I spent about 4 hours on the slope this weekend. Too bad it was on a project that doesn’t look like much. Pretty much I dug up and moved a large bush into a new space that involved a large hole that I pick-axed at the top of my backyard slope. Then I planted a smaller shrub into the newly vacant area in my raised bed. I then put down landscape cloth across a third of the top of my slope and beauty barked the area. The new bush is happy and the area is looking good. I carried 4 bags of beauty bark and 1 bag of planting compost up the hill which was exhausting. Thank goodness I work out at the gym 3 days a week or I don’t think I would have made it! Eventually I will do the remaining two-thirds. I finished off the weekend’s work with the planting of 8 baby bear pumpkin seedlings that my oldest daughter started from seed. I planted these on the slope and mostly in peat moss as they will get full sun all day and the area tends to dry out quickly. I finished off by surrounding the seedlings with slug poison. While adjusting the sprinkler heads on the slope today to accommodate my new plantings, I checked on the seedlings. There are dozens of dead slugs surrounding each seedling. Truly disgusting pits of death. I hope the seedlings don’t mind all the slime. Today I also planted 6 impatiens next to the patio and beauty barked the area. A light day after all the hours I put in over the weekend.
Oh, and I almost forgot, my husband and I cleaned our fountain for the first time since we’ve had it running and installed a filter on the pump. The fountain was amazingly clean and wasn’t really due for a cleaning, but since were were dismantling the pump we did it anyway.
Next project for me is to figure out how to discourage a family of crows from hanging out in my yard quite so often. They are as big as chickens and can’t be up to any good though I haven’t quite figured out why they are here other than to periodically drink from my fountain and sample the climbing rose buds on the trellis. Not too many bird droppings in annoying places yet.
Newly blooming:
What does a soap opera have to do with my garden, well, I’ll tell you! My 3 Jackson & Perkins hybrid tea roses in white just started blooming. But here’s why I have 3 white rose bushes. I am an avid fan of All My Children, the only soap opera I watch. I record it on the DVR so I can fast forward through commercials and watch it when the children are sleeping and my husband is traveling. The children would ask too many questions and the husband thinks it’s too stupid for words. I’m a big fan though. Anyhow, back to white roses. Last year they had some wonderful white only flower arrangements on the show and all of a sudden it occurred to me that I had no white flowers in my garden. So, now I do and soon I will try to duplicate a white rose arrangement for my home. I’ll post a picture when I have enough roses for an All My Children arrangement. So, now you see why I needed 3 white rose bushes- to ensure I would have enough blooms all at once.
The complete list of what’s newly blooming:
- White hybrid tea roses
- Red climbing rose
- Pitcher plant
- Delphinium
- Mock orange
- Maltese cross (Lychnis coronaria)
- Yellow stalks (name coming!)
- Tickseed (Coreopsis lanceolata) (Asteraceae)
- Blue flowered rock garden plant (real name coming!)
I planted a couple more annuals in the front yard and in some of my flower pots on the back patio. Mostly snapdragons and petunias. My patio pots are an on-going thing. I pretty much never completely empty them, just pull out the dead or out of season plants, keep what still works and so they are always growing. They all have New Zealand Flax in the middle which is pretty hardy and year round. Some pots have small daisies and the rest just rotates- snapdragons, salvia, petunia, bacopa, vinca… In the spring I sometimes do dump the pot contents in a wheelbarrow, recycle the soil in the garden, salvage what plants are viable, and start with new potting soil to keep things fresh, but not every year. This yea I did refresh a couple pots this way. Things are looking cheerful and bright!
Finally, the peony are blooming! They usually bloom around Mother’s Day, but due to the unusually cool temperatures, they didn’t start blooming until Father’s Day instead.
Also, Happy 41st Anniversary to my parents and Happy Birthday to our car that is 1 years old today as well.
A flower arrangement from my garden from June 1st.
My husband came home, I handed the kids off to him and from 6 to 8:30 pm I worked in the yard. Yard work (though hard work) is my way of relaxing. I moved an ornamental grass and two sweet peas and planted a fern, 2 containers of cosmos, 2 pots of pinks and 5 container grown dahlias. Then I spread a bag of beauty bark around the new plantings and put down some slug poison as well. I finished off the evening by mowing the lawn. For some reason, lawn mowing is so satisfying when you see the perfect rug of neatly trimmed green. It makes the whole yard look tidy.
Noted the following new blooms:
