Wednesday Workday - Update on Projects

It was a lovely late spring weekend - more spring than summer - with an extra day so a perfect time to finish another of the projects for this year.

I had four projects for the spring:

1) Convert the xeri-garden to a veggie garden.  Check!  Changed my mind and kept half in xeri-plants (this is a huge space - nearly 50 square feet) so now am watering half.  The potatoes never came up, but I have a good crop of herbs - basil, parsley and cilantro - plus red and green leaf lettuce and Romaine.  Am very pleased with the results. 

The xeri half is gorgeous and smells wonderful.  Both the bees and butterflies are plentiful.

2) Divide the iris in the fish pond and clean out the lily pond.  Half check.  Cleaned the fish pond and divided the iris in April.  [With the fish, i really can't put off cleaning the pond, if i want them to live!]  But, so far no progress on the lily pond.  Maybe one hot July day I will do it and pump the water out into the surrounding space.  It will both water and feed the plants - probably a good use of both water and time!

3) Turn over the compost pile.  This is taking far longer than I planned, but am about half done.  Mitchell will be traveling on business a lot in June, so I hope to do it in the evenings while he is gone. 

4) Put in a "step" in front of the shed.  Check.  This was one of two big weekend achievements.  Mitchell says now I have a shed with a patio, but the doors can swing freely all the way open, so that I can get anything I need into or out of the shed.  A huge improvement and I am happy.

So, after two and a half months I have finished two goals and half of the other two.  Not unhappy about that. 

The rest of the weekend work time was spent in mulching.  Three trips to the garden center and 36 bags (nearly three cubic yards) of mulch later, it is all done.  I keep promising to do it earlier in the spring so that I don't have to work around all the big perennials, but failed again this year.  Maybe next year. 

Everything is lush and blooming full here.  Still cooler than usual and getting rain fairly often - no drought yet! - so hope that we will continue like this for a couple more weeks. 

I love the second flush of peonies.  They are smaller and easier for me to manage

in a vase.

Happy Week!

Thanks, Alberto!

 It was a lovely weekend - thanks to Alberto who was trying to form a proper tropical storm off of South Carolina.  

 

It brought us lovely cool breezes out of the northeast, dappled sunshine and mid-70's.  

 

A perfect weekend for working in the garden and sitting on the deck reading - so I did both.

Happily, he failed - Alberto.  Now back to the work world for a few days!

One Nice Thing

about a garden is that you can leave it unattended and it will grow just fine without you.

Well, in this case, without me. 

Weigela florida 'Red Prince' in background.

Weigela florida 'Wine and Roses'.

Clematis hybrid 'H.F. Young'

 A busy week at work and two days of rain.

The first peony [Scarlett O'Hara] of the season.  It's not a good flower, but it's still the first.

But like Mary, Quite Contrary, it grows and grow and grows.

June 4, 2011

Rosa 'Radsunny' PP 18562 (shrub)  (Knock Out Rose)  April 27, 2012

Sunday in the Garden

It feels like June today.  

Native Honeysuckle

Deutzia  - a creeping form - Deutzia crenata 'Nikko'

Lilac 'Miss Kim'

Iris.  In April?

March 19, 2012...

...on which I join the chorus of, "It's too soon!"

On March 20 last year.  Today they are all gone.

The tulips are starting to open.

I was planning on mid-April to May.  Were you?

Last year they waited until April 3.  This year I've already cut this plant once for the house.

Dogwood and creeping phlox seem to have kept to a normal calendar, tho.  Somehow that's comforting. Am finally starting to feel ok in all this warm air.

I Need a Kick in the ...

... well, you know where.

Forget meteorological spring.  Forget astronomical spring.  Forget calendar spring.  It's clearly spring - no matter how you look at it. 

So, why can't I get in the mood?

Was it the short warm winter?  Not enough cold and bad weather to make me long for sunshine and warm breezes?  Not enough snow to make me yell, "enough"?  Too few dreary days?

Whatever it is, the sap just isn't rising in me yet.  I've wasted nearly 10 days of pretty afternoons when I could have been out in the garden.  I've wasted seven extra hours of daylight.  I'm the only mammal in Central Virginia who's still hibernating.

Finally, today there are branches of flowering almond on the table and a bowl of stock on the table - the first blooms from my new cutting garden - but still I can't get excited. 

 

Just when I need a touch of spring fever, I got nada.  I need a kick - well, you know where!

It's so Hot...

that I am thinking of flora from farther southwest.

Like out yucca. Mitchell loves yucca so we put in two several years ago [Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard']. It has a pretty variegated leaf and provides just the pop of white that the first hot days of June demand.

The other plant has a reddish tinge to the newest leaves, but seems to be struggling and didn't bloom this year.


Around the corner from the Jazzercise studio there is a wonderful corner that is completely filled with cactus. Most years it has a lot of flowers, but this year it is gorgeous! It's completely covered with yellow blossoms. Makes the trip to dance even more enjoyable.

Somehow that didn't make me feel any cooler, tho. Happy Monday!

The Best Kind of Day

Cut the hedge out of the blackberries ... check.
Cut the volunteer trees out of the day lilies and peonies ... check.
Cut the wisteria out of the lilac ... check.
Weed the iris ... check.


Don't even think about work ... check.
Trim up the hydrangeas ... check.
Plant more planter boxes ... check.
Add more portulaca by the driveway ... check.
Add dianthus to the xerogarden ... check.
Help Mitchell cut the plum tree back from the house ... check.

Have a glass of wine on the deck and enjoy the view ... check!

Ah! Refreshed!

It's amazing what just a couple of hours outside and in the garden will do for the spirits! Managed to move a few small things to do some re-design around our deck steps, but even a little bit of digging dirt made me so calm and relaxed.



The dianthus is the star of the garden right now. Its spicy fragrance is not as awesome as lilacs or some of the peonies, but it's nice to have inside, too. Hope you are having a lovely day.

Too much going on. Too much work. Too little sleep. Just plain, not enough time. I hate it when life is like this. Two more weeks and maybe things will ease up.


Mitchell calls this our "primrose path" and indeed, it is. Evening Primrose, aka Oenothera berlandieri 'Siskiyou', that is becoming a bully. I'll enjoy it one more season and then rip a lot of it out so that some other perennials have a chance to take some space.

It's Coming...

The storm is coming. A big one. The news is calling it a Super Cell that has already wreaked havoc in the deep south. It's well west of us, and headed for Jane - hope it misses you! - but we are getting the outer reaches of it and expecting rain in the next couple of hours.
But there are good things about it, too. The fresh breeze smells clean and is driving leaves ahead it it covering the deck. All of the garden scents are concentrated and carried to the house - most of all the lilacs that bloomed yesterday.

I hope that we will get just enough rain to bring a needed drink of water to the garden, but I fear that we will get so much that it beats down all the wonderful iris that also bloomed yesterday.

I cut the blossoms off the first-blooming peony to keep them from being beaten up, and to bring a little something living into the house.

Which brings me to a question; one I want to ask Jane, Marie, Belinda, Denise, and all the rest of you who really know something about arranging flowers. When should I cut the peonies? I usually let them open fully on the plant and then use the "full flower". I have noticed, tho, that you all seem to include tight and nearly tight peony buds in your arrangements. Should I cut them before they really open? What does that do to "vase life"? anything? Will they continue to open, or are you going for the "ball" shape in your arrangements? Thanks!

Stay dry!

Happy Easter Day!

It is a lovely Sunday morning in Central Virginia, full of peace and warm light! The perfect opportunity to snip a bloom here, tuck a blossom there and just enjoy the day - or eat breakfast on the deck. So I did all of that.
The very first - but definitely not the last clematis opened this morning. If I had to pay tax to the county based on clematis buds, I would be poor indeed this year. This one is Clematis hybrid 'H.F. Young', and loves life twined around the mailbox post.

I have been meaning to share the native honey suckle with you. This is Trumpet Honeysuckle [Lonicera sempervirens] and seems to love its spot because it gets larger every year. It vines some, but is easily controlled and provides not only lovely color, but green nesting places for various birds. Have not seen any particular activity around it this year, so we probably don't have any baby birds.













And, finally our newest azaleas that we just planted last month. After a hard winter and a hot dry summer I lost a large barberry in this corner, so we decided to bring some light under this tree with white azaleas. I think they will be lovely in a few years, when they are less ball-like

Trevor likes them!

Chapter Two

Spring turned another page today as the weather has finally stayed warm for several days. It was a lovely morning with the ground littered with confetti from the fruit trees, redbuds and dogwood. I'm sorry to see them gone already. They never seem to stay long enough, but this year it seems like the dogwood bloomed last week and the leaves started coming in this week - perhaps not really true, but that's how it seems.

Other things follow, tho, as is the pattern. The azaleas are opening by the hour with waves of pinks, lilacs and reds all around the yard and the neighborhood. Aguga is everywhere. The native honeysuckle is gorgeous and all the perennials are growing well.

Over the weekend I made time to plant both bulbs and seeds. If I am lucky (and treat them right) I will have rain lilies, pineapple lilies and [please, please, please!] ranunculus later this summer. Jane at SmallButCharming convinced me that ranunculus will grow in our zone 7 area, so we both jumped in and ordered some. I got a mixture of pastels, picotees, and a "rainbow mix". Somehow this is a plant that I had totally missed until a couple of years ago. I have actually planted them a couple of time in pots and not had any success with sprouting them, but never had particularly good directions either. I have fallen madly in love with them and must have some ... if I can.

In the seed department I planted larkspur (hyacinth-flowered, if that matters), royal blue forget-me-nots, and poppies - Shirley single blend and both Mission Bells and Tropical Sunset California poppies. I've been a dedicated grower of perennials until this year, using some bedding plants for a splash of instant color here and there. This year I want to seriously increase my cutting garden - and cut more of what I grow! - so I have dived in and planted several new things.... like seeds!

The viburnum is lovely, but its blooms look more like lace cap hydrangeas than some other viburnums I see. I think - from photos - that it is Viburnum plicatum tomentosum. It has no fragrance at all, and not the pretty flowers of 'Carlisii'. It has a very distinctive shape with very straight branches that come from the base and not so many from the trunk. It's a lovely specimen plant and provides the visual break that I wanted, so it's good. Would be even better if I had kept the label.

Another new addition today was this tiny iris-like white flower. I am not sure they are a true iris, because they grow from a very different rhizome-like structure. But they prefer dry shade and you know how hard it is to find things that will even grown in dry shade, much less prefer it! They were a pass-along gift from one of my Wise Women, so I particularly treasure them.
Sat on the deck for a few minutes just before dark, savoring the peace and calm of the garden and wishing I had made time during the day to get out there. The fish were active in the pond and all the greens were saturated with color in the evening shade. Bits of color are popping out all over as the first blossoms of the next wave begin to open. Soon it will be peonies and iris.

What more could a girl want?

Half a Load is Better than None...

... if it's half a load of mulch that got spread this weekend, that is. The mind was willing, but the body rebelled around 2:00 both Saturday and today. What in the world could have happened? Twenty years ago I could have spread mulch for eight hours at a stretch without a whimper.

So, I did what any of you would have done and transplanted a few little bulbs to fill in the end of a bed, raked last fall's leaves out of the back beds, weeded Henbit until I wanted to screem, and pulled monarda out of its neighbors. If the hummers didn't love it so much, I would declare it a bully and hit it with the Round-Up, but instead I just wage war with it annually and hope the hummers appreciate all my work! Now everything is ready for me to finish spreading the mulch - hopefully a little while every afternoon so that by the weekend I will be done.

With a bit of leftover time, I made a few discoveries. The most interesting was this violet. I have lots of deep purple and lavender violets that I assume are common violets, and I suppose this one is, too, but I have never seen this color before. It really does have tiny dots all over it; its petals are curved backwards more than usual; and, of course, it's a volunteer.

Think I'll go sit on the deck and just enjoy the rest of the day and look at what else is blooming!












Lamiam- a variegated variety and candy tuft. Surprisingly, it lasted more than a week in the vase last week - who knew?