What season are we in?

Technically, it's still winter (today is Feb. 24) and spring is round the corner...(March 20th) yet this week felt like summer! We've had two days with highs near or at 80 degrees...and last weekend we had rain with mix of snow and sleet! I don't know what to make of this and I wonder what the plants and wildlife are thinking? Well, onto the point of this post. We were gently reminded by a dear and sweet family member that we (I) haven't posted anything in quite a while, so this is for our sidewalk supervisor.

Ah yes, it's nearly spring and the first signs of spring are popping up all over the ground. First the snowdrops and then the snow crocus.

I can see the tips of the daffodils breaking out of their winter rest.

These must be early tulips

Hellebore Red Lady

We've had loads of rain the past few weeks and it has me worried that I might end up with half the bulbs blooming. Clay soil with poor drainage and too much rain is not ideal for bulbs. Good thing I planted 800 bulbs! I spent several weekends last fall planting all over the back yard, front yard, side yard, mom's yard and in several pots. The last allium went into the ground two weeks before Christmas. Like I said, it took several weekends, a drill, bulb auger attachment and a crazy orange hat. I dare not share this photo but what the heck! The drill made this job so much easier and made me very happy as you can see.

Now,  time to get those veggie and annual flower seeds started. This year I will be growing more annual flowers - cosmos, zinnias, love-in-a-mist, white dill and sweetpeas. I've got big plans for them in July.

May & June veggie garden update

I've been a busy Lissie this summer and I can't believe it's the end of June. So much is growing in the veggie beds and so much is not. I'll get to that shortly. May was so lovely and the flowers were positively brilliant! I love the flower combination below: peony, pink evening primrose, German chamomile and Butterfly Blue pincushion flower. The pincushion flower is wonderful because it'll bloom through much of the summer and the chamomile smells so sweet. I love that it seeded itself from last year's planting. I transplanted several bits, here and there.

German Chamomile

 



I had a sweet little batch of Virginia strawberry. Planted a few new varieties for next year.

Fragaria virginiana

Pumpkins and squash were planted early this year and in a raised bed and bucket. Last year I planted them in July and it didn't go so well. 

Far left bed has  Rouge vif d'Etampes, a french red pumpkin variety.

Lots of growth on the rouge vif d'Etampes pumpkin and gray squash hidden below it in the bucket.

Experimenting with growing potatoes this year. I planted red potatoes in the ground and yellow potatoes in a grow bag (above in the white planter). The potatoes planted in the ground leafed out, grew and then all the leaves were eaten by slugs. Nasty buggers. Hopeful though that the tubers are still ok...?

Potatoes in grow bag.

My two favorite pea varieties were planted in early spring and did very well. I intended to grow a second crop but decided instead to transplant my red cabbages in place of the peas. They seem to be growing better now in their new home among the sweet peas. Before transplanting, the cabbages used to be in a bed that I had to remove to make room for my new greenhouse! Yes, Tim bought me a greenhouse for my birthday! He's the best!!!

British Wonder and Green Arrow peas.

Mammoth Red Rock cabbage and Summer Love sweet peas.

Tomatoes and peppers are going strong.

 

As for what isn't growing very well or not at all: nasturtiums (shaded by the pumpkins), onions, beets and basil. Must have had some bad seeds. 

If you're wondering what Tim has been up to, he's been busy working on the boats, fixing up some old cars and on occasion, going out in the boat. Here he is enjoying a ride out to the beach.

Captain Tim, my sweet pea!

Garden Update

I'm back! Yes, it has been that long and I have so much to update. So what have I been up to? Well, idunno really. I started working part-time last year and thought I'd have oodles of time to work on some side projects and blog more, but that never happened. Life happened...and it goes by fast when you're having fun.

The start of the garden season was very busy and productive. I started most of my veggies and flowers from seed to save money but mostly to enjoy watching the seeds sprout and turn into lovely plants. It's such a fun process but caring for seedlings is so much work! I doted on them daily and worried for them when we went away to the cottage for the weekend. I admit though, not everything was started from seed. In late spring I ordered some tomato plants and pepper plants because I just don't have great luck with those and I never start the seedlings early enough.

My favorite new crop is peas! I grew the most delicious variety, "British Wonder". And how wonderfully sweet and tasty they were. I picked and ate them right off the vine.

The cherry tomatoes and cucumbers grew in abundance and I had enough to share for weeks.

Sadly, I lost many of the large tomatoes that I didn't harvest in time and some were eaten by birds or some other vermin. Then July and August came and I gave up. Soooo hot and humid! The vegetation however didn't mind too much and took over. What a mess it became. Some days, I'd spend all day in the garden and not make a dent with the weeds. I blame the heat and the mosquitoes for not allowing me to get out to weed more often, it was just miserable. Below is a before and after of what my veggie beds looked like this summer.

Top photo: early June; Bottom photo: late August

In July, I just barely managed to start a pumpkin patch and some red corn (I know, a bit late for corn). Tim had finally finished his boat project in the back yard which freed up a lot of space. Perfect spot for a pumpkin patch. Next year, I'll start them earlier. I had also hoped to grow brussel sprouts and cauliflower but I was too late for those too.

The eggplant is looking great. I put these in after the radishes were done. Hope it bears fruit soon.

Peppers are doing better after I cleared out the sad tomato plants.

Late summer harvests. Butternut squash, huge purple dragon carrot, some kind of winter squash, and one cucumber (about to be eaten - hopefully not the last). Really disappointed that I didn't get more winter squash. The plants just didn't make it. Given the size of that carrot, it's probably time to harvest the rest.

This little squash is doing much better.

Table Dainty Squash

Since the heat kept me away from the garden a lot, I spent most of August indoors working on organizing my closets and trying to keep the house tidy. Of course the garden was always on my mind - thoughts of next spring and all the garden chores to be done in the next growing season were being planned out even before I could finish what's needing to be done this year. I was getting catalogs for fall plantings, ordering bulbs and roses for my flower gardens and getting even more excited for what all of my many gardens could be next year. I just wish I had more time...and energy.

June Was Abloom with Colors of Summer

Trying to achieve all-season color in all of my garden beds hasn't been quite that easy. Ok, yes, most of the beds do have some flowers blooming in them but not as many as I would like nor as colorful. I've achieved that aspiration in only one of my garden beds, and that's why this post won't show all of the beds that I posted in the spring. A wall of green leaves and clumps simply isn't that interesting. That's "evil eye gardening" as Dorothy Sucher would say. She came up with that term for the gardener that disparages her garden fearing the evil eye if she praises her garden too much. As Dorothy discerningly said in her book, The Invisible Garden, "The gardener is always painfully aware of the gap between the dream and the reality...whatever is achieved is nevertheless a betrayal of that first radiant vision".

How true that is! When I first set out to create my garden 5 years ago, I envisioned winding paths through lush gardens, an arbor loaded with pink new dawn roses, a gleaming, twinkling pond with the soothing sound of a small waterfall, vegetable beds full of plump veggies and a front cottage garden hiding the view of the busy street. Well, that hasn't been the reality. The good news is I can always keep trying. I'm just too impatient though...sigh. The reality is that my garden beds are too small, I planted things way too closely so now I have no room for that winding path for two to walk along side by side and the pond is surrounded with weeds. As for the front cottage garden, the white picket fence isn't happening. Oh bother, as Pooh says...

In June, the brightest, boldest bed was filled with purple coneflowers, butterfly weed, bee balm and wild bergamot, Stella de Oro daylillies, and coreopsis. It's the garden bed next to the drive way with a small, narrow unfinished brick path. I love its bold bright tones of gold, orange, purple and hot pink. In the spring, this bed was full of beautiful peonies, irises, bearded iris and tulips. As pretty as it it now, its missing a certain je ne sais quoi.

The brick path leads to the bird bath where more purple coneflowers grow along with Culver's Root, white phlox, oakleaf hydrangea, fothergilla and tall panic grass. I just put in a circle trellis and planted a clematis vine that will eventually grow over it. Never cared to have clematis in my garden before but I couldn't resist getting this one because of its name, Clematis, Duchess of Edinburgh. Sounds so lovely, maybe it'll give my garden an air of a formal romantic garden. Maybe romantic country garden is more like it since I have several barn birdhouses and that wooden red wheelbarrow.

View of the oakleaf hydrangea above the bird bath and the fothergilla to left of the hydrangea. They'll have pretty fall foliage!

Better view of the circle trellis in a temporary spot, and unfinished brick path...ran out of bricks :(

One of my favorite birds after chickadees and titmice are goldfinches. Their bright yellow color stands out among the green leaves and flowers. I took these photos from inside the house.

Tucked away in the back of the yard is the woodland garden with a dry stream bed running along its edge. More like woods' edge since there's just one deciduous tree there and some evergreens which are small so not too shady like a true woodland. Here the milkweeds, sundrops, wild bergamot and wet tolerant shrubs keep their feet wet along the stream bed that holds water when it rains (the stream bed needs to be redone since most of the rocks have been covered by weeds and years of fallen leaves covering over). I recently planted a campanula and larkspur but they have yet to bloom. Fingers crossed they'll do well. The cardinal flower that I planted two summers ago didn't come back. Not sure why since it prefers wet sites.

Clockwise from top left: 1: Milkweeds (pink blooms), Guara whirling butterflies (white blooms), wild bergamont (lavendar color); 2: Milkweed, Asclepias Incarnata; 3: Coreopsis American Dream; 4: Milkweed that planted itself by Tim's shed; 5:Center pic, yellow rose. 

The front beds and other side beds aren't blooming so much. They're just a wall a of green and a few flashes of color here and there so I need to place new plants that will bloom in that transition period after spring and during early summer. What's in the front bed now will be in bloom a bit later this summer and the solidalgo and anemone in late summer/early fall but I'd like to see some color all throughout the season especially in this bed since I can see it from the living room. It looked pretty with the hollyhocks earlier but I removed them because they got ugly nasty rust spots on them.

Front yard bed with purple coneflowers in bloom.

All green, just the yellow rose and milkweed in bloom. Needs more color and texture! I started planting grasses for texture like the little blue stem and switchgrass.

And so that's it for now. Hope to show you the veggies and pond in a future post.

Springtime Blooms from April through May

What a beautiful spring season we had! The cool days were brisk and refreshing and I miss that. Perhaps it was that which prolonged the bloom time of my flowers or maybe spring just seemed longer because I had more time to enjoy it without all of the stress of planning our spring conference. Whatever the reason, the flowers were all too happy and gave a great display all season long, I was even able to keep up with most of the weeds.

Flowering Trees - early April

The redbud and serviceberry trees were among the first to bloom followed by the pink dogwood tree.

Redbud tree in foreground on left; Pink dogwood in background.

View of front yard from the living room.

The serviceberry tree doesn't seem too impressive in this picture but it's a beautiful, sweet little tree in person. I wish more nurseries would sell these gorgeous little native trees. 

Serviceberry flowers

Spring Bulbs - April

A little planning in the fall paid off. I planted several bulbs all around the front gardens and for the first time tried layering bulbs. It's a planting technique where you dig a very wide and deep hole and plant bulbs that bloom a few weeks apart at different depths (the layers) based on the bulb's depth requirement. This works great in containers too. It was wonderful to have a continuous display of flowers in the same spot. The three pics below show this; first the daffodils, then the white narcissus, then ending with the pink tulips. Sadly I missed getting more pictures of the tulips but you can see one or two starting out.

Blue and pink hyacinths, purple tulips and reliable good ole' pansies.

Other Flowers - late April-May

Virginia spiderwort (blue flowers) and Green and gold - chrysogonum virginianum - little yellow star-like flowers in back.

Virginia Spiderwort, tradescantia virginiana

Viola White Czar

Yellow Jasmine; Gelsemium sempervirens

Yellow jasmine vine on birdhouse/feeder pole.

Fothergilla

Peonies - May

I can't remember having such an abundance of peonies in past as I did this year. From early May through now, I've been able to cut armfuls of peonies. I had so many, that once a week I would take bunches of them to share with friends.

Peonies, yellow roses, coreopsis, and showy evening primrose (oenothera speciosa) filling the foreground and all over.

Roses - mid-late May

Pale pink climbing roses on arbor in the back yard.

The scent of these roses is amazing.

Virginia rose is a fast spreading rose shrub. I've planted it in the front yard to create a pretty screen/hedge to block the view of the road.

Virginia rose, rosa virginiana

The two purple flowers in the foreground from left to right - catmint nepeta and babtisia australis.

Now, I wait for summer/later summer flowers to start blooming. It will be spectacular but I will miss my spring darlings.

Till June!