Odds and Ends

I spent some time yesterday and this morning pottering in the garden.

I'm really liking how this pot off the mudroom porch came out this year. The Rock and Blues salvia is really budded up, so it should show a lot more of the blue soon. I put an optical grass in the center front, but it's being swallowed by the alyssum.

 This pot is also looking nice, after sitting in a dormant state before I realized how much damage the ant colony had done. The plants are now growing.

Yesterday I transplanted the clethra shrub from the north porch garden to the new dragon garden. This is the fourth year I've had this shrub, and it actually looks worse than last year. It is so hard to grow things in the north bed. 

I ordered some little blue stem grass plugs to try in there. Supposedly it stays shorter in very dry soil. I also ordered some spotted monarda, and I was thinking of putting it in there as well, but I do wonder if it will get too tall? It would need to be near the front to get enough sun.

I watered a couple of pots yesterday as well --specifically the two with the sweet potato vines. Those really suck up the water!

Today I put the north drip on in the north garden for 1.45 hours. I did some deadheading, brought in another two Early Girl tomatoes (had the last two for breakfast before going out!), and laid a strip of cardboard and mulch along the area in front of the mudroom deck. We tried to straighten that area the last time we had Hertzog's mulch the area, but even though Rob had killed the grass, the guys just followed the old edge. I sprayed some round-up, laid down some thick cardboard from a double-walled box, and put down three bags of mulch. I've got a bag in reserve in case the cardboard starts to show.

Interestingly, I could only get two bags of hardwood shredded, so the other two bags (I can only fit four in my car) are brown dyed mulch. I don't like it at all --it's not shredded, so much bigger chunks. I'll definitely try to avoid that in the future!

NW Corner Garden

 This garden area had a major edit about three years ago. For a long time there was a large area of dark pink New England asters in the back, and every year they would flop all over the place. And they were slowly expanding, taking over the bed. 

I removed the asters and a lot of Siberian iris. I moved some large dark blue bearded iris to the corner of the woodshed. That opened up a lot of space, and my first choice was a dwarf butterfly bush. It arrived barely rooted in to its pot, and even though I babied it through the summer (shading it and watering it well), it didn't return the next spring. It was probably for the best, because I think it was going to be too short for that back right space. 

That fall I added in a clematis (Hudson Blue), and lots of Asian lilies and daffodils. I also divided the orange/red daylily that I love because it had gotten too big. Unfortunately, one group of lilies are really too tall to be in the front area of the bed, so they'll need editing as well.

I'm really loving the thyme in front --there's creeping thyme and wooly thyme. The creeping thyme blooms purple in the spring. 

I moved some Stargazer lilies and another shorter oriental lily to the back. That summer was incredibly dry, and then the next summer (last summer) I was non-weight bearing for six weeks after my peroneal tendon ruptured, and the drought was even worse. That has slowed things down a bit.

I'm most disappointed with the clematis. I don't know if it gets enough sun. It came back well it's second year, but was eaten up by earwigs. The same thing happened this summer. The foliage doesn't look good, and there's at least one brown branch. I've given it quite a bit of organic fertilizer, although it has been a balanced one, so maybe I need something different. Weirdly, the nepeta (Cat's Pajamas) that I planted under it isn't really thriving either. I don't really get why. 

Things to do in this bed:

• Move the tall Asian lilies, either to the back of the bed, or to another bed.
• Add something shorter --perhaps dwarf Asian lilies to that spot.
  

Rebooting

I believe I'm going to reboot this blog, as a way to keep a personal record of changes in the garden.

The last several years have seen a few major changes, including the creation of a new garden area, new plant additions, and some major editing of existing beds. Last summer I had foot surgery, and it was the 2nd summer of a two-summer drought, so I have enjoyed being able to garden this summer, and while the weather was nice, we have both enjoyed sitting out under the maple trees and enjoying the blooms. This summer Rob was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer, so we are experiencing the journey of chemotherapy. It is very much not fun, but the garden does bring some solace.

So, July 14th might be an odd time to start this, but I think it will be helpful to be able to look back. 

Earlier in July, we had the mudroom porch replaced.  We widened it slightly, and had a larger deck area at the bottom put in. It's nice and solid, and we're happy with it.

We were actually thinking of adding a pergola, and we had that originally priced. When we got an estimate from the first guy, we asked to break the job up, so the pergola would be done next summer. After weeks of not hearing from him, we reached out to a guy who bills himself as a handyman (Reece's Handyman Services). After seeing some of his work posted on FB, we got a (much less expensive) estimate from him, and he built this later that same week. Eventually it will silver up to the same color as the boardwalks Rob created years ago.

Next up, some new and edited gardens :-)