garden log : new iris bed planted

May 16Jul 8 girlflowers, improving, plants, yardLeave a comment

The new bed of crested irises.

I took advantage of the few days between downpours this week to clear the liriope from under the smaller dogwood and prepare a bed for the crested irises I’ve had sitting on the porch in boxes. It’s far too late for them to bloom this year, but they’re reported to spread easily and aggressively, so I’m hoping they’ll do that over the next couple of months. In an effort to both contain that spread somewhat and create a visual boundary between the bed and the composter, I edged the bed with bricks scavenged (with permission) from our neighbors’ old patio.

While working on the bed I was amused to have a pair of catbirds hanging around chattering at me. I could tell they were just waiting for me to move back a bit so they could get at all the food I was turning up with the soil. The dirt around the tree was chock full of worms; whether that was because that part of the yard is healthier than the front or because they’re staying closer to the surface of the saturated ground, I couldn’t tell you. I was reminded of our efforts to clear the pokeweed roots last summer and the way the catbirds flocked to the turned over soil. This year’s birds haven’t gotten used to us yet, I don’t think: none of them were as bold as the ones from the previous year. Already I can tell that I need to put down a thicker layer of mulch, as the squirrels have been successfully pock-marked the bed in only two days.

The wee rose bush at the back of the house.

One of my goals for this year is to create a better environment for the four rose bushes in the yard. I am pleased to say that the pruning I gave them last autumn seems to be helping them bush out quite a bit more this year. They’re coming in quite well, and the two smaller ones already have lovely deep blooms. I know that I need to create more space around them, as they’re getting choked by weeds and being kept from drying out. I suspect the bushes are over 25 years old, possibly longer; I don’t think the previous owners planted any. One at least, the deep red very fragrant low-growing bush at the back of the house, appears to be Crimson Glory, quite possibly from soon after its introduction as a new hybrid tea rose in 1936 (the year our house was built). It’s odd to imagine a rose older than our parents just plunked at the back of our house, but nice to have the continuity with the original owners. I hope to have as much luck identifying the three other plants!

garden log : spring growth and more plant refugees

May 8Jul 8 girlflowers, plants, yardLeave a comment

The new mini-bed of irises and prickly pear.

In keeping with my efforts to preserve all the plants I find around my yard, I volunteered to provide homes for any leftovers from the town’s annual plant exchange. I arrived home on Sunday evening to find bags of plants on the porch: bluebells, irises, prickly pear cactus, chives. The next day I cleared the grass from the front corner of the house to create a small bed that should get sun almost all day long. Into that bed, following the removing of roots and the mixing in of humus, I planted the irises. I love irises, and hope to someday have them all over the yard in various shapes, sizes, and colors. For now I will content myself with these refugees, as nearly all of the places I might plant irises, in particular the south facing wall of the garage, have several years to go before they’ll be suitable locations. Which is to say: they’re all completely overgrown with honeysuckle and the like at the moment.

Next to the irises, in some sandy soil that I did not enrich with humus, I planted a few pieces of the prickly pear. I look forward to seeing how it does there, and I hope that it won’t eventually grow so large as to prevent the gas company from reading the meter. I’m told they now have laser readers that can be used from a distance, but we’ll see. The chives I planted near the lavender at the corner of the porch, and the bluebells I passed along to my neighbor. We have bluebells in our yard already, and I’m still deciding where I’ll move them. I keep talking about moving them to the base of the maple tree in the front, but that seems like work, all that adding soil around the tree and digging up from around the rosebush and transplanting. At any rate, it hasn’t happened yet, and I decided that bluebell refugees I had aplenty. I also passed along some pachysandra, a ground cover of which another neighbor is very fond. So, our block did well from the plant exchange!

The clump of spiderwort that emerged from the swath of liriope last year.

One of the funny little surprises of our yard has been the clump of spiderwort that appeared last year seemingly out of nowhere. It’s not hard to believe that it’s been dormant under the carpet of liriope for years, but how many years is the question that fascinates us. Spiderwort appears to be native to this area, and I’ve seen it in beds around town. It’s not the most elegant plant on the planet—its spiky leaves flop all over each other and the somewhat delicate flowers get a bit lost in the foliage—but it’s a lovely deep purple and it blooms for a long time. I haven’t decided where I’ll move it; I suspect it’s destined for one of the many beds that live only in my imagination. In the meantime, I’ve cleared a little space around it and am letting it be.

The rhododendron, taking off this year.

Another plant that is creating somewhat of a quandary for us is the large rhododendron at the back of the house. On the one hand, we hate it. My partner is allergic to rhododendrons, so we’ve spent years developing a fierce dislike of the plant. Plus, it’s pink, and I’m already struggling to accept the roses, peonies, and azaleas in all their pink glory. It’s also smack in the spot that is destined to be the patio or screen porch: the one that also lives only in my imagination. As such, we’ve been trying to offer the plant to friends and neighbors alike to no avail. On the other hand, it’s a lovely plant and is likely nearly as old as our parents. After several years of neglect and poor weather—it allegedly used to be taller than the single-story addition—it’s growing and putting out all kinds of blooms. Having gotten no takers on our offers to pass it along to a yard where it will be loved and cherished rather and cursed and reviled, we’re starting to become fond of it in our own hateful way. It’s possible that when we do finally move it, it will be to another location in our own yard.

Our original peony plant, putting out all kinds of buds after having last year’s choking weeds cleared from around it.

Finally, the plant that has been the best gift of the yard is the peony. Tucked away near the back fence, it was completely choked with vines and weeds when we moved in. Last spring we cleared most of the weeds away from its base, and it produced quite a few blooms. We also received some refugee peonies from our neighbors down the road, and they seem to have mostly survived; I think we lost the smallest in the drought. It looks like we’ll get one flower from them, which is more than I expected, but they’ve all put up shoots and look to be photosynthesizing away.

It appears that luck is with me, as it will be raining for the next few days, creating perfect weeding weather: cool with nice soft soil. I am determined to make major progress on the backyard over the next couple of weeks, while it’s still arguably spring. I have no desire to repeat last year’s experience of trying to eradicate weeds that had settled in for the long haul at the height of the summer. I remind myself that we’re making enormous progress, and the photo record certainly helps to keep that clear. So, next week I hope to be reporting that I finally planted out those poor little crested irises I’ve had sitting on the porch for weeks!

garden log : rain rain rain

Apr 28Jul 8 girlflowers, insects, plants, yardLeave a comment

The front daylily bed, exploding with growth.

Aster at the end of the front bed, looking like it might actually get bushy this year.

It’s been raining! This is a good thing, both for the new shrubs and the region as a whole. Coming from farmland, I’m always appreciative of the rain, but this year more than ever after last year’s drought. The rain and other commitments have kept me from charging full speed ahead on the yard. I’ve mown the lawn, but it’s mostly been a sit-back-and-watch-things-grow sort of week. I’m glad to see the aster coming up so lushly, as it’s been quite scruffy for the past two years. It’s susceptible to pests, but it’s been hard to tell how what was a pest and what was simple lack of water; my philosophy on yard plantings has been ‘survive or die with the water that falls from the sky’ which meant that last year was hard on a lot of things. This year, though, they all seem to be recovering pretty well, so we’ll see how it goes.

The pink azalea at the side of the house coming into bloom.

Azaleas are extremely popular in this area, for reasons which no one has quite been able to explain to my satisfaction. I understand that there are native varieties, but it’s not clear to me which those are. At any rate, our yard included fewer azaleas than most when we acquired it—only two—and I’ve been trying to keep them alive. Knowing absolutely nothing about azaleas, this has been a bit of a challenge. As with everything else in the yard, they were quite scraggly when we moved in. Following the advice of one of my many ‘help me, I know nothing about flowers!’ books, I pruned them back relatively hard last year before they bloomed. They both did bloom, the white one in the front foundation bed and the pink one around the corner of the house. With last year’s drought and the warm winter that caused them to put out buds in February, which all promptly died in March’s freezing weather, they didn’t exactly fill in as much as I’d hoped. I’ve been on the verge of fertilizing the front one for weeks, as it was yellowed and half-dead looking, but the rain seems to have revived it. It’s not likely to bloom this year, but it’s putting out fresh green leaves and perking up quite a bit, so I’ll hold off on the fertilizer for now. I have no objections to fertilizer, I just haven’t cleared and mulched that bed yet, so I wasn’t relishing clearing away the leaf muck to properly apply the HollyTone. If we have a similar winter next year, I’ll get organized to treat it a bit next spring. I promise.

The self-seeding poppy bed just starting to come into bloom.

One of the areas of the yard that’s thriving from neglect is the poppy patch adjacent to our back walk. Each year I’ve let it go to seed and avoided mowing the sprouts as they come up in the spring, and each year I’ve been rewarded with a nice bright patch of poppies. I see no reason to keep them from doing their thing when there is so much else to be done in the yard. At some future point I figure that I’ll just pull them out before they set seeds if I don’t want them. In the meantime, they’re cheery and not hurting anything so there they stay. It appears likely that the bluebells, which are also in full bloom, will remain where they are at least until the autumn (note to self: mark their location with a little flag thingy so that you can dig up the bulbs and move them).

The crocus bed: humus-enriched, mulched, and edged.

In terms of my own labor in the yard this week, I did very little. I mowed the (front) lawn. I hired the tree people to spray bacteria on the Eastern tent caterpillar nest, which seems to have been successful as we’ve seen little caterpillar corpses on the back walk (not that I’ve been looking too closely). I pulled up dandelions by the dozens—some before they went to seed, even!—although still not nearly enough to keep them from cropping up again, especially given their prevalence through the whole block. And, I edged the new bulb bed with bricks to keep everything from running away down the sidewalk, added an inch or so of (store-bought) humus, and covered the whole thing with pine bark chips (my mulch of choice). I hold out absolutely no hope of getting any blooms in there this year, but instead am eagerly waiting to see what survives until next spring and what kind of flowers I might get then. To that end I’m just letting the scruffy greens do their photosynthesizing energy-storing thing.

My goals for May remain the same: weed, mulch, and remember that it doesn’t all have to get done right now.

garden log : new foundation bed & tenacious bulbs

Apr 12Jul 8 girlflowers, plants, yardLeave a comment

Grape hyacinth in the front lawn.

One of the nicer aspects of restoring order to our neglected yard has been discovering new plants as we weed and mulch parts of the garden that had been completely overgrown by liriope and ivy. I’ve spoken about the appearance of new clumps of bulbs along the side beds, but even the ones I’ve known about are doing better this year. The two grape hyacinths in the front yard have multiplied, putting up four flowers this spring. I love the perky look of them against the grass, and plan to again avoid them with the mower. Looking back over my notes from last year, I see that I recorded their location as ‘just at the border of the grass’ and the bare dirt under the maple. I’m pleased to see that the grass has made inroads into that bare area, as the hyacinths are now a good foot or more into the lawn.

New azaleas in the front foundation bed.

After talking about it for a couple of years, this week was the time for actually clearing out the neglected foundation bed and planting two new azaleas. I considered camellias for some time, but none of the ones I’ve seen in our town have been free of brown frost spots, so I decided that the climate was just a little harsh for them. To keep the front relatively consistent color-wise, I chose white azaleas; the white azalea and pieris in the other foundation bed look nice against the brick. Our neighbor helpfully adopted the two big barberries that had been plunked by the porch — we are thinking of them as burglar deterrents along her back fence — which cleared up the space for planting. I spent a couple of hours loosening the soil and clearing a good lawn bag full of roots from that area and then prepped the whole space with generous additions of humus and peat. Per the instructions I found on the internet, I created two nicely aerated mounds for the plants and then covered the whole area with enough mulch to keep the water from sitting at the foundation. To finish off that bed I added the taller of the woodland phlox varieties I’d picked up at Behnke’s and planted out the lavender near the front step, after adding more peat and mixing some garden lime into the dirt.

I’m satisfied with the outcome and look forward to seeing the shrubs grow and the phlox spread out over the next couple of years. I have more plans for the front of the house, not least of which is to mow the lawn, but they’ll wait a couple of days. I worked to get the bare ground covered before the rain that was anticipated for this weekend, and that included moving a couple of hostas from the backyard to the north side of the house. I’d cleared a strip of liriope from along the foundation there, and once I had the hostas in place I mulched the whole stretch with pine bark chips (my mulch material of choice, as it has some color but doesn’t reek like shredded hardwood mulch). I don’t love hostas, but we have a couple of them in the backyard so I’ll see if they’ll take along the north side of the house. If so, I’ll move the rest and create a narrow foundation bed the length of the house.

Tenacious lilies-of-the-valley coming up along the back of the house.

I’ve mostly left the back to itself for the time being, relying on the clearing we did last year to hold us while I get the front tidied up. The leaf mulch seems to have been good for the bulbs under the dwarf cherry, as the lilies-of-the-valley are coming up like crazy. My plan is to move them to under the holly tree, on the south fence, and encourage them to spread into a nice ground cover there; this is also my plan for the crested irises I purchased. First, though, that area needs to be cleared of liriope and soil-treated; we — and by ‘we’ I mean my partner and his friend — got the space about half cleared last summer, and I plan to tackle it over the next week. Or so.

Today, though, I’m going to enjoy the fruits of my labor and watch the bees buzz around the new flowers.

garden log : killing killing killing & buying buying buying

Apr 8Jul 8 girlflowers, killing, plants, shopping, yardLeave a comment

This week has been rainy and I’ve focused on killing unwanted yard invaders. Chickweed is sprouting like crazy all over the town, spurred on by last year’s drought, and I’ve tried to clear the larger patches of it from the front yard. I’ve also tried to catch the dandelions before they go to seed, and have been moderately successful. I am not sure that the bare, slightly muddy, patches are better than the weeds, but I’m hoping the grass and violets will fill them in with time. I know that many people consider the violets themselves a weed — not to mention a sign of poor drainage — but I find them cheery and am happy to see them return. They, too, will spread, but more slowly than the plants that fling their seeds in all directions, so I tolerate them gladly.

I’ve taken advantage of the damp weather and wet ground to dig up more of the invasive liriope as well. I’m making slow but steady progress; I’m determined not to let the weeds get stronger over the next few months. Digging them up mid-summer was possible, but not a lot of fun, and I hope to have them well in hand by that point this year. In addition to killing things in our own yard, we lent our skills to the town for the civic association’s annual stream clean-up. Our contribution was to clear the invasive tree-strangling ivy from along the stream banks of one block of the town park. Yes, two hours of labor netted us two large contractor bags of ivy and one block cleared; that’s how prevalent the ivy is around here! In some instances the ivy had been previously cut but had grown back together and was refusing to die; in those cases we pulled the roots from the trunk, even though that can be harder on the tree. From all accounts the stream clean-up was a success, as there appeared to be enough volunteers to cover the entire length of the creek this year.

Ivy-damaged tree in the town park.

As I continue to clear the ground in our yard, I’m starting to need materials to cover it up again: plants and mulch. I purchased two cold hardy white azaleas for the left foundation bed, and they’ve been sitting on our porch while I collect the peat moss and humus that I need to plant them out properly. Azaleas grow well in the soil in our town, so I expect that if I plant them as recommended they’ll do well. This will be the first time I’ve planted a shrub, though, and I didn’t think the ‘plunking them in the ground’ approach that works so well with transplanting daylilies would suffice.

Plants waiting to be planted out.

In addition to the azaleas, I purchased a range of low-growing natives — woodland stonecrop, three types of woodland phlox, two varieties of crested iris — to fill out the front bed and the cleared area under the holly tree in the back yard. I’m hoping that the phlox will anchor both the soil and the mulch in the front and that the iris will spread into a nice ground cover in the back. Of course, this means that the coming week will be full of soil treatment and ground preparation, if it ever stops raining. Not that rain is bad; I’m grateful for it, especially after last year’s drought. It just means more time inside — and more money spent at the garden store — than I’d like.