Sunshine, Pathways, Locks & Stones

Today, for the first time since a short, warm week in April, I felt summer! It streamed through my window in the morning and pulled me outdoors, with no thought for any pedestrian pursuits like eating breakfast or brushing teeth. It even made me forget, for almost an entire minute, that I'm definitely not a morning person!

Only when my bare toes had felt the sun-warmed concrete of the driveway, and my tender veggies had made it safely back out into the sunshine after spending the chilly evening inside, did I realize how hungry I was. And since I had Big Plans for the day, I knew I would need a good breakfast.

But first, I wandered outside, coffee cup in hand, checking out the garden. I know that I have showed this simple combination of chives, sage (salvia officinalis 'Newe Ya'ar) and 'Fuldaglut' sedum before, but it continues to thrill me.

The 'Diablo' purple ninebark behind, and the stand of 'Caradonna' salvia to the left (both outside of this frame) really help define the space, but this plant combination alone makes me happy. Spikey, soft, upright, whorls of color... it's all there. And that they are all "humble" plants, two of them "mere" cooking herbs, makes it even more fun somehow.

It occurred to me as I walked around that I might have actually planted my shade garden too tightly. I meant to plant things closely, as my mind rationalized that with dry soil and the gardener's reluctance to water anything not edible, this trick would give the impression of a lush garden anyway.

But I might have taken that a bit too far, as you can see here with the 'Hillside Black Beauty' bugbane and its underplanting of pulmonaria. I thought that the bugbane would look tall and leggy, and the pulmonaria would provide a low, silvery foil, but right now it just looks crammed together. I'll have to keep an eye on this as the bugbane grows to see if it matches the picture in my mind's eye or needs to be moved.

On the brighter side of the shade garden, 'Othello' ligularia is doing its dark, brooding thing next to an unusually lively hakonechloa macra 'Aureola.' The Japanese forest grass sports these lovely red tips each fall, but I haven't noticed them in the spring before.

I'm guessing that our continued cool spell is playing a role in my garden all around. The hakone grass is tipped in red, my zebra grass is already almost 2ft tall and has yet to show much banding... but on the other hand my neglected moisture-lovers, like the ligularia, aren't yet looking as lackluster as they tend to do when it gets warm.

Eventually, I did take advantage of the gorgeous day to get some heavy work done, and as you can probably guess from this post title, my work involved pathways, "locks" & stones.

But concision is not one of my strong points, and I'm never able to edit myself well when I'm as excited as I am about today's sunshine and this current project. This is already a long post... and I have to get to the grocery store before it closes, or I will have nothing to eat for lunch at the garden center tomorrow... so the rest of today will have to be explained in a "part two" posting.

I hope that all of the rest of my fellow garden bloggers were able to take advantage of today's wonderful weather as well, whether working or playing. It really was a nice one--here on the sunny shores of Lake Erie, at least!

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day: May 2008

May has been an interesting month. Some of the early bloomers got all mixed up on when they were supposed to bloom, I discovered that serendipity had created a color theme in my spring backyard garden, and I got inspired by my brother and sister-in-law's ambitious first garden.

All the while, things have been blooming. Many things. But before I show you some of them and list others (in the spirit of May Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, hosted by Carol of May Dreams Gardens) I want to point out the beautiful state of decay of my Ivory Prince hellebore. Having such a small urban garden, I really value plants that look good when they are supposedly "past their prime!"


Most of the tulips are on their way out as well. The greigii tulips have long since shattered, decorating the front yard with their bright red petals. 'Black Hero' double tulip, a surprise returner this year, rests amongst the yarrow foliage:


And the elegant 'Prinses Irene' is fading from a bright mango orange into a shade akin to Tang:

At the end of the front bed, just before you turn to go up the porch steps, unnamed single late purple tulips sprawl through golden oregano, 'Purple Dragon' lamium, and my Japanese maple:

"The Bad Bergenia" has bloomed profusely this spring... as if to mock me for thinking about taking it out and replacing it with something prettier. And the foliage has looked nice, too. I still mostly scowl at it--what a cheeky plant it's turned out to be!

And finally, the garden's newer blooms. I keep wishing for the willpower to take out the doublefile viburnum in my front yard garden, because it is one of the least drought tolerant viburnums and I dislike fussy plants. But between the horizontal habit of the branches and the gorgeous texture of the leaves, I'm too deeply into my addiction here. And then there are the pretty flowers:


Also in the front garden, 3 of my 4 'Efanthia' euphorbias have rebounded and look amazing in bloom. The fourth plant has a few little nubs of new green leaves, but is nowhere near flowering like its friends:

People either love or hate geranium phaeum 'Samobor,' but I am always surprised to hear complaints that the flowers are not eye-catching enough. I guess that must be due to their size--because check out this amazing bloom color:

I am working on a theory that says something like the following: If you complain about one of your plants on your blog, and proceed to abuse the heck out of it (hopefully to the point of death, to avoid the necessity for shovel pruning) it will elevate its game. (See the bergenia above for further proof.)

And you might even start to have positive feelings for it, like the cautiously positive feelings I have for this garishly hot pink rhododendron, now that I've surrounded it with things like Japanese bloodgrass and goatsbeard to tone down the girliness:

This next bloom probably shouldn't even count, because the plant is still in its nursery pot. But I hope you can understand why I fell in love with the luscious flowers on this lewisia:

The blueberry flowers are doubly exciting--not only are they pretty, but they'll be good eating later! (In bud, next to the blueberry, are allium karataviense 'Ivory Queen.' I love its pleated and cupped foliage coming up through the creeping thyme.)

I wasn't sure what ajuga would think of my rather dry yard... but I'm happy to report that the diminutive 'Chocolate Chip' is extremely happy here. And handsome:

Other things in bloom on May 15, 2008:

grape hyacinths
bleeding hearts
'Samourai' pulmonaria
'Pine Knot Strain' hellebores
'Honeycrisp' apple
sweet woodruff
'Queen of the Night' tulips
'Geranium' daffodils
(note: Orangery and an unnamed daffodil would also be blooming... except that the elegant 'Geranium' ruined these showier daffs for me. I ripped them out.)
'Metallica Crispa' ajuga
silene maritima
carex 'Beatlemania'
tiarella 'Crow Feather'
carex platyphylla
an unnamed epimedium with a pretty deep lilac flower
blue fescue
'Cape Blanco' sedum
'Jack Frost' brunnera
alpine strawberries
phlox divaricata
lamium NOID (from Mom's garden)
This little carex, 'Hime Kansugi'

Other plants in bud on May 15, 2008:

penstemon NOID
culinary sage
physocarpus opulifolius 'Diabolo'
'Black Beauty' elderberry

clematis jackmanii

lonicera sempervirens
raspberries
'Caradonna' salvia
'Marcus' salvia
these beautiful chives:

I just love chives... both edibly and aesthetically.

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
- William Morris

(Or both.)

Spring Garden Work

Spring is a time for new beginnings... and a lot of work in the garden! I have been staining fence panels as they are needed for espalier and trellising, and also double-digging some new beds.

I'm down to maybe 5 minutes total for mowing both the front and the back yard. My John Deere-loving father will be very disappointed with this turn of events... but he'll be happy to know that the amount of grass you see in this picture will basically remain. It will just be a more environmentally friendly grass, eventually.

Why keep some lawn? Aesthetically, I like the fact that it serves as a ground for the other plantings and gives the eye a place to rest. Practically, it gives both the Gardener and the Garden Assistant a comfy place to rest our bodies as well. In fact, we both snoozed for a while on the lawn this weekend... you know, just in case the neighbors were starting to wonder if I'd suddenly gone sane. Can't have them thinking that!

You might notice that I also moved the second square drainage tile (both were trashpicked from a treelawn in '05) into the same bed as the first. It is set a bit higher than the tile closest to the driveway, which will hopefully lead your eye to the cherry tree that will soon be planted and espaliered against the fence.

The tile will add some much-needed structure, along with the arc of lavender cotton that I'm planning, to this very wide bed. (Sometime soon I'll take a picture from my second-story bedroom window so you can see what I mean.) I'm not quite sure what I'll be planting in these tiles for the summer just yet, however. I'll have to take a walk through the annual section and see what strikes my fancy.

A few other things that have been amusing me this week:

- I am playing A-league women's sand 2's for the first time ever, and we won our first game last night. This is an athletic challenge that I am unlikely to experience again in my life since I'm already at the ripe old age of 32... and even though we're no Misty May and Kerri Walsh, we're having a heck of a lot of fun. I can't even tell you how much this is invigorating (and exhausting) me.

- I love to watch new foliage unfurling in the garden. Particularly baptisia. Particularly when the baptisia is backlit and covered in morning dew.

- Most of my time working at the garden center is spent dispensing advice and answering questions, but sometimes I am on the receiving end of ideas as well. Last week, a lady turned me on to this recipe for Grilled Chicken Sandwiches with Sage Pesto and Apples from an old issue of Bon Appetit.

She said that the sage pesto is so good that her family eats it throughout the summer and she rarely makes pesto with basil anymore at all. I doubt that I would go quite that far, but I definitely want to try the sage substitution. And it might be good with walnuts instead of pine nuts, too. Yum.

So many fresh ideas, unfinished projects, and new growth going on... yes, it's finally spring!

Spring Colors: Yellow, Purple, Blue

I feel like I'm always blaming my garden successes on serendipity... but maybe I don't give myself enough credit. I admit that I bought these 'Queen of Night' tulips on a whim because I was entranced by their beautiful moodiness... but made a conscious decision to plant them where they would fill in space in the spring garden, and play off of the light green emerging foliage of the goatsbeard and switchgrass:


Notice that the fence has been stained recently? The grays unfortunately skipped from medium gray to black, so I had to settle for "Coffee" instead of dark gray as a fence color. The trellis I'm putting up is to help encourage my native honeysuckle to climb the fence.

(Annie in Austin introduced me to lonicera sempervirens, which you can see in her April Bloom Day Post, and I just had to add one to my High Country Gardens order last year. It's not so "sempervirens" for me up here, but it's healthy, has flower buds, and its glaucous foliage will look gorgeous against the brown fence in a few years.)

I had given up on these species tulips, tulipa tarda, which you see both above and below, because they are supposed to be early tulips and they hadn't even shown up by the time the greigii tulips all bloomed. They were a nice surprise this weekend!

I planted them next to the purple foliage of 'Regina' heuchera, which amazingly enough is in its second year in the same spot, knowing that their yellow and white petals should show up well against the colorful coralbells. I guess it just goes to prove that some spring bulbs are indeed "late" in the first year after planting.

Grape hyacinths are tucked in all along the driveway bed as well. Their color mixes nicely with the leaves of 'Othello' ligularia and a miniature hosta. When I bought the hosta at a Master Gardener sale, 'Dawn' was the name on the tag, but I'm not sure that is correct. It's pretty, either way.

More blue and gold in the same bed. These are the baby-blue flowers of the handsome 'Jack Frost' brunnera, underlighted by fresh sprigs of yellow creeping Jenny:

Circling back around to the fence again, we find 'Chocolate Chip' ajuga just starting to bloom under the watchful eye of a pretty hellebore. In the background, 'All Gold' hakonechloa brightens up the show at the start of a bed of sweet woodruff:

I know that some of you might be wringing your hands at the thought of the sweet woodruff. But I absolutely love the scent so I deal with this high-maintenance groundcover. It gets pulled out from around the brick retaining wall as soon as it's done blooming, and thus stays out of the flowerbeds. Three scaly Buckler ferns have no problem growing up through the woodruff, and my broken-but-still-beautiful bird bath adds some height to the corner.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with how these parts of the backyard are shaping up--and that they seem to have a spring color theme is definitely an added bonus! But there are plenty of areas of the backyard that I am not about to show off just yet... much construction will commence now that I'm recovered from both the flu and the sinus infection that it left behind as a parting gift.

And then maybe I'll be brave enough to take pictures of the rest of the backyard to share. :)

The Kids Are Alright

As I noted a few years back, my younger brothers were not gardening prodigies. But they have both come a long way since then. Both of "the boys"--and the wonderful women they lucked into marrying--have been growing small edible gardens at their rental housing for the past few years, much to my delight.

There has obviously been some branching out into the ornamental as well, as you can see in this succulent pot above. Also obvious here is that my brother, unlike me, has not inherited my mother's black thumb when it comes to growing aloe. Damn unfair genetics.

Jeff, the youngest, and his wife Amanda bought their first house this spring. The first thing he did was to refinish all of the wood floors on the second story before they moved in. They turned out beautifully, as you can see. (Be forewarned, Jeff: I'm definitely calling you for assistance when I want to redo mine in a few years!)

While other family members were asking about the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, I was scoping out pictures of the yard, wondering where and whether they might tuck in a garden or two.

Maybe a week or more ago, I got a phone call from the kids. They were all excited for me to check out pictures of the new veggie garden they had started in the backyard, and I was of course excited to hear that they had started one!

The first picture shows the work from day 1. The garden is located at the back corner of their property, a good 8 feet or so in from the property line.

See all of the string? I'm sure there was a level involved, too... my brother's an engineer. And we all inherited our parents' common sense and general "If you're going to do it, you might as well do it right," attitude.

The bed is pretty ambitious in size, and big enough to hold lots of veggies. I knew that they were planning to build up the wall a bit more, but I was surprised when I saw this next picture a few days later.

5 rows of retaining wall block! This side of the yard sloped more than I'd thought. I wonder if this project just evolved into something larger, or if Jeff and Amanda knew that it was going to take this many bricks when they started?

With all that space to fill, they of course had to get some dirt delivered. I'm known around my neighborhood for getting a huge pile (6 yards) of Sweet Peet mulch delivered every spring, but the size of this pile of dirt is kind of daunting even to me.

I admit, I take my time mulching--sometimes parts of the pile are still there in the spring yet. But as you can see, Jeff & Amanda filled up the new garden in fairly short order:

They even finished off the garden bed with one last row of bricks on the top. Doesn't that look nice? I love that this looks like it should be a massive landscaping bed in a fancy park, and yet it's going to hold fruits and veggies... veggies are beautiful enough and deserving enough of such a lovely home, after all.

So what's going into the garden? I have yet to see the full list, but I know that some of the neighbor girls helped Amanda plant seeds the other day--and as a result, she's way ahead of schedule! See, Amanda is a big softie (that's part of what I love about her) and when the girls seemed disappointed that they were "already done," she went in and found more seeds for them to work on. Generation Y exposing today's kids to gardening.... that makes me very happy!

No word yet on whether the extra seeds will require a matching garden in the other corner of the backyard. If so, I'm guessing it won't be built until next spring--it will probably take that long for their aching backs to recover from all of this hard labor. As you can see, even Miss Molly, their usually indefatigable Golden Retriever, was pooped after this huge project.

Great job!


***Updated to add: I just spoke with Jeff, and there are actually 7 layers of block on the highest side. They used 300 blocks and moved 10 yards of dirt into the garden.***