floral friday

So, my garden goal this year is to have flowers.  Not just plants, I have a lot of those, but things that bloom and look pretty. The idea being, if I have enough things blooming outside, I can bring them inside too.  I'm getting there!

I'm not a fan of pink and red together, but I don't care. I have flowers.  In a pretty vase.  In my house.  Mission accomplished. 

The peony & rose aren't new this year, but they've gotten some extra tlc, and this is the first year the rose has bloomed.  Hopefully this arrangement will last a little while, if not, there will be more where that came from. 

There are a lot of 'floral friday' linkups out there, I linked to this one.  Let me know if I should be linking to another one. 

may bloom day

Here's hoping that this goes better than yesterday's disaster of a blogging attempt.

Happy Bloom Day!  Guess what? I have roses!!  The fence roses are covered in buds, and just a few started opening in time for me to take pictures.  This rose didn't bloom at all last year, and it is a dark pink, almost red.  It's tiny, but it has lots of petals.  I can't wait to see what the center looks like.  There are three roses on the fence, and this is the first to bloom.  It reaches about 4-6 feet, and has sent out a few really good looking, sturdy canes this year.

My peony looked great this year too.  It has doubled in size, two blooms this year, and they are just pretty.  No other way to describe them.  I'm looking forward to next year, apparently it should double in size again.

instagramed

unfiltered

The Hearts-A-Burstin are doing their thing, but it doesn't seem as showy this year.  I blame the peonies.

The hellebores are sticking around too, but I think their days are numbered as it starts getting hotter.

 

My rhododendron is making its way to a full recovery from the drought before I moved in.  It had even more blooms this year, and you really can see the new vertical growth.  Before the drought, it was as tall as the roof on my porch, but died back to about a quarter of it's previous size.  It'll take time, but it's coming back.

The duetiza (sp?) is coming back too.  This is an old fashioned shrub that my great grandmother planted.  The renters who lived here before me didn't do a lot as far as taking care of things, and I know this could be prettier than it is.  It has beautiful blooms, but only half of the plant actually flowers.  A little fertilizer should go a long way to fixing that for next year.

These little sweet alyssums should fill out nicely this summer and make a nice boarder.

This year has been funny for the wildflowers.  My yard is full of yellow, but I'm not seeing the red and blue that I'm used to.  Hopefully the fire pinks are just being slow.

The wild blackberries are really happy though, and I think I'll have raspberries this year too.  If I can get to them before the animals do.

I'm trying my hand at vegetables again this year.  I really don't have enough sun, and there is a lot of wildlife that calls my place home, but I'm going to try.  For the zucchini & squash I am using a technique for deep watering that I saw on pinterest.  You fill the buried pot with water, and it drains deeper into the soil.  When I water with the hose, I usually fill the pot 3 or 4 times, or until it holds water. I'm not sure this would work better than a drip hose, but we'll see.

Well that's about it, and I'd say it's a good improvement over last year and the year before.  For more of what is blooming around the world today, visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

PS, my mom just started a blog so she could do bloom day too.  So if you want to see where my plants come from, or what plants will be in my garden soon, take a look.  I'm sure she would love the visitors and the comments!  http://happy---place.blogspot.com/ 

plants in the ground

I have tried three times to write this post and it just isn't working.  The blogging gods are not smiling on me.  Every time I tried to format the post so that it's actually legible to read, it got crazy, and now it completely disappeared.  In the 30 seconds from when it happened, and when I tried to revert to the draft, it auto saved.  Fantastic.

So here is an ugly graphic I want to reference later, and I'll try another post tomorrow for bloom day.  For now, I give up.

That would be Dusty Miller, not Dusty Millet.  Oy vey.

 

plant people are good people

Say what you want about tree huggers, but plant people are cool people.

I've been talking to some people for a while about my excess of plants.  I had too many day lilies.  I didn't need 5, baby confederate jasmine, even if they were $2 a piece.  I hate yuccas BUT, I knew exactly the person who would appreciate their toughness and spiky foliage, and I found homes for all my extra plants.

Now that spring is finally here and it's safe to start transplanting, the talking turned into taking. (woo-hoo!) All of the day lilies are gone, and I don't have to look at the yuccas when I drive down my driveway.  And the coolest thing happened, my plant giveaways turned into plant swaps. 

Just as I knew my saucy friend would love the spiky yuccas & spider-warts, she knew that some white and green plants would look great with the new paint job on my house. (It's like she knows a thing or two about design, or something like that.)  Then my newlywed friends who took plants for their first garden, they knew that I would love their extra veggie seedlings.  (Heirloom cherry tomatoes...yes please!)

I had no idea offloading these plants would turn into plants swaps, but I am declaring plant swaps cool, and I think they need to happen more often.  Thanks y'all!!

Also, a shout out to my friends who left me their extra impatiens.  They are exactly what I'm looking for my window boxes!

garden progress report

I hope everyone had a Happy Easter/nice long weekend.  Good Friday always comes as a surprise to me.  Easter isn't really on my radar, but it's a day I get off work.  So about Wednesday someone usually tells me we have Friday off, and it's always a great surprise.   Who doesn't love a good 3 day weekend??

Long weekends are meant to be spent on the porch.

I spent my 3 day weekend outside working in the yard, and I think these were my last big yard days for a while.  Which is good timing, because mother nature looks like she's going to do that thing again this year where she skips spring and goes straight to summer, and it's going to get hot.  Anyway, I'm glad I sucked it up and got the hard work out of the way before I would be drowning in sweat.

I used a push weed eater to clear paths through they ivy & to the pond.

This guy thought he was sneaky.  He was not.

The biggest project was prepping 3 foundations beds for planting.  Even though I had done all the right things by mulching the beds for a year, and watering them before I started digging, none of that removes rocks and tree roots.  That job was left to me and an maddock...which was then followed by a job for me and a heating pad.  But it's done!! In the past week or so I have cleared those 3 beds, and planted in two of them.
 

This bed is the smallest of the three.  I started here first because I thought it would be the easiest. 
WRONG. It was full of clay, rocks and tree roots.  It's ready for planting after we install a window box.

Before, with composted manure piled up at the back of the bed.

After.  These hostas should bloom white.
I'd like to add some Lupines that I started from seed behind the hostas.

Front bed before.

Phase 1, adding a rose.  This is Buff Beauty.  This bed has been completely prepped for annuals & herbs.
All of the beds were dug 12" deep with a mattock, mixed with manure & top soil, then mulched.

The next project was finding a home for my other rose.  Both roses that I purchased are as shade tolerant as roses go, but I wanted to find a spot that was got as much sun as possible.  It's a challenge, but I was able to dig up some Yuccas and steal a sunny spot near my driveway.

It's a baby Cramoisi Superieur, but it had some delicate blooms on it before I transplanted it.

The spot is between two boxwoods that I really want to get rid of.  I like boxwoods, I do, and I'm happy with the other 6 or 7 that I have, but I've wanted to get rid of these since I moved in.  They look diseased, and there is a lot more I would like to do in that spot.  They came from "The Old Homeplace", and I'm going to have to find a creative way of convincing my Grandmother that they have lived a happy life and need to be retired.

The rose is much prettier than the boxwoods.

The last of my big projects over the weekend was planting my remaining $2 azaleas. Of the seven I purchased, I really only knew where I wanted to put two of them.  That left me with five hot pink - not pale pink like the picture on the tag - bushes.  But my goal is to add more flowers, and these can be seen from a mile away,. So they found a home in my front yard near my fire pit.  I'll be able to see them from the porch, but they won't get in the way of the view of the pond.  It's a win all around.

It's hard to see but there are 5 new pink azaleas mixed in with the Huckleberries.

All in all I've done a good bit of work, and I'm pretty happy with where I stand so far.  This is my list of garden goals for 2014, and I'm doing pretty good for April :)

Here are my garden plans for 2014:

The first window box is up!

1. Fertilize EVERYTHING.  A friend boards horses, and my parents have a truck.  I have no excuses.  The 'to fertilize' list includes, but is not limited to: my rose, the boxwoods, the rhododendron, the azalea, and the hydrangeas. (roses, boxwoods, holly, & magnolia 3/11/14; azaleas, bulbs, & raspberries April)
2. Make a map of my house & garden for the blog. (yeah, about that.....)
3. Install lattice for my Confederate Jasmine to climb. (check, completed 3/16/14)
4. Plant a rose. Probably Buff Beauty. (If they're sold out by the time I try to order I will hunt you down.) (ship date 4/7/14, 4/19/14 planted both  ofmy roses!! )
5. Plant morning glories around a tree. (I need to start these seeds)
6. Build at least 2 window boxes.  (2 built, 1 installed 4/19/14)
7. Plant impatiens in my tree stumps. (soon, very soon)
   
8. Plant goosenecks by the new day lily bed. (check, 4/8/14)
9. Design & plant in the beds around my foundation. (design - check, planting - started)
10. Grow things from seed as much as possible. Basil, purple coneflower, black eyed susans, moon flower, morning glories, foxgloves, there are SO MANY SEEDS, and it's so much cheaper than buying plants! (Most of my seeds are started, just one more round to go)
11. Experiment with cuttings (wild azelea, mock orange, etc?)
12. Clear ivy in at least 2 more sections of yard.
13. Plant more bulbs. (gladioli & fresia 3/15/14)

There's something pretty gratifying about that strike through.