Well that Sure Escalated…

Aug2

Sometimes I’m stubborn and set in my ways, determined to make something work and prove I’m right. Other times I can turn on dot, easily distracted and influenced, and just one idea can derail an entire plan. About three weeks ago I went to a daylily farm, and even talked to a daylily breeder. I bought one. I went to another farm. suddenly I found myself going back to the first farm and getting a few more and now suddenly I like daylilies. Hmmmm… did not see that coming…

Some Brookside daylilies which have been added to the garden. It’s nice to have something green in the yard.

My mother might point out that at one point, maybe thirty years ago, someone planted dozens of daylilies alongside the garage and some of those clumps still remain today, but that was a long time ago. I thought we were past that.

The front border still looking a bit fried. Recent rains have greened up some of the lawn weeds, but only the rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) looks completely unbothered by the dry weather.

I guess not. Plenty of good people like daylilies, so what’s the harm in adding a few? With the garden still a depressing shade of sun-faded khaki anything which can shrug off the dry heat can only be a good thing.

Purple gomphrena and angelonia don’t mind the heat, but do need regular watering to keep this fresh and bright. I think it’s worth it.

No one even noticed a few new daylilies, but they did notice the water bill jumping up last month. I admitted that maybe it was the garden causing this, but also pointed out the garden-fresh vegetables were surely worth it. Fifty dollars for a couple zucchini and some lettuce, thankfully there was no cost to benefits analysis done to double check my logic.

Regular watering helped stave off the worst of the baking in this end of the front border, but even without watering I suspect ‘Blue Yonder’ agapanthus would still look unbothered. I’m so glad the bulldozer missed this one, although my seedlings and several other things in this bed were lost.

Triage by watering hose was saving a few things but fortunately I went and scheduled a camping trip for last week, and this brought in a nice storm which actually soaked in a little.

Cestrum is remarkably easy from seed and only grew faster in the heat. At first I was underwhelmed by the small lemony flowers of the first seedling (in my hand), but a couple weeks later, other seedlings began to open up larger orange flowers, similar to their ‘Orange Peel’ mother, and it was all good.

A nice soak, cooler temperatures, and then another surprise shower this past weekend have made all the difference in the garden. No more wilted plants making me feel guilty at every turn and the lawn even has a green haze to it, although it will still be a while before I need to fire up the lawnmower again. I think this just-in-time rain will also help the little tree frog tadpoles immensely. They’re just starting to sprout legs and leave the pond, and I don’t think venturing out into a desert would have been the best thing for my little babies.

There’s a big range to the tadpoles with some already out and about, others well into leg-growing, and a couple still just fat little polliwogs.

I’ve been coming across baby tree frogs in a few spots around the garden. Unlike the gray adults, the babies are a bright green with a dark mask around their eyes.

Baby gray tree frogs (Hyla versicolor) have a leafy green color while the adults take on more of a bark/lichen gray color.

My fingers are crossed that a good number of them make it.

Even the frogs like the new daylilies.

New daylilies, baby frogs, and a decent rain. It’s not perfect but it’s a good position to be in for the first week of August, and as long as no one asks how the construction is going I think it’s still better than a cold day in January.

Have a great week!

Garbage Day

Jul18

So it’s been hot and hasn’t rained more than half an inch here in the last three weeks. My “garden” has always been a little more interesting than it is beautiful, and now with things wilting and dying left and right, on top of the construction debris and damage, my yard has officially entered the trash stage. Visiting several beautiful gardens last weekend, filled with lush goodies, all artfully combined and arranged was a nice exercise, but did not help my opinion at all so earlier last week I decided to rip half of it out, mulch most of it, and try to save a few bits through the daily triage of going plant to plant with a water hose.

Lawn is not drought tolerant but rudbeckia and a few other things are. At least not everything is brown.

Maybe we’ll get lucky tonight and the storms rolling through will drop some moisture, but it’s going to take a couple days straight to get anything into the hard-baked soil and that’s not going to happen. Also the next week’s forecast is full of 90’s (32+C) so any rain tonight is more a teaser than relief.

With half the plants now ripped out, and a couple days of standing around with a water hose under my belt, the front border no longer shouts ‘save me!’ and instead just looks hot.

So plenty of people have it worse, and some people always have it worse, so please don’t feel the need to be nice and sympathetic when this kind of summer really isn’t that out of the ordinary for us. There’s still plenty of recyclables in this trash pile, and always a few treasures to pick out, such as the orien-pet lily ‘Conca d’Or which dominates the front border this week. I love everything about it this year, it’s huge, fragrant, creamy lemony, and as solid as a tree.

‘Conca d’Or’, perovskia, and some ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass doing just fine under the triage of ‘just in time’ watering.

Now faced with a garden of mostly trash, more garden visits sounds like a good idea, right? I think so, but little did I know how dangerous they can be. Some friends and I traveled up into the far reaches of Northeastern Pennsylvania this weekend to visit a daylily farm and it was a bad thing…

A perfect, Idyllic, country view of the daylily sales-field at Lambertson’s Daylilies. Mark it with a flag, pay, they’ll dig it and it’s yours… what a deadly temptation!

I’m not above taking one for the team, so when a visit to Lambertson’s Daylilys came up in conversation, I of course politely agreed. “You hate daylilies” was mentioned, and that’s kind of extreme, but I can be nice and keep my thoughts to myself when opinions vary… and try not to relentlessly steamroll people with my beliefs and opinions just like all adults should… but I’m digressing… we met for breakfast and all of us headed out for a day at the farm.

Some of the display beds coming into bloom around the house. No trash here!

I bought one. It’s planted and gets checked way too much each morning. Today I cross-pollinated a few flowers and I’m already thinking about going back to see about picking another one… or possibly two… dammit…

The mother in law’s garden bed and it also looks very non-trash. I guess I’ll have to swipe a bit of this one and add it to my new daylily adventure.

When I returned home (filled with delicious ice cream because of course we had enough sense to stop at a dairy while in farm country) I put a critical eye towards the depressingly stunted tropical garden. A daylily would look good in there.

Even with watering there’s little hope for this year’s tropical garden. I’m far too lazy and cheap to water properly and the cannas are knee-high rather than chest height.

Seriously. It’s the perfect spot for a daylily patch… bed… border… growing field 😉 The peak bloom will match pool season, and that’s when this sidewalk gets nearly all its traffic.

My selection out of the farm’s seedling patch. At Lambertson’s the seedlings grow for a number of years, the under performers are culled out and most of the good ones are just sold as un-named seedlings.

Tree lilies, daylilies… I’m sensing a theme for easing the pain of a better-for-the-pool-than-the-garden summer. Waterlilies fit right into that.

The pond is thick with debris and whatever else washes in off the construction site, but the pink water lily has never grown as lush before. The tadpoles are also doing well, and I guess a dirty pond is still better than no pond.

So it’s not all bad, unless you judge me for finally falling into the daylily trap. I was doing so good… in 20 years I think I never went over a total of five daylily plants, and no one needs to know about the other 30 years of my life and the rows of daylilies that still grow at my parent’s house. I had put that behind me.

Not daylilies, just a couple hundred bricks which I chipped the mortar off and neatly stacked so that they can sit here for decades until I finally get around to doing something with them. In the meantime I’ve camouflaged them with potted plants which I couldn’t be bothered to bring up onto the deck.

It’s just one daylily. Maybe it’s just the dry weather and heat that are getting to me. Luckily plants other than lilies are still chugging along and even enjoying the weather. All those geranium (pelargonium) cuttings from the winter garden are loving the dry, sunny days, and were a nice, cheap way to fill a bunch of planters.

Maybe a few too many geraniums on the deck.

Another potted plant which has surprised me are the rhodohypoxis bulbs. They’ve been blooming for over a month and I didn’t expect that at all. In fact they’ve grown so well I might need to divide them soon, and don’t know if now or next spring would be the better time.

Some of the rhodohypoxis pots still doing well. The large-flowered, pale pink ‘Pintado’ is by far my favorite.

Maybe I mentioned one other bulb which wasn’t doing as well as the rhodohypoxis (actually both are classified as corms, and not really bulbs). Last winter I lost about half of the caladiums I was so excited about last year summer, but that doesn’t mean the ones which made it are pitiful. A couple are awesome again, and since many are of the same sort I’ll be referring to them as some of the idiot-proof cultivars and think twice about trying new ones this year. -which is something I decided last night after closing an online order which was soooo tempting until I thought about the daylilies again-

A few caladiums coming back to life now that temperatures have warmed. I think a cold, wet spell last fall did a few of the others in, as well as not hot enough weather in June.

So that’s what’s been going on here for the last couple weeks. It’s not bad at all but the garden really is trash, and only close editing and avoiding the majority of the yard has saved this post from becoming a complete downer. There’s a new daylily though, and the pool is always refreshing, but don’t bother asking how the construction is going, and just for reference it’s midnight and the possibility for a good rain is dwindling with each hour.

All the best for those in really hot and dry weather patterns, and I hope you still all have a great week. There’s always ice cream.

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 😉

Before the Freeze

Nov17

Looking out the kitchen window this Saturday morning the sunshine is beautiful, and to be honest it was similar yesterday and I even enjoyed the ride to work because of the brilliant light. I wish we could start late every Friday, if only for the chance to remember what it’s like to have sunshine lighting the way to work rather than headlights, but it’s a rare treat this time of year. I won’t say it’s unlikely to happen again until February or March, but those familiar with the calendar and seasonal changes in day-length might already suspect that.

In spite of the sunshine there is still a bit of lingering snow from Monday’s Arctic plunge. Cold weather does that, and it’s been cold. I briefly considered a few snowy photos, but with only an inch or two it wasn’t enough to cover up all the garden’s flaws so rather lets go back to last weekend when the last bulbs and newly purchased shrubs and tree seedlings and clearance perennials and surprise plant packages and whatever else went in to the ground and the last half-hardy pots and tubers and bulbs and cuttings and offsets came indoors in one last, desperate weekend of procrastination comeuppance.

The cannas have left the garden. As part of my “new” laziness I’ve used hedge shears to chop up the canna tops and left everything in situ after the roots were dug and brought in. It looks better than before and that’s my new gardening mantra for my 50’s.

No one wants to see the mess all the tuber filled tubs and overflowing shelves of plants have created indoors so let me instead celebrate a major garden milestone. I hesitate a bit to share, because a story comes to mind which Chloris at The Blooming Garden related not so long ago, but I don’t think people hold me to as high a standard so I think I’m safe. My foggy memory seems to recall Chloris mentioning some surprise over several negative comments given regarding a newly completed project she had revealed. I expect and perhaps deserve a few less than enthusiastic observations, but her projects are always a little crazy and over the top and turn into amazing spaces, so the fact readers were able to find flaws surprised me but it gave me pause none the less. Just for the record, I know my reveal still faces an uphill battle. A lukewarm reception is expected.

Several years of neglect have left the leaky garden pond as an overgrown sludge-filled pit of lost toys and random garden waste.

I don’t have enough time to bring you up to date on what a failure this part of the “garden” has been. A more optimistic time would be 2013 when this pit was first dug, but looking back at the post(s) even then the title should have been a clue for where this would end up. >Here’s a link< Needless to say a timely article by my friend Pam at Pam’s English Cottage Garden on fall pond building reminded me that a decade is a long time to look at a muddy failure.

Deep but small meant cinder blocks for three of the four sides. Pond fabric went down first to cushion the liner.

In all I’m not sure why it took so long. The hole was already there and I didn’t really have the ambition to make it much bigger… plus the liner I had on hand… for years (oh my God that’s a whole other story) wasn’t much bigger than the hole, so it was just a matter of reshaping things and getting the blocks in.

Liner, second layer of pond fabric, position a few rocks and layer in some bags of gravel, and it already looks 90% better.

Construction began about a month ago but then it sat for a few weeks until I could figure out the edging. The back has a bit of a gravelly, sloped beach, but the sides and front are steep and unnaturally squared. I browsed around but eventually called a landscaper friend who hooked me up with some scrap and leftover stone stair treads. He said the thicker cut would look good, and he was right. I love it!

Done for the winter. I’ll likely take up all the sides, re-level and cut the stone for a proper fit next spring but for now I’m happy with it. Various footprints have already shown it to be quite popular with all the most destructive wildlife.

So in my usual tradition I’ve almost finished another project and have convinced myself that I’ll finish the rest at a future date. I may not have learned that lesson yet, but I did learn one interesting thing about my garden, that being the reasons behind my less than stellar drainage. I had assumed the layer of shale fill that surprises the shovel four to six inches down is what keeps the yard a mudpit after it rains, but surprisingly if you chip and pick your way through that, bedrock lies another six inches below. So much for the inground pool plans, and hence the reason for the pond being slightly elevated.

Some last flickers of fall color. Each passing season brings a little more winter interest.

The garden has been neglected sine last weekend. I’d like to haul a little more compost in for some last minute mulching, but all I’ve really done is order an unnecessary amount of clearance bulbs which now need to get in the ground before the frosts really set in. Maybe I’ll just hope for a warm December.

Looking towards the foundation. For some reason I really like the dried tan of the asian spicebush (Lindera glauca v. salicifolia). Thoughts?

In any case blowing off Saturday blogging and gardening and journeying down to Philly to enjoy some fall snowdrops doesn’t help my case at all. Maybe today I’ll find some motivation to get all the new jobs done.

A fat verbascum has found a niche in the foundation bed. I love verbascum in general but I hope this one is something more interesting than the plain roadside version. We’ll see next year.

Motivation through the week hasn’t even brought me outside. Late nights and cold weather can do that, but at least things look halfway decent for the winter, even if all I do is take a glance while pulling in to the driveway.

Amsonia hubrichtii next to the mailbox is showing some of the fall color it’s known for and the frozen miscanthus has fluffed up nicely. I’ll still need to chop down the miscanthus, it makes a mess when it crumbles and blows all over in February.

Another thing which may look halfway decent for the winter is the indoor winter garden. In a rare bout of preparedness I did a summertime cleaning of the room and when things started trickling indoors they actually had a place to go this year. I’m excited for it and have already spent a night in there picking pots clean, arranging plants, repotting a few things… all the unnecessary things which define the slower pace of puttering indoors.

Cyclamen confusum indoor under lights. It should be hardy but of course having it indoors is more fun, especially when you want to visit at night.

As soon as this posts I’m off to secure another batch of mulch. It’s now Sunday morning but hopefully late enough that Godless doesn’t come to mind when I’m seen filling tubs with compost behind the town hall building. I promise this will be the last of it, and it really needs to be since I should be addressing the tray of new cyclamen which may have followed me home from yesterday’s Philly trip. There will be more on that later, so for now let’s focus on the money I saved by not shipping directly and at least I didn’t buy any more snowdrops.

sorta like suburbia

more than you ever wanted to know about my garden

Category Archives: pond

Well that Sure Escalated…

Garbage Day

The Potager 2.0

Before the Freeze