Flowers a Bloom

Well this year is quite the year: busy weekends, rainy weekends and just all around kind of neglecting the gardens :-/   

Thankfully the wildflower border at least has been pretty self-sufficiently jungle-like while still being pretty!



I added a cute little cedar plank border that I think adds a very adorable cottagey look to it.

And then the flowers just started exploding in their spring glory!

The clematis reached the top and I had to help train it around the braces. In the end, this is as far as it appears it's going this year. Still not bad at all considering it only made it halfway up last year!

Then the lilies bloomed and all the clematis flowers fell off in the rain...is that it?! I thought at least my Earnest Markham was supposed to last all summer! I'd better get more blooms!! :-(

I totally missed getting a picture of the lovely smelling gardenia in bloom  😑 

But I'll tell you one thing - the hibiscus may very well be spectacular! It's huge!

A few weeks ago

Yesterday

So long as I can keep the caterpillars off  😑

And everything else is throwing out flowers now too...

As usual, it's a bit of a mess, but for the most part, these are all flowers! I've tried to be good about getting weeds out!
So I just need them to bloom to prove it! :-D

Bee's Balm!!

Daisies!!

A jumble of lovely craziness

I WILL Grow Food!

Well, with the giving up of the garden plot, I am determined to make some of my favorites work in my yard.

As I've mentioned previously, my little edible plot in the back doesn't get the sun it needs, particularly as the summer goes on. So until I convince husband that traditional lawn grass is actually an invasive species and pretty terrible for the environment and we should rip it out and turn the whole sun-covered front yard into gardens... (only partially serious...grass is one of the worst uses of resources, but boy is a bright green lawn simply brilliant to drive up to! My gardening hypocrisy is now exposed.) ...I am having to get creative about growing edibles.

The only immediate solution?
Get ginormous pots (thank you, Costco!) and make them pretty since it IS the front yard.

We eat a lot of zucchini, so I wanted one to grow, please!

I also looked up what does well with it since they would be sharing confined quarters.
The answer?
Many types of herbs and apparently hot peppers!

So may I present....

... my front yard garden plot:

A zucchini in the middle, a hot pepper (very specific, I know...pretty sure I left the tag in it to identify...?), parsley, basil, a sweet potato vine and some oregano that I'm also going to try to get to vine over the sides.
I also put one of my horribly leggy (because it's one of my started-from-seeds) 4 o'clocks in the back and in spite of looking like it's gone through the runner, it's still holding on!


Well I planted it days before a bunch of wind. Oh and have I mentioned that the front of our house feels like a wind tunnel some days? Good going, genius.

The zucchini stem snapped and I figured that was that...but there was still some green leaves going on a day or so later and I realized it had tried putting down roots further along.

Another week or more of looking highly sad and I gave up on it.
Everything else was growing just beautifully around it, though!

I come check back a few days later and it's totally growing!!

So proud! What a determined little fellow!


(This is also about the time husband tells me that zucchinis don't climb...they just bush out and spread.
But....but....but....

No!!! I refuse to give in! Zucchini put out vines, so I believe I can train it up my trellis, dang it!
Of course I'm guessing it'll need help with tying it off here and there, but I will not give up on my beautiful vision!)

Well, fast forward another week and great googly moogly, these guys are certainly enjoying the rain!

 (pardon the ugly black bags...we re-did the bricks on our front stoop and did NOT want to drag heavy bags of debris around back just to take them back out front for trash day!)



Look at that zucchini go!
I'm hoping it's getting enough sun tucked down between the monsters consuming it nearby, but it is growing beautifully, so here's hoping! 

Just a couple of days later (and more rain) and things seem to be growing inches each day!

Rather than buying potting soil, a nursery owner recommended getting PittMoss which is essentially shredded newspaper mixed with chicken manure. It's crazy light, so great for pots and gives you your fertilizer and water-retainer in one.
You do a 1:2 ratio of PittMoss to compost. Since I had tons of gorgeous compost, I figured it would be a good product.

Um...yeah, I'll say it's working! 

I need to start making more Italian food so I can use all my herbs!

And ironically, all this container-growing-in-the-front-yard-sun could actually prove to be semi moot...

I'm out in the back yard weeding last weekend and by late morning the edible plot is in shade.
However...around noon the sun starts coming back across it!

4:45PM...the sun is just leaving the final corner. Woot!

What the....?!


My only guess is that it has to do with the neighbor cutting down all (sniff, sniff) their trees. Is it possible that I actually DO get more than 3 hours of sun there now?!!! (I always thought it was my trees that were the shade culprit!)








Time will tell because obviously the sun skips around as the summer goes on, but for right now, my tomatoes and green pepper are having a blast!

We've started eating lettuces too...oh how indescribably wonderful it is for a chronic "aaahhhh, I forgot to grab ___ from the store when I was there!" to have a 'constant', fresh supply of something!













And I'm trying a cucumber! Up a tomato cage! 'Cause when you have a small plot you go vertical! Need to watch that for pests like a hawk 😑

Bummed that not many peas or beans have come up :-/

I keep meaning to pop more beans in the ground and that just hasn't happened. Must have green beans! Love  - them - so - much!!  And husband actually picked our first mini crop of peas yesterday...all 4 of them! 😁

As often happens in the beginning, I am highly optimistic since things are looking so great!

We'll see how the growth and sun and pests and consistent watering (ahem) progress as the summer goes on.

The End of an Era

Well, we made a big decision to say goodbye to the garden plot.

[play taps]


It was a spring of what can only be decribed as "meh" about the garden plot.

I went out there once and spent over an hour just cleaning out the smallest bed and planting lettuce.

An HOUR!!

It was absolutely thick with weeds.

This picture shows them all piled up next to the tiny bed.

It was crazy.

Other than that, the garden was a mess!
Our winter cover crop never sprouted, bed edging desperately needed to be re-done, and there were not horrible amounts of weeds all over, but definitely very tall ones in certain areas.

Spring was so delayed anyway and then I had a busy few weeks while garden plot partner was out of the country and so there it sat.

A mess!

We had decided to scale back anyway and try to focus on what we could grow well and do more established plants instead of seeds.

I was thinking that perhaps I wasn't "feeling it" because we'd had some pretty miserable fails the last two seasons.

And frankly - a community garden only works if you live nearby.
Apparently working nearby isn't enough  because staying after work means fighting extra horrid traffic on the way home (or staying there even later and starving!).
Or going out in the heat of the day over lunch breaks to weed and water...not ideal (and actually, 4-5 is typically the hottest part of the day here, so after work is even worse than doing an early lunch around 10 or 11!)

The more I read, the more I realized that consistent watering is so key.

NOT our strength!!


So partner gets back from her trip, we compare notes on how poorly we've done with it and she finally says, "Soooo....how committed to the garden are you this year?"

Oh dear. How do I graciously say that I'm struggling to get motivated and pessimistic that our watering habits will be any better?

Then she lays on me how I'd feel about giving it up because she's really not feeling it this year.

Oh!

We discussed it for awhile and since she has moved from an apartment to a townhouse-with-a-gardenable-backyard since starting the plot, we both agreed that it wasn't ideal for us anymore.

We wondered about having to muddle through the year planting only a few "sure-fire" crops.

She decides to email the garden organizer just to see if there is interest...

Hears right back - yup, there is definitely a waiting list; someone would be ready to take over the next weekend!

Well alrighty then!

So she spends that Saturday doing a smashing job cleaning it!
I went out for a bit the next week to grab a few things and give it a final look and then slowly walked away from what has been a fond, fun (mostly :-D) and educational journey.

And that's it. Just like that we pass along a really spectacular garden plot weeded and with lettuce growing and blueberries, strawberries and grapes already blooming.

Dear stranger: please take care of it!!

I'll miss the beans and soybeans which always did well.
I'll miss the peanuts.
Other than that, it was so hit or miss from year to year what worked and what didn't!
So I won't miss that. Or the "stress" of when to get out there and finding over-ripe veggies because neither of us could make it, etc., etc.

Now I just need to get creative on growing more edibles in my quite-shaded-except-for-the-front yard!

Farewell, little garden. 

The Deluge

We are finally basking in glorious sunshine after over a week of rain - some really hard!

Our town didn't get slammed as hard as others further west (we're a little mini pocket of weather that is typically milder from most other areas in the state...even just a few miles away!).

Even so, we received several inches and my poor plants are showing it!

The roses and peonies just pummeled...

The sun finally came out yesterday, so we walked around and guess what bloomed in the middle of the rainy days?!

BOTH kinds of clematis!

Just absolutely beautiful!

Pretty sure that's as tall as the smaller, Jackmanii will get, but the Earnest Markham has now reached the top of the side and is stretching fingers towards the top supports of the arbor! Yes!!

The delphinium is starting to bloom. I will definitely have to tuck that guy back towards the fence for next year; it's incredibly tall for being smack in the middle of the bed!

Oh how I love all the colors in bloom!

Apparently the little white Chinese lantern flowers I planted last year like to heavily seed themselves!! (They're the larger triangular leaved clumps of plants in the middle.)

The lilies are all budded up too, so hopefully in the next week or so we'll have full color again!

Many things definitely grew impressively throughout the rain and I'm wondering now that the sun is out if they're just going to explode with blooms!

And I'm sure the weeds will far surpass them all! 😩

Flower Updates

I'm behind on posting about the flowers...

After such a delayed spring, the bulbs finally, slowly popped out one by one...

The cute tulip border with daffodils and hyacinth:

Note the heavy clusters in the middle. When I re-planted the bulbs in the fall, I had spaced out some of the types of flowers. If you recall, I ran out of time before I got them all planted, so came back later with the shallower planted bulbs and filled them in the "blank" space I had left.

It now appears highly likely that the "blank" space was not in fact blank and so now bunches of bulbs are clustered on top of each other. Deeeelightful.

White daffodils I have no recollection of planting!

Colors!

Now these are my new favorite!
Unlike 2016, I did actually get my fall pansies in last year and one of the options was these "black velvet" ones which are a really, really dark purple. They are gorgeous!! Cannot wait for them to fill out!

Within a few weeks the new tulips I had planted in the fall were coming up. They're quite tall!

Such pretty coloring!

Unfortunately they're the only tulips that came up!
Why can't I get tulips to grow year to year?!  (And don't say squirrels - everyone goes to squirrels. The beds are undisturbed, ya'll. Unless the squirrel mafia hired the mole as an underground bulb hitman...it's not the squirrels!)

And then soon after, my newest addition started blooming.
I saw Ranunculus in a catalog this winter and just couldn't pass them up. I've never seen them before, but wow. Just, wow!

They're what I panted on top of the tulips instead of in the blank spot. 😑



Cute little blooms on what I think is a geum marmalade, but I'll have to confirm that on the tag when I locate it. And the fuchsia not-an-anemone (freesia) came back again!

















As per usual, the front beds are a mess! All a tangle of yet-to-be-trimmed liriope, spanish bells, rogue peony, lilies and gladiolas coming up, pansies filling out and newest of all: apparently the yellow balloon flowers I purchased last year re-seeded! EVERYWHERE!!

Craziness!

And then there are the two dying camelias I tried because of the inability to grow anything else in the corners of the stoop.
I say "dying" and not "dead" because, to the contrary of all visual cues, at the suggestion of a nursery owner I gentle scraped away some bark and did find some green!

When I was describing the condition, he came to suspect lack of water being the culprit. They are not only under the 2nd story overhang (several feet), but are also under the roof overhang which is several more feet!
So when it rains, I figure I'm good! And apparently probably not so much :-/

So I went home, fertilized them, gave them some good soakings and we watch.

In the meantime, I put a large pot back there to fill in the space and since my hopes are at about 12% chance of the camelias surviving.


I put several partial shade plants in the pot, so we'll see how it goes.

The crowning jewel?

A honeysuckle!!

Who doesn't need a ginormous vine climbing at their front door?!

I'm going off the plan to keep it trimmed, cut it down to the base each year and hope that the pot helps keep it manageable and that it will survive winters in there :-/  Fingers crossed!

I did quite the number on it trying to stuff it through the trellis, but by the morning a couple days later, it was already wrapping itself happily around it again!

Moving to the back, we had a lovely spread of blooming tulips in the wildflower border:

And the clematis are doing marvelously!!

Halfway up a week ago:                                           Nearly touching the top support as of this week!

 Both have put out buds, but the earlier Jackmanii (on the left) seems to have peaked out. It is a smaller plant, but I was hoping it would get a little higher this year. Oh well. Patience.
The Earnest Markham shows no signs of slowing down! Yes!! Cover the arbor! Go! Go! Go!!!

The knock-out roses are starting to bloom, the peonies will pop soon and then there's the huge delphinium that shot up and should blossom soon.

Here is a shot of it on the left compared to the arbor. It's huge!

The good news in the rest of the wildflower border is that the Sweet William re-seeded itself.

The bad news in the wildflower border is that the Sweet William re-seeded itself. Extensively.















Such an anticipatory time of year - watching everything come back to life! Wondering how well they'll do or how big something will be or in the case of wildflowers - where the heck they're even going to come up at!