Tending the Garden
Jun. 28th, 2022 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseBy chance someone was giving away native plants on the Book of Faces yesterday. She was available for pick-up at 8 am, which was NO PROBLEM for me today, since I had trouble sleeping last night and was up early. (We have a sick cat who needs a vet appointment and, of course, the stupid internet fight. Both conspired to wake me up at 4:30 am and not let me fall back asleep.)
I still need to do some mulching, but here's how it's starting to look:
Image: dirt with natives planted in it, plus the edge of a sidewalk Mason and I built for our postal carrier.
So, just looking at this picture, I can tell that I need to get more (and better) mulch. I kind of hated how this stuff smelled, however--very chemically. I got it at Menards because I live within spitting distance of Menards and so it always seems like it should be a good place to go. I think when I get up to move the sprinkler, I may hop in the car and head to Mother Earth to see if they have anything better. I also need dirt because I want to expand my boulevard garden with the remaining plants I got from the nice native FB lady.
Anyway, the things you are looking at in this picture include: a sedge of some kind (that's the grassy looking thing,) black-eyed susans, New Jersey tea, coneflowers, monardia, some joe pie weed in the back, asters, and a bunch of other oddities that I'm not sure are going to make it.
Image: path from other side (on a day I had not yet weeded the cracks in the sidewalk)
So, my friend Gerriann who is also very into pollinator plants and natives gave me a bunch of free plants, too, much, much earlier in the season. They are already very well established. On this side the closest plant to you is that joe pie weed, then comes a bunch of sedum, boneset, and... more stuff I no longer remember what it is. (mmmm, I'm going to have to look at my list or have Gerriann over to re-identify them.)
Slightly better angle of the whole thing.
It's starting to look better. It's still not the showpiece I would like it to be, but it will get there eventually, one hopes.
Meanwhile, I'm super disappointed in the side garden that I worked really hard on last year. It's in such a tough spot being entirely shaded by our 'Autumn Blaze' maple tree... which also blocks a lot of the moisture. So, it's shady and DRY. I have, of course, populated it with a lot of hostas and ferns, but sometimes a person wants more than yet-another hosta shade garden, you know? Well, I will keep working on that.
The rest is looking pretty good. I'm quite pleased with my longest established garden in the backyard.
The herb garden has become mostly oregano and mint. Something is eating my basil (and it's not me!)
And, weirdly, the Asiatic lilies are looking amazing in the side yard.
Image: fiery red (with slightly orange centers) Asiatic lilies
How does your garden grow?
I still need to do some mulching, but here's how it's starting to look:
Image: dirt with natives planted in it, plus the edge of a sidewalk Mason and I built for our postal carrier.
So, just looking at this picture, I can tell that I need to get more (and better) mulch. I kind of hated how this stuff smelled, however--very chemically. I got it at Menards because I live within spitting distance of Menards and so it always seems like it should be a good place to go. I think when I get up to move the sprinkler, I may hop in the car and head to Mother Earth to see if they have anything better. I also need dirt because I want to expand my boulevard garden with the remaining plants I got from the nice native FB lady.
Anyway, the things you are looking at in this picture include: a sedge of some kind (that's the grassy looking thing,) black-eyed susans, New Jersey tea, coneflowers, monardia, some joe pie weed in the back, asters, and a bunch of other oddities that I'm not sure are going to make it.
Image: path from other side (on a day I had not yet weeded the cracks in the sidewalk)
So, my friend Gerriann who is also very into pollinator plants and natives gave me a bunch of free plants, too, much, much earlier in the season. They are already very well established. On this side the closest plant to you is that joe pie weed, then comes a bunch of sedum, boneset, and... more stuff I no longer remember what it is. (mmmm, I'm going to have to look at my list or have Gerriann over to re-identify them.)
Slightly better angle of the whole thing.
It's starting to look better. It's still not the showpiece I would like it to be, but it will get there eventually, one hopes.
Meanwhile, I'm super disappointed in the side garden that I worked really hard on last year. It's in such a tough spot being entirely shaded by our 'Autumn Blaze' maple tree... which also blocks a lot of the moisture. So, it's shady and DRY. I have, of course, populated it with a lot of hostas and ferns, but sometimes a person wants more than yet-another hosta shade garden, you know? Well, I will keep working on that.
The rest is looking pretty good. I'm quite pleased with my longest established garden in the backyard.
The herb garden has become mostly oregano and mint. Something is eating my basil (and it's not me!)
And, weirdly, the Asiatic lilies are looking amazing in the side yard.
Image: fiery red (with slightly orange centers) Asiatic lilies
How does your garden grow?
no subject
Date: 2022-06-28 06:32 pm (UTC)I have learned that too much shade is not actually a problem in my garden once it gets to be summer. Too much sun is. A lot of plants are getting sizzled. On the plus side, growing tomatoes and melons will be no problem.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-28 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-28 08:24 pm (UTC)They tore down large parts of my Depression Walk Ravine to expand the railroad tracks (it needed to be done, but it didn't need to be done there, and I'm pissed). So to compensate they gave out a bunch of trees and shrubs, and I managed to score a red dogwood and a serviceberry on Sunday. I am slowly getting rid of invasive things and replacing them with native things. I still have no idea what I'm doing.
My mom and neighbour came over and dealt with the weed situation in my backyard. Unfortunately my mom has a vendetta against my strawberries and uprooted them yet again, so by the time the neighbour got there with his weed whacker, there was nothing to save. She got all but two of my sunflowers. She means well but she cannot plant identify. I'm not planting anything new there until the backyard work is done (if it ever is) and then I'm going to label the shit out of it.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-28 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-29 01:49 am (UTC)So...I cried a lot the first time she pulled up my strawberries, especially since those were my good strawberries. These ones don't produce very much and are tiny so, while I am upset, I am not quite as devastated. I could have avoided this situation by weeding properly before she showed up and started weeding without me, but I've been in so much pain all year that I just couldn't.
She did weed the whole backyard, which you couldn't walk though. But I really wanted strawberries. I think I will just have to plant them once everything else is done and make it obvious where they are.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-28 08:36 pm (UTC)K.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-28 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-28 08:42 pm (UTC)My garden has disappeared under a tidal wave of non-native sedges, leggy white violets (yay) creeping bellflower (boo), dame's rocket (yay), daisy fleabane (yay). The Shasta daisies that appeared in the yard a few years ago appear to be losing the battle against Virginia creeper (meh), wild grape (meh), sweet autumn clematis (yay but good grief, plant, take a breather, there is no reason to behave like Khrushchev to all in your path), a strong undercurrent of volunteer mulberries, hackberries, Siberian elms, Norway maples, doomed ash trees, and black walnuts (mixed review but none of them are in a good location to be left alone), giant Solomon's seal (yay but YIKES). Also the Virginia waterleaf that appeared in a too-shady corner where I'd foolishly put a peony has at last spread freely across the lawn. YAY.
I cannot cope with hot weather and also cannot get up early, so I am trapped in a cycle where it's too hot or rainy to do anything in the yard, and then when the weather is lovely we go hiking and then it gets too hot or rainy or I have to do other things. I need to break out of this. I actually love the yard in its wild state, and I have apparently managed to placate the city of Minneapolis by hiring a young woman to mow the front yard, the boulevard, and the patch of grass back by the garage that is the canary in the coal mine to the inspectors from the Department of Housing. This year the grass has been overtaken by Bouncing Bet, also known as soapwort, so she was afraid to mow it because I might want the flowers. The soapword used to confine itself to a nice display at the roots of a Siberian elm growing on the property line between us and our neighbors to the south, but at some point it jumped the driveway and now it is rioting. I am not sure what its demands are. Possibly to get the daylilies out of the way.
However, there is also a Japanese knotweed incursion in the side yard, and the neighbors' Siberian pea bush hedge is falling into my front yard. I have never been able to get any neighbors to deal with the hedge, so I just cut back the branches so they won't hit my lawn-mowing young woman in the face, and mutter a lot.
I also have a gigantic number of hemerocallis fulva and when they all bloom with the daisy fleabane and the dame's rocket, it's really lovely. I don't think they will line up this year, though. The weather was too weird earlier in the spring. Not yet in evidence except as a riot of green are the black snakeroot and the spiral goldenrod. They are also gorgeous when blooming together, but that doesn't always happen either.
I had better stop. I had better get out there. It will be a lovely evening, I think.
I have never managed to post an image in a Dreamwidth comment, or I would provide a couple so that you don't feel bad about the minor imperfections of your garden.
P.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-28 11:41 pm (UTC)Seriously, it sounds incredible.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-28 11:45 pm (UTC)A couple of years ago I took some photos of the back yard when it was really burgeoning, and the following spring Google Photo served them up to me and I thought vaguely, "Wow, I wonder what state park that is, it doesn't look familiar. They should paint that outbuilding -- oh. That's the garage."
When the blooms have started in earnest I'll take some photos and do a post so you can see.
I can also try to dig up the ones I just mentioned, but I don't think the quality is all that good. Still, as a mass effect they might do all right.
P.