Two Weeks in the Garden

This is some of what I have been seeing in my garden over the last two weeks.  Enjoy.

 The Royal Raindrops crabapple that I planted last year.  I put this in to eventually replace an old Snowdrift crabapple, though so far it looks great this season.  

Columbine that has seeded itself and gone wild in the yard.  

 Salvia that was used to replace daylilies.  Deer do not eat salvia.

 I know I told myself I would buy no new plants this year, but I removed some more grass and this clematis was lovely.  

 Last year I divided all the iris and they too seem to be doing great.  

 Wisteria 'Amethyst Falls'.  More like wisteria on steroids.  It is just loaded with flowers this year.

 My oldest peony that my mother gave me from her yard back in the mid 70's.  I have three plants now.

Krinkled White peony that just opened this morning.

Ferns.  A friend gave me a few ferns back in the 70's when I was planting the garden.  Every year I have some to dig some up from where I do not want them.  I've tried to concentrate them in a few areas and this year they are just gorgeous.

As much as I complained about the long cold winter, many of my perennials seem to have loved it.  I did lose some plants, but the ones that survived are loving the rain and high humidity.

Garden Project - DONE!

Well, I probably did my sore leg no favors by completing this project as fast as I did, but the temp this morning is 43 degrees F, it is going to rain for the next three days, and I had all the materials here so it was now or never, lol.

Here is the area again before I started:

And here it is after I finished yesterday:

Once the grass is all dead and the area has settled down, I will add more plants.  I did buy a peony and plant it yesterday.  It is there on the right side of the pic.  And I moved a few astilbe along the right border too.  I'll let those forget-me-nots move into this area. 

I'm curious to see how this handles all the rain they are predicting for the next few days.  I must say when I was digging to lay the brick edging the yard looked like a worm farm.  Too bad my fishing days are long past.

I'll post a photo of this area later in the year when the flowers are in bloom.

A Bloom for a Day

In case you haven't realized it by now, I love, love, love daylilies.  I never saw anything other than the common daylily until the 1970's when a co-worker suggested I visit a daylily farm nearby.  OMG.  The grower specialized in daylilies and hostas and my love of both began.

A few years ago I redid the garden so that the deer would no longer have daylily buffet tables.  The result is seen below.

Daylilies all up and down the north side of my home.  Unfortunately, it also means that there is a lot of clean-up since each flower is only open for one day.  If dead flowers are not removed, they can lie over an unopened bud preventing it from opening.  It has been miserably hot and humid here with the real feel temp of 99.5 F one day this weekend.  So, not much yard work getting done.  Yesterday we had a break in the temp and humidity to the point that Charlie wanted his jacket on when we went outside.  That also meant that I could start cleaning dead flowers.  Once everything was done I took the above pictures.

Several stems had one remaining bloom and rather than wait until today to cut them, I made a bouquet to enjoy while I sat outside and read my book.  Here it is for you to enjoy.

 

I hope this added a little color to your life today.

A Sunday Garden - Memorial Day Edition

So, guess what?  They are predicting rain for today.  Just what I do not need.  I cannot dig without water coming to the surface.  Ah, Mother Nature.

So, here I am, waterlogged.  I truly had believed that I had no garden projects this year.  That was before I went out this spring and saw that a large area of grass had turned to weed grasses since last year.  Quack grass, bent grass, nutsedge... all had invaded the area and overtaken my Kentucky Blue.

My first thought was to just kill it all and resod.  Then I looked at the mess in the yards on either side of me and figured it was a losing battle.  One neighbor has never used any fertilizer or weed killer since he moved in about 15 years ago.  The other house has a single woman living in it who does not do yard work and does not hire anyone to do it.  Her ex, or whatever he is, shows up every few weeks to cut the front lawn, but not the back.  I could put in new sod and just replay the invasion all over again.

So, after several weeks I decided this week to just cover up the grass and put in a new bed.

This is the area that had been covered since spring waiting for the grass to die.  It is also the area where I have a swale for all the water to run off the property.  Also, it is the same are that was invaded by a mole a few years ago.  While the trapper I use says moles do not eat roots, I still think the tunneling damaged the roots of the grass enough to allow the weedy grasses to take over.  As to where those weeds come from, the local garden center said that they are moved around the neighborhoods by the large lawn cutting machines that do not get cleaned between mowings.  And the fact that seeds blow all over town.  I cut my own lawn, but these crews move their machines up and down the streets going from one home to another.

So, I set out yesterday to re-landscape the area.  Ugh.  It was nearly 80 degrees F when I came inside.  I was beat, but although not done, I have this new planting area.

It was too wet to dig the edge and I just gave up.  I'll do it when and if the area dries up.  I am also thinking that I may remove more grass on the right side of the photo.  Actually, the grass looks better in the photo that it actually does in person.

So, this week in the garden.  Green.  Lots of green.  This is the view from the bridge:

And here are a few flowers, a tree peony, Cup Race iris, and those wild columbine that are having a magnificent year.

And two views for you, back by the dry creek and looking out the front door:

Have a great holiday weekend.

A Sunday Garden in the Rain

A Sunday Garden and a Grandson

Last year I blogged about my garden on every Monday.  This year I plan to blog on Sunday, but not quite as extensively.  I mean, really, how many flowers can one person look at?  Don't ask, LOL.

Spring is coming early and with it the rain.  Yesterday it rained and then the temperature hit 78 F at my home.  That is ridiculous.  But, it did make the flowers pop up.  Now I just have to pray we do not get a frost.

I actually have a lot of clean-up all ready done, but I am far from through with it.  I've decided to remove one of the large spruce trees that I have been trimming every year thanks to needle-cast disease.  After 44 years in the soil here it is going to come out because by the time we trim off all the dead branches we will end up with a tall trunk and branches on one side only.

So, now a few pictures.  Did I say we have had a lot of rain?  I still have puddles in my yard.  Charlie wanted to go outside and play one day and I told him it was raining.  He put on his jacket and I told him that wouldn't work 'cause it was raining too hard.  So...

he went and found my umbrella.  He still didn't get that Nana was not interested in splashing in the puddles, though we did splash when the rain stopped.

And speaking of Charlie, he is learning yoga, all on his own.  I am amazed at how he gets into positions.

Table position with leg lift and twist.
This past week he had a birthday, number 3.  Can you say excited?

Anyway, onto the flowers.  Right now all that is blooming are daffodils and squill, and not much of either.  One clump of daffs has no flowers at all!

Other plants are emerging nicely, but I still don't know how much I have lost.  Several hostas have crowns that are torn up by varmints.  Here is the bleeding heart which just flew out of the ground virtually overnight:

And so did this peony:

When I look out of my front door I can see flowering trees in the neighbor's yards:

Last year I always took a picture of the north garden from the view of the front gate.  This year I am going to do that again, but now with the view from the bridge in the back.  Here is what I am seeing this morning:

If I look at the garden from this area I do not see all the moss that I need to remove from the beds.  And I need to do it soon as the spores are forming already.  work work work.  A four-letter word if there ever was won.

Have a great Sunday.

A Deck - 40 years later

1977 - the deck has been built and landscaped - see that rock layer?

1985 - everything is filling in and more grass has been removed

1987 - a dogwood is providing a nice vista

Fast forward to 2012 - the original yews are so tall you cannot see the deck

August 16, 2015 morning - I've had enough and decide the yews must go

August 16, 2016 evening - it takes all day to cut back one shrub

August 23, 2015 - two shrubs have all green branches removed

May 1, 2016 - time to remove the other two shrubs and cut everything to the ground

June 13, 2016 - the yews are gone and the re-planting begins.  That is still the original dogwood and mock orange from 1977.

July, 2016 - the deck is cleaned, the furniture is out and I am ready to relax.  HaHa.

The view from the deck

I still have work to do planting more flowers, but first I need to uncover all the egg rock that was originally laid down back in 1973.  Remember it from that first picture?  It's buried under 40+ years of dirt, leaves and decaying mulch.  Which goes a long way to explaining why I am not blogging.