this spring to prove they’re not dead, but I wouldn’t mind a few flowers on top of that… especially since other gardeners are already showing off their plantings in full amazing bloom.

The orange surprise lily, Lycoris sanginea.

So besides finding surprise lilies in the compost area I also found some surprise pots, all nicely filled with potting soil and ready to be planted. The next step was obvious… well maybe not so obvious. In spite of the magic going on I’d had enough of the bugs and heat and humidity, so it was into the relatively cooler winter garden and its dozens of neglected cyclamen and snowdrop pots. I repotted.

The cyclamen have multiplied and are ready for fall while a few cuttings were stuck into a few pots. Look closely and you’ll see my dead New Zealand sedge. Honestly I still can’t be sure if it’s dead or not so I’m not sure how that qualifies as ornamental… but you know…

Adding pots to a garden which already has plenty of pots sounds a lot like just adding work, but it’s really not. In a bit of foresight two years ago I bought enough fittings for a second drip irrigation setup. Last year I found an irrigation timer on clearance. Last week I put it all together and opened up the whole side of the house for shade containers. Hmmmmmm 🙂

The dripline came just in time for Brugmansia ‘Miner’s Claim’. The dead stick from last year has finally put on enough growth to need regular watering in order to continue looking uber awesome. I don’t even care if I ever see another lame pink flower on this thing… although I won’t complain.

Shade containers will be a new thing and I’m sure I’ll be complaining about them by the fall. I’m going to start nosing around for free brugmansia cuttings immediately either by gift or stealth, so let this be your fair warning when I invite myself over for a garden tour. Under the cover of social distancing I’ll try to behave myself but I make no guarantees, only after the fact confessions.

Oh look. There’s already a potted camellia ‘Ashton’s Supreme’ ready to move into the new container garden. I think these are flower buds forming for the autumn so of course I’m super excited it’s forming flowers under my care rather than dying.

Besides being a poor garden guest I’m also starting to go on too long so let me wrap things up. Elephant ear from edge of Florida parking lot. A weed down there but here it barely survives each winter, even when I try to pamper the tiniest bits of life indoors under lights. Sometimes I’ve resorted to dumping out the remains and hoping the water and heat of summer bring some life back to the tiniest bit of living root, and so far it’s worked, but I dread the winter when I finally lose this treasure.

Someone is loving the heat and a steady IV drip of miracle grow and water this summer. I just potted up another offset for the new shade garden.

This potted elephant ear (I’m not sure of the exact species so lmk if you have an idea) looks deceptively tame in the photo, so let me assure you it’s pretty big.

I love the wrinkles and swirls of green in each leaf. At four feet long I still expect them to get a little bigger still before frost.

Oddly enough I didn’t even plant the tubers of the regular elephant ears because… well because I’m fickle. These are bigger and less floppy, so I guess that’s the reason.

The sun containers. Watered via timer every 12 hours and all I have to do is sit with a coffee in the morning, and an adult bev in the evening. I hate watering so this is the only thing which keeps them going.

Don’t let an empty compost bin and a few repotted plants give you the impression I’m just a flurry of activity and hard labor. I’m not. It’s been two weeks since my last post and there’s only so long you can cruise on the high of a mulch job completed, so this is probably the least I could do. Oh, I also mowed the lawn. Go me. At least there’s been no pressure to do nonsense like painting or new closet shelves. The dog has been a handy distraction for things like that since I wouldn’t want to wake the little beast with hammering and stuff.

Hope you have a great week.

The Potager 2.0

Jul17

When the pandemic first came to our shores and we were faced with a surprise vacation and then a transition to work at home, the non-commuting lifestyle left me with what seemed like a mountain of extra time to spend in the garden. ‘Let me get some building materials delivered’ I said, and ‘build a few raised beds’ I thought. The boss gave her approval and things began to move. Slowly. A thousand things had to be moved first, plans needed to come together, but I think it’s finally at a point where I can show it off a bit, if only to get it over with rather than build some unwarranted, over-blown hype.

The front entrance to the potager. A slight downward slope ends at the pergola, the beds are leveled into the slope, and the blocks will hopefully help with keeping the lawn edge neat just in case we get enough rain for it to grow again.

The first dilemma was choosing lumber. As usual I went with cheap and selected eight foot pressure treated 2x4s, but it wasn’t all that easy. Naturally rot resistant cedar or redwood would have been nice, larger boards would have been nicer, but the costs were way higher than I was comfortable with so it was a compromise between expensive all natural, or cheaper with a vague possibility of copper leaching… well I say that but actually the compromise was lower the cost or it’s not going to happen…

Overall I hope to get at least ten years out of the wood because although it’s pressure treated it’s not rated for ground contact. Eventually it will rot, but the treatment should give at least a few years more than untreated, and funny story… the pandemic caused a pressure treated lumber shortage, so we will see exactly how much faster au naturel rots, since all I could find for the last two beds was untreated wood.

The view from the trampoline. We are into the annual zucchini tsunami and each morning a few more line up on the counter. Someday I hope to level this bottom part of the garden. The beds are built level but the grass paths still need some fill to bring them up.

Besides being cheap with materials, I also got a little greedy with the bed space vs path width. Between beds is about two feet, and even if it were wider there was still no way (add laziness to the growing list of personal faults) that I was going to wrestle a lawnmower between each bed. Enter the wonderfully gritty sand pile. I knew I didn’t want lawn, wood chips need replacing (and why add organic matter to your paths when it should be going onto your beds?), bare landscape fabric is ugly (and violates my no new plastic policy), so I wanted it to be something inorganic and long lasting (and yet again, cheap). So I grabbed my face mask and was off to the quarry to look at stone dust, crusher run, and sand. Surprisingly the sand looked perfect. It was sharp enough to pack down well for a solid footing, and coarse enough (up to about 1/8″ particles) to not wash away in a heavy rain. So far I love it, and in the future I might even get sand to top off beds rather than buying ‘topsoil’ that turns to rock the minute it dries.

I removed the grass from a few of the pathways and used the turf to fill the beds. Sand paths will hopefully be low maintenance with great drainage, and if worse comes to worse I can just dig them over and replant grass.

Cinder blocks are also cheap, and at about $1.20 a piece I lugged a few carloads home to use as edging and to form a little paved area under the pergola. So far I like it. It’s an honest concrete look rather than concrete pavers trying to pass off as something fancier. Of course stone would have been another nice permanent edging but again spending a bunch of money was not part of my pandemic response.

With the beds built and the lawn edged and sand down on the paths I was super surprised to see that I still had leftover sand. I tried to calculate for extra sand for an additional pathway up alongside the fence, but to actually have a plan that worked out was a little bit of a surprise. After years of collecting and lugging random stones I could finally use them to line a sand trail that gives access to the back of the pond.

Finishing the pond is still on the to-do list but for now I think it looks good enough. The shallow end is in constant use as a birdbath, so it’s really more of a watering hole than a pond…

The pond path is surprisingly popular with the kids and our little garden bunny. I’ve caught both zipping back and forth, and in the morning there are all kinds of footprints in the sand.

Pond path’s entrance. Yes those are mostly weeds. Weeding went onto the back burner as I lugged load after load of lumber, blocks, and sand.

To sum it all up I love the new beds and I feel like there’s so much more useable space with it set up this way. I have a total of eleven 4×8 beds and for now it’s all vegetables and I’m trying not to give in to the temptation of planting flowers… except for the one bed which I gave over to chrysanthemums… but my resolve may dissolve since I still need room for phlox and tulips. At least I’m trying to be firm with the usual sunflowers and verbena bonariensis seedlings. -for the record I’m not sure why I needed a bed of chrysanthemum, but after years of neglecting them and abusing them in horribly weedy, infertile, and dry sites, I thought it was about time to do them right. We will see.

Yes, more weeds. The weeds exploded with last week’s rain and this bed was the next one to need attention.

With everything under control in the potager, there was still enough sand to upgrade the dirt ditch of the rain garden with another nice, stone-lined, sand path. If you recall, last summer this area received a small paved area and path with all the leftover flat stones liberated from the industrial park construction. It was nice, but I didn’t like the dirt gully which channeled the runoff, and when I don’t like something I kind of neglect it, and when you neglect a garden the weeds send out an alert, and when they all show up to answer the call things go downhill fast. The weeds are out now, the sand is down, and although I’m short on rocks along the one side, the other doesn’t look bad at all. We will see how it holds up. If you look closely at the paving joints you might notice the joints are neatly filled with sand rather than dirt, and both of those are a pain to keep weed free when all you have is this narrow joint that the roots can hold onto. Truth is I threw some leftover polymeric sand in there, and when you wet the sand the polymer sets up and solidifies it. I don’t know how it will hold up but hopefully I’ll get at least a few years of no-weeds-in-the joints enjoyment. The weeds will be fine elsewhere though, so if you’re worried don’t be.

Another step forward I hope. Mulch would be nice now.

That’s where we’re at going into the weekend. The weather forecast is promising another heat wave so I’m not worried about mowing, but watering will be on my mind. I don’t like watering but it does beat lugging cinderblocks and digging turf so I’ll keep the complaining to a minimum.

Traditionally I usually meet the hottest days of summer with a pile of mulch in the driveway. Hmmm. I hope you have a more relaxing weekend 😉

A Project For the Pandemic

Mar29

I’m extremely lucky. Both my wife and I are able to work from home, while this health crisis spreads across the land and attacks our healthcare system, and our children are home here with us. Our immediate family can afford to do the same. Only a few of our closer friends are on the front lines as healthcare providers, and the area we live in has yards, streets to walk, and woods to wander. I wish it were the same for everyone.

The first pasqueflower (Pulsatilla vulgaris) opens. I love their furry sweaters and the saturated color the cool weather brings on.

It’s not though, and the beautiful, early spring is a bit surreal alongside the news headlines and overall concern. So we stick to home and the garden.

Blue Scilla siberica and the red tones of Corydalis solida seedlings have officially taken over the front foundation beds.

Working from home frees up about two hours worth of commute each day, and with lunch and breaks it easily adds up to an extra three hours of spare time each weekday. Sometimes I even stretch my lunch a little, but please don’t tell.

The potager is getting raised beds. The old edging is coming out and the new layout is being planned. I have no idea where all the soil to fill raised beds will come from but I’m sure something will work out.

After an ordering fiasco and delivery disaster the wood for the beds has arrived. Normally I’d make a thousand trips to piecemeal and nickel and dime the entire project, but for once I planned a bit and will hopefully have most of what I need. We will see. As projects go it’s fairly simple and straightforward except for two things. (1) The site is not all that level, and (2) Thousands of plants are in the way.

The zucchini and gooseberry bed…. but then underplant the berries with colchicums. Edge the beds with chrysanthemums. Tulips came in with the compost. Daffodils will die down before the zucchini needs room. The rose is so small… oh I need a spot for these snowdrops…

Common sense would say dig it all under and buy a few new bulbs in the fall. This was considered, and then considered again, but of course by Thursday I decided to save as much as I can. How can I dig under tulips just a few weeks away from blooming? Things are now being moved if possible, or just plain potted up with hopes for a miracle in space becoming available.

The front border starting to look less sloppy and more flowery.

The potager is going to be a mess for a while so I’ll leave you off with a view of the front street border. The mowed up debris of last year is starting to become less noticeable as spring bulbs come up green and burst into flower. Surely some good must come of this.

Have a great week, and all the best.

Happy Fourth!

Jul4

Summer is here and so is that wonderful humidity and heat. Oddly enough we’ve also been getting rain-free days, and when I think back to last week there were actually a number of absolutely beautiful days, which I swear did not exist last year. Suddenly I love gardening again and even though I actually had to water a few things (for the first time in months) things are generally pretty good. I’m thinking today’s Independence day celebrations should be quite excellent, even if we don’t have tanks rumbling along in the local parade or fighter jets buzzing the church picnics.

Welcome to the festivities, and welcome to the bougainvillea hanging basket which was irresistibly priced at a local greenhouse this spring.

Yesterday evening the yard cleanup was as far as it was going to get, and the light was low, so I was able to get a few decent pictures taken before retiring to the porch with a cold drink and ceiling fan.

I think these spikes are the curious spires of the rusty foxglove (Digitalis ferruginea) which have been biding their time for three years before actually blooming. I also think they will pass on after blooming so we’ll see about any reseeding for next year.

There’s a lot of altitude this summer with tall plants reaching for the sky. The rusty foxgloves are topping out at just under six feet which is not bad at all since I do like wandering around with my plants rather than looking down at them.

Digitalis ferruginea? I planted a couple different kinds of foxgloves a few years ago, and to my un-botanical eye many look quite similar.

Usually the fuzzy leaved verbascums (mullein) are my high altitude stars but this year I have a Canada lily (Lilium canadense) which has taken it upon itself to reach for the sky. Before slouching back down to my height, it was measuring in at just over the seven foot mark, and it wouldn’t have been the worst idea to tie in a stake to keep it up there.

Lilium canadense, a native to the Eastern woodlands of N . America, and probably something that would be more common if there were less deer.

Last year this fellow was barely half the height with just two or three blooms, but this is a lily which loves steady moisture, and trust me it had moisture galore last year.

Love the speckled insides, and the flowers are bringing some nice floral fireworks up to deck height.

A sibling of this plant just a few feet away has decided to focus on multiplying, and although the stalks are only about half the height there are quite a few little sprouts coming up here and there around the main plants.

This one has slouched into the arms of a cutleaf sumac. I think these are some pretty elegant flowers, but honestly, can you think of any unattractive lily?

Other robust plants around the garden include some soft yellow hollyhocks which I’m hoping can avoid the rust attacks which did in last year’s planting. I think this is Alcea rugosa, the Russian hollyhock, and although the color is limited to yellow it’s hopefully a start in finding a hollyhock which can grow and bloom in this garden without losing every last leaf to a rusty mess of diseased foliage. Word is there are other rust-resistant forms out there, and I think it’s not the worst idea to give a few more a try 🙂

The Russian hollyhock (Alcea rugosa… I think). A little yellowing on the leaf tips, so it’s not entirely happy, but at least it still has leaves which wasn’t the case last year.

Things are still pretty short in the tropical garden but at least I finally have it planted, edged, and mulched (and mostly weeded). The mulch is all lawn clippings raided from the piles dumped in the woods so today it’s kind of smelly, but hopefully that fades away as it dries out a bit. The cannas and elephant ears love this mulch. Between the heat and the nutrients which wash out of the grass they should really take off now… assuming my neighbors haven’t overdone it with the weed killer which could be hitchiking in with the clippings (although I don’t think they’ve been spreading anything around lately).

Mostly edged and mulched, and this part of my lawn is obviously not heavy on the weedkiller. There’s more than enough clover, and if you could eat the clover little bunny please do so and give my scrubby birch a break from the nibbling (the birch is the clump of well-pruned leaves to the right of the rose, now covered with chicken wire).

I may try and tackle a little more mulching and weeding this morning before it gets too hot and sweaty and the pool lures me away. We’ll see. In the meantime I know for sure I’ll be admiring the Regal lilies which are flowering fantastically this week, and are filling the whole backyard with that slightly overpowering scent of summer.

A good year for lilies. Lilium regale and the first of the garden phlox in the potager.

I like the lilies. They’re remarkably easy and fast from seeds and these are just the ones which survived a late frost earlier in the year. If all would have gone according to plan there would have been about twice as many, but hopefully next year the ones which froze to mush will return. Plans may be overrated anyway. None of the plans included the dark purple ‘Lauren’s Grape’ opium poppy which reseeded from last year’s far more pathetic plantings, and if the plan to dig up tulips worked out I’m sure these would have been lost.

The potager in early July. A little neglected, but holding up regardless with lilies, phlox and poppies.

So if you have plans to enjoy the holiday I hope they work out well, and if they don’t I hope things come together even better, and if today is just Thursday rather than a holiday, well then the weekend is approaching for you as well. In any case here’s to a beautiful day!

Back to Work

Aug1

The rain last week did wonders for the garden and it’s become as lush as last year. Lush is sometimes code for overgrown, so I spent some productive time trimming and weeding this weekend and I’m happy to say it appears to have paid off. With pictures taken at precisely the right moment, from just the right angle, within hours after the lawn was mowed and edged, the yard finally looks nice. I guess it’s about time considering we’re about four months into the growing season.

The lawn cut and edged. It looks almost parklike, just ignore the yellow spots… the kids were playing with a metal detector and searching for treasure in the turf…

I’ll try not to dwell on all the flaws I see. The front border has much less color from annuals this year because of beetle attacks and a dry spell, but there’s enough which has come along regardless. From the street side it’s really filled in, the usual perennials and random sunflower make a nice barrier between us and the road.

The border does its own thing along the street with just an occasional whacking back when things get out of hand.

From the lawn side there’s also a good amount of perennial color, but not as much as I’d like. I do prefer my plantings on the brighter side 🙂

This picture is 100% showing off the lawn. It’s a rare day when a well watered, green, freshly cut, neatly edged, lawn shows up on this blog.

Speaking of too much color, it’s not an official policy but in general I don’t have many daylilies in the garden. I don’t like the way the leaves on so many of them look all beat up by the end of the year and for that reason got rid of most of them. That may be a-changin’ though. I spotted this one next door and there’s a good chance I may rationalize an emergency dividing, so I can sneak a few pieces over onto my side of the property line.

Orange and pink. This might be just what my border needs… or it might be one more piece of evidence in the case against any good taste in my garden.

I’ll have to be sure I don’t give in to the temptation of bringing a few bright daylilies into the tropical border. It’s supposed to be all big leaves and bright colors thanks to explosive, non-hardy southern plants, not steady reliable things like daylilies.

A late start means the dahlias are only just now starting to flower, plus an unusually lazy May meant three or four were all that ever got planted. Maybe less will be more this year…

The top part of the tropical border is again nearly overwhelmed by 8 foot tall sunflowers among other things. This year I thought for sure I’d have the upper hand after pulling nearly all of them up but of course with more space the remaining plants grew even bigger. I guess I could have worse problems.

At least the elephant ears look tropical.

The lawn isn’t the only thing enjoying some maintenance love. I pulled out the hedge clippers and started doing a little trimming and was able to re-meatball all the lumps of yew along the house. I don’t completely mind trimming hedges, but rounding off the same yews every year just to have the same yews rounded off every year seems incredibly pointless, so by the time I got to the big one at the end I was more than a little bored. We’ll have to see where this ends up.

Maybe I can call my yew balls ‘topiary’ now. Of course I have yet to clean up the trimmings or get a ladder to reach the top…

Out back the potager is particularly lush. I’ve been relentlessly pulling sunflower, verbena, persicaria, and amaranth seedlings but plenty remain. Through July I still pretend to be the one in charge, but by August I lose the urge. From here on things will be getting messier and messier, with all kinds of halfway attractive flowers sprouting up and taking over as the phlox fade or the vegetables are picked.

It’s phlox season, and each day far too much time is spent checking them out.

I do like my phlox, but experience has shown they don’t like me. The list of named varieties which have perished in this garden is pretty embarrassing, so of course we won’t talk much about that, and hopefully more observant readers won’t notice that I again spent a decent amount of money on new ones earlier this spring. They’re not dead yet which is a good sign I think.

A mix of seedling and named varieties of tall garden phlox (Phlox paniculata). To my eye gold and pink do not mix well… in fact I hate the mix… but I need marigolds and I need phlox, so there you go.

From further away the phlox look colorful at least. Close up the foliage looks abused and there are plenty of other issues, but the flowers keep coming, and it makes me wonder if they think this is their last hurrah before they kick the bucket. I hope not, but I’m not going to fool myself into thinking they like it here.

I feel like it’s a requirement to grow marigolds in your vegetable garden, even if it’s so fancy that you call it a potager. Sorry about the white buckets littering the view, but this photo is to prove that there really are vegetables in here.

One last phlox photo. I wonder if they’d like me more if I dug up a whole new bed and devoted it to even more phlox and more new phlox? A few more reds would be nice and how much room do a few tomatoes need anyway?

I definitely need more phlox, and I also won’t rule out bigger clumps of the good ones like this white seedling. They’re native plants by the way, so maybe this is helping make America great again.

I’m sure by September I’ll be wishing for fewer phlox and more colchicums. Maybe. Hopefully it’s not chrysanthemums though since I’m this close to yanking most of them out in spite of the fact I needed bunches of them just a few years ago. I hope not everyone is as fickle as I am.

Happy August and have a great week!

Around Back

Jul3

It’s been a wonderful spring with reliable rain, even temperatures, and no extreme weather. This is enough to spoil a gardener and make him forget the usual drought and plague which usual hit about this time of year. Delphinium would be my poster child for weather gone wrong, and in a normal year would lay in a storm beaten heap well before the end of June.

The delphinium this year have been exceptional. Even though this photo is a few days old they’re still gracing this corner of the porch with two foot long trusses of (still upright) bloom.

So I couldn’t help but gloat a little over the delphinium, but the real point to this post is to show a little of the backyard and hopefully impress someone with how busy I’ve been. There’s a whole other garden back there and sometimes my limited attention span never makes it past the Tuesday view of the front street border 😉

First stop is the tropical garden alongside the South side of the house. Our neighbor has stopped commenting about the “black, dead eyes’ which she sees every time she looks out the kitchen window. I’m guessing she’s either finally lost her soul to the Queen of the Prairie statue or she’s too distracted by the overwhelming awesomeness of the ‘Black Forest’ rose.

Once into the back yard the most prominent feature is the kid’s play set. It may look romantically functional in photos, but in reality it’s become too weak and shaky, and not quite what 9 and 11 year olds look for in outdoor entertainment.

Nine years of noble service but at this point I’m worried a kid will come crashing down through a weak floorboard.

An executive decision was made to retire the play set.

The end of an era. I remember opening the carton on the day we bought it and thinking, mmmm all cedar… some day this is going to make a cozy bonfire… I guess that day has finally come.

Between ripping down the old set and figuring out what to do with the site, several weeks passed. Another executive decision determined that the budding gymnast needed a bar to do acrobatics off of, so off to the internet. In the meantime summer came.

The stewartia tree is fantastic this year and surprisingly enough the native bumblebees are as thrilled with this Japanese (or Korean, or Chinese… not really sure) tree’s flowers as I am. You can see a bumblebee butt sticking out of the middle flower.

While working out the swing project (which as expected became much more complicated than it should have been) I also tried to triage the vegetable garden and back flower beds. For as wet and cool as the spring was, the phlox came up terrible this year. Spider mites, stunted plants, missing clumps… I blame miserable soil prep and last summer’s drought, but who knows. I did finally fertilize, and things appear to be turning, but as I realize once again how great they should be, I kind of regret not taking better care of them.

Phlox ‘blue spot’ is one which did get a little extra care. I couldn’t ignore this one, I just moved it onto the list of favorite phlox… which isn’t as impressive as you’d think since it includes almost all the phlox I have!

Even though the phlox patch (aka vegetable garden, aka potager) is really just an overdone example of gardening gone wrong, it only takes one amazing flower to make it all right. Some Regal lily (Lilium regale) seedlings from a few years back are big enough to flower and I love them. The flowers are nice enough in themselves but in addition to color, they perfume the entire potager with a heavy scent of summer which reminds me of gardenias and the tropics. Too much for an enclosed place, but in the late afternoon, out in the garden, perfect.

Regal Lily in full bloom. I would qualify them as ‘easy’ from seed, just as easy as all the other “volunteers” which fill the bed. A less generous eye would say lily in a weed-patch but as long as the weeds flower…

While the garden slowly comes together, the new swing set also rises. An idea comes to mind, no real reason why it shouldn’t work, new parts, wrong parts, returned parts, and a whole lot of sweaty digging while the price tag goes up and up.

An industrial swing which can even handle the occasional daring adults. Once it all came together it wasn’t that bad, the real work was removing the gravel, filling with dirt and sod dug from elsewhere, and of course digging a new planting bed 🙂

As the old swing went down, the annual ‘cut that damn grass it looks horrible and it’s full of ticks and don’t you care about the children’ discussion took place. In an attempt to distract naysayers and define the area I nearly killed myself moving a few mini boulders over to define the edge of the meadow. I like it and of course think it looks even better, but as for other opinions… I’ll let you know as soon as we’re back on speaking terms.

End of June meadow. Daisies ending, rudbeckia and butterfly weed coming on strong, but I’m not sure if the aspen saplings will stay or go.

To be honest bugs do abound in the meadow. There are fireflies, butterflies, crickets and bees galore, as well as visitors of the cottontail type.

Eastern cottontail rabbit. They do damage, but over the season it’s still much less than a single deer or woodchuck could do in one night. I have a soft spot for the bunnies, and have been known to carry on conversations with them, so I guess their company is worth the beheaded broccoli and mowed down lettuce.

While I was trying to figure out how the old swing set could so quickly collapse and be outgrown, it’s beginning to sink in that it’s the actual years which are ticking away. It’s already been nine years since we moved to this house.

A backyard view. Nine years ago only lawn spread across the yard and up to the house.

But you really can’t do anything other than enjoy the ride. We now have a cute little swing set for relaxing afternoon entertainment and it will hopefully provide many years of fun.

It took them all of ten minutes to figure out how much more fun jumping is compared to more sedate back and forth swinging. As of tonight no bones have been broken so let’s hope that luck holds.

The pond is next. It’s been a ball-trapping, mud-slopping, weed-filled pit for more years than I care to admit, and is absolutely overdue for a detox. Every year I say the same, but I hope that once the potager is weeded, and the new swingset bed planted, and a truckload of bark mulch spread, and daffodils dug, and out-of-control compost pile reclaimed… I think then I’ll start on the pond. Maybe.

Have a great week!

Getting Roots in the Ground Again

Feb18

2016/17 been a remarkably mild winter in this corner of Pennsylvania, and although February usually brings us some of our harshest cold and winter storms, this year it’s going out with a whimper. For a few days I won’t complain but beyond that I can’t promise anything. March has a history of big snow-dumps and hopefully if they do come they’re more picturesque than they are damaging, and hopefully this quirk of a winter is also not some dark prequel to an even worse global warming future.

Without a solid slate-cleaning this winter I’m a little lost heading into the 2017 gardening season. It all still seems so ‘last year’ so I suppose I’ll use that as my excuse for not putting out the usual bored with the snow, don’t want to face the cold, winter time flashback posts, but let me at least try and get this one post out before I’m lost outside again searching for spring sprouts. It goes back to 2002 when the ignorance of youth thought it would be a good idea to buy a house, lose a job, and get engaged all in the same two months.

Our diamond in the rough.

Before I get too distracted with the story I want to point out that a normal first impression of our little valley usually dates it at around 20 years behind the rest of the country. It’s a region who’s boom time began at the tail end of the 1700’s with the discovery of vast deposits of anthracite coal; the cleanest, hardest, and highest carbon coal out there, and the fuel which powered the economic and manufacturing development of this entire region. For about 100 years we were riding high but it was a one horse show, and by the 1950’s the horse was definitely showing its age. Deep mining had shifted to strip mining and the whole region went into a kind of long term hibernation of fleeing youth and aging residents. Our house is an example of the ‘build it quick for housing’ phase and was probably built around 1910 as cheap two family housing for miners. After decades of rough living it was probably worth our $24,000 purchase price.

100 years of history and the yard didn’t even have a peony or daffodil. Gardening was confined to an overgrown privet hedge which looms to the right and a single mass of lilacs growing alongside a decaying shed.

I optimistically brought all the potted plants over from my former apartment balcony and then later watched them freeze as first the plumbing and then heat and finally electricity were pulled out and replaced. In case it’s not obvious from the photos or purchase price the house was in horrible condition, so much so that when the realtor’s odd girlfriend took her small dog into the house and allowed it to pee on the kitchen doorjamb it barely raised an eyebrow. I guess we were too distracted by the rotted floor boards, cobbled home repairs, and ‘evidence’ of vermin infestation.

That fall I planted daffodils, and in between gutting the house and piecing together scraps for a rabbit hutch, put in the first patch for gardening and trimmed back the near side of the privet. oh yeah, and actually transplanted grass so that I had at least one nice strip of lawn to walk on.

As I’m very fond of saying, ignorance is bliss, and for several months the economic realities of the newly unemployed demanded that I just “polish and put a shine on shit” and hopefully have a resale value once the journey was done, but a former girlfriend now fiancée had different ideas.

I have no idea why I had to have a waterlily even when I didn’t have a running toilet, but there it is. Until the next dumpster arrives, what better use is there for a 1960’s avocado green bath tub?

After several months of basement and utility renovations the friend who’s a contractor is traded in for the actual deal. We’re into new territory now and although I can’t pay my labor in cases of beer anymore there is progress. Unfortunately real contractors can’t be bothered with sensibly small attic dormers, they prefer “it’s cheaper to rip it down and build solid walls” and so we did.

About a year later. Might as well add a second floor while you’re at it.

So here we were taking a two family home (which likely housed close to a dozen people at one time), tripling it in size, and making it just large enough for the two of us.

Looks quaint and country, but keep in mind that a freight rail line runs just behind the trees, and only a few years ago a garbage truck collapsed into the road when an old mine shaft gave way.

Still unemployed, and now enrolled in school (again) the ballooning “don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of the kids”, pricetag finally scared me off the very addictive drug of contractor help. With windows in and siding set to go on we cut the cord, buttoned up the exterior and moved into the basement… and found out what it is to live on love 🙂

Building from the bottom up. What were we thinking!? In hindsight it’s hard to believe all of this was the product of me in the basement with a few sheets of graph paper and a lot of ‘yeah, I think I want another door here and window there… and oh, probably another bathroom’.

Obviously there wasn’t all that much free time for gardening, but you know how it goes with all work and no play…

Of course there’s not much to the garden in October, but the privet has bounced back from its trim back and another bed is in. Not really a garden design, but these beds take care of the pathetic grass which it replaced. Please note the ever popular burn pit where most of the old house’s lumber was illegally burned.

Once we moved into the house the next three years are kind of foggy. A full kitchen came first, a completed first floor, a new job, a master bedroom, a new baby, a completed second floor… finally an attic loft. Slowly the garden inched along as well.

Behind the garage became a new garden spot where iris divisions were welcomed. You can’t beat the generosity of other gardeners for filling in bare patches.

To know me is to know I have a slight leaning towards the tropical flair. I love how you can get a massive show in just a few short weeks.

The usual leftovers and scraps which are my constant struggle. Someday I’ll get them under control… or move to a new house 😉

The fun of a new garden is you have room for nearly everything and don’t yet have the baggage of too many beds gone to weeds, invasive plants, or “shouldn’t have put that there” issues.

I am a bit of a creature of habit. Ten years later and I’m still growing all of these tropical and tropical looking goodies. -and I still like too much red

Another big plus for this house was that pretty much everything we did was a blessing -considering the property’s history of troublesome kids, giant rats, and overflowing trash piles. Construction debris, dirt piles, unfinished projects, were all overlooked in this neighborhood where it’s not unusual for people to live and die in the house they were born in.

The front garden never really had time to come together. I would have loved a small picket fence or something.

We were on a different track though. Memories were built, lessons learned, and dreams ignited but when it came down to it this wasn’t more than a stepping stone. Five years into it (just as the last big projects were finished) we decided to buy the house of my wife’s grandparents. It was an unexpected decision based mostly on emotion, but in the long run we knew this would be short term.

A very helpful addition to the garden. From the start he was practically an expert in finding worms and digging up new transplants.

So that spring I focused on grassing over a few beds, moving a ton of plants to the new house, and getting the house set to go on the market.

The new view out the back door. I wish I had better pictures of the seating area carved out of the back slope, but as usual I was distracted by lounging out on the deck.

So that was what brought us to the new house. In what has become our normal mode of operation for life changing events, that spring we were hit with a tsunami of the house selling in three days, a baby arriving a month early, a job lost, a car totaled, all made even more fun when you decide a few changes to the “new” house might be necessary… but we survived and it really puts the panic of a late frost or snapped iris stalk in perspective.

Don’t worry, we shall return to our normal garden updates next post. I’ve just taken a look outside and the snowdrops are coming and the snow is melting and as soon as 2017 is off and running I won’t give a darn about years gone by until winter rolls around again. Hopefully the weather is looking up for you as well!

Gratuitous phlox

Jul13

I don’t have nearly as many of the tall garden phlox (Phlox paniculata) as I’d like. The photos are misleading without the big picture so here’s the big picture with a wider view of the potager (complete with freshly trimmed hedge). A couple (4) in the front bed, and a dozen or so in the back bed is not a lot of phlox.

Mid July and most of the garden phlox are nearing their peak. Can I call them a favorite flower? I feel like I do that to something new every other week.

We’re just going from one phlox to the next here. No commitment.

Phlox ‘dorffreude’… I think that roughly translates to town’s joy?

A few cooler nights have deepened some of the colors and although I don’t know the names for several of these it doesn’t matter as far as enjoying them goes.

This random seedling gets a pink tint when the temperatures drop.

But the dry weather has them all a little miserable, and unless they get watered every few days the leaves and flowers wilt and the spider mites procreate.

Another random seedling which opens pink and then fades. Note how bushy the plants are… that’s thanks to this year’s frequent deer, woodchuck, and rabbit nibbling.

The next few days promise more dry, clear skies with temperatures into the 90’s (32+C) and the garden will be on its own as we go off traveling.

The dark purple ‘Nicky’, starry eyed ‘Laura’ and an unknown salmony red passed on from a friend. A threesome of color.

Of course there’s always the pretty yet troubled one. Phlox ‘Brigadier’ has a great reddish color yet doesn’t bloom well, is losing stems, is a magnet for mites, and resents every dry spell… but I can usually just get her a drink and she’s ready to go.

Phlox ‘Brigadier’ with ‘Cabot’s Pink’ in the back.

I guess when you’re jumping from one phlox to the next you’re bound to run into problems but I’ll admit I’m a phlox addict and don’t really want to change. When I was out at the nursery last week there were about six new ones which I had a chance at and they all looked like a fun time (even if I already have a few waiting at home) but I said no. It will be a hard enough time staying faithful this winter when it’s just me and the computer and the great online phlox source, Perennial Pleasures. They’re like a Craigslist for hooking up with new phlox and I’m sure I’ll click on something I shouldn’t.

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

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