Poppycockles

2012-02-16T07:05:00.000-08:00

Looking at last year's pictures, I've been thinking that the backyard could use a super-early-season colour boost. The primroses and bloodroot don't do much in isolation: what I need are Drifts of Colour.

If I'm successful starting some primulas from seed, that will be an excellent start, since I will then have a pile of them to scatter around. I doubt they'd do very well in the sun bed, though - crocuses might be a better solution there. And/or squills, maybe. Will have to keep an eye on the ones in the front yard and see when they bloom. Hellebores would be a good pick for the shadier parts of the backyard, too. Although they're pretty pricy to plant in numbers.

Figures that this occurs to me NOW instead of three months ago, when I could still have been planting spring bulbs.

2012-02-16T06:39:00.000-08:00

Tempting from the Gardenimport catalogue:

* Bush clover (Lespedeza) Gibralter.

This caught my eye in the show gardens at Artistic Landscape Design in the fall, but at 5'-6' tall and wide, I figured I didn't have room for it. What I DIDN'T know was that, like Buddlejas, these die back to the ground every winter and grow back to their shrubby proportions over the season; so if you place them right, the smaller stuff they engulf is getting ratty-looking anyway. And it "prefers a poor, well-drained soil in full sun," which I think I can provide!

I'm not generally a fan of heucheras, but these really caught my eye as possible splashes of colour for the east bed:

* Autumn Leaves

* Pear Crisp

I was looking at Persicaria, too, but it needs consistently moist soil. Bah.

2012-02-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

It seems imprudent to go hog-wild on the seeds before determining whether my new equipment will actually help them survive, but...BUT...damn you anyway, tempting seed catalogues!

Enticing from the Thompson & Morgan offerings:

* primulas: japonica mix, crimson japonica, and drumstick mix - particularly tempting because I lurrrrv these and want to plant many many of them; this would be a super-cost-effective way to do it, if I could pull it off, considering that a packet of seeds costs as much as a single potted plant
* bright orange calendula
* agastache cana
* amaranthus marvel bronze
* amaranthus love lies bleeding
* celosia flamingo feather
* cleome mix
* knautia macedonica
* verbena pink spires
* verbascum copper rose

Intarwebz tips for growing primulas:

An alternative method for growing PRIMULAS is to sow in a peat based compost which has already been moistened and do not cover the seed. Cover the container with a piece of glass or plastic and grow in the dark in a steady temperature of 60F. This is quite adequate and over 65'F germination will be inhibited. When the seeds start to germinate sprinkle a thin layer of fine compost over them and when the seed leaves come through this, move the box to a well lit place with a temperature of 55'F. At no time should the seed box be in full sun.

2012-01-24T17:25:00.000-08:00

Just acquired a second-hand tabletop light setup for seed starting. I have not had very much success with seeds to date, between lack of light and absent-mindedness wrt water. So I made this purchase in hope of addressing the first issue, and I figure a capillary mat (from the ever-trusty Lee Valley) might help with the second.

Because the house is a mess, I have lost the order form where I jotted down my planned order from Lindenberg Seeds, so I am trusting it to the interwebz instead.

* Cannas: Pkg of 3 Ambassador (4135) and Pkg of 3 Red King Humbert (4137)
* Liatris: 2x pkg of 10 (4272)
SEEDS:
* Agastache Honey Bee Blue (506)
* Amaranthus Joseph's Coat (5158)
* Wheat celosia (602)
* Cleome Rose Queen (625)
* Cosmos Early Sensation Mixed (650)
* Delphinium Pacific Giants Mixed (670)
* Digitalis Purpurea (690)
* Digitalis Foxy (691)
* Globe amaranth (713)
* Lavender hyssop (7386)
* Marigold crackerjack (781)
* Nasturtium Whirlybird Mixed (819)
* Nigella Persian Jewels (836)
* Nicotiana Deep Purple (8321)
* Nicotiana Red (8322)
* Ornamental Millet Purple Majesty (8375)
* Perennial Chives (385)
* Borage (2106)

Winter interest

2012-01-18T12:20:00.000-08:00

I has it!

At least there's one upside to weather that leaves you spending half an hour to chip your car out of the ice. The trees are breathtaking today, full of light. This picture doesn't do it justice.

Trying to think of ways to work both of the above into glass designs.

2011-10-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Oho! The people who sold me the bricks for the front yard? They have another 150 sq ft of the same stuff available. Which would be pretty sweet, considering the price, and also that it's very easy to compose curves etc without having to cut stones. I would need ~75 to 100 sq ft, I'm guessing, given I still have scraps left over from the last batch.

Trying not to interpret this as the universe telling me to jump into action on my side yard plans, because those are so newly hatched and unformed as to constitute a whim, and besides, as stated below, (another) major project just now? DO NOT NEED.

Still, I am powerfully tempted to snap the stuff up and let it sit until spring.

2011-10-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

Made an excursion to the Rideau Woodland Ramble today in search of a dwarf evergreen to replace the spruce I killed. I love garden shopping at this time of year - 35 to 50% off everything: sweet!!

Snapped up some red oriental poppies and some red cinquefoil, whose foliage caught my eye. Hemmed and hawed over the conifers. I was thinking about a variegated hemlock, but they're apparently understory trees that prefer part shade and moist soil. In the end I bought an itty bitty one, since I have no qualms about gambling with a $12 plant; apparently these grow at a downright glacial rate, so we'll see how well this works out. Or I might lose my nerve and find a spot for it in the backyard somewhere. Also got a couple of itty bitty blue star junipers for the same price and a dwarf common juniper.

As if I don't have enough to do

2011-10-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

A couple of recent garden magazine articles about side yards have got me to thinking about the throughway.

Ugh. Embarrassing. I'm kind of glad the camera ran out of batteries before I could snap a photo of the view from the a/c unit looking back towards the carport - junk city. Some previous owner of this place did a pretty craptacular job of laying down a path - the fieldstones they used to pave it are nice enough, but then they apparently tried to trowel cement into the cracks?? It's starting to get weedy and the cement is breaking and loosening in places, adding a certain treacherousness to the fugliness. Underneath one piece that I almost tripped over I found no base to speak of, just plain old dirt.

So SOMETHING must be done, and soonish, and the magazine articles got me to thinking about what that might be.

Fine Gardening recommends a gently winding (but not too wiggly) path through a side yard to generate a sense of surprise and discovery, an idea that I like. I'm thinking my path would bow out from the side of the house and go around the lilac. Although once again I wonder if I shouldn't replace the lilac to avoid stupid suckers messing with my paving.

I could send virginia creeper or bittersweet vine up the side of the house, with other tall shade-tolerant plants in front (such as what?? hemlock, delphinium, digitalis?) In the near left-hand corner I'd put a Japanese maple, it's a nice sheltered spot for one. Otherwise...most of the the left-hand side is apt to be bone dry given those cedars. Maybe no more so than the east side of the backyard, though, and plenty of stuff seems to deal well enough there. Including rhododendrons, even. Those would be pretty gorgeous with the afore-mentioned maple.

2011-10-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

Last year:

This year:

BWAHAHAHAHAAA.

Progress on the front border, too:

Just need to snap up some Lee Valley "garden staples" (since the plastic pegs from the nursery were not, to use my mother's phrase, worth the powder to blow them to hell) to secure the landscape fabric and then get riverwash stone to spread around.

Additional details that make me happy:

Miscanthus 'Gracillimus'. Beautiful reddish plumes that bob and flutter in every breath of wind. One clump is twice the size of the other, weirdly; as far as I can tell the growing conditions in those 15-20 feet should be identical. Hopefully they'll even out over time.

Cleome - surprise! And yay for self-seeding annuals! I'm reminded/struck by (a) how gorgeous these are and (b) how much I like the foliage and what a nice contrast it is to everything around it.

Pretty purple-and-silvery sage from my mom's garden. I wasn't sure how well it would take the transplant, since it was basically a stem hacked off the main plant and stuck in some dirt, but when I finally got around to putting it in the garden it had already grown roots right around the bottom of the margarine container it was transported in, so I think its survival is pretty much assured.

Pretty pink fall-blooming Ozawa chives. One more reason to ♥ the allium family.

Have only the backyard tulips left to plant bulb-wise. Of course after I got just about everything in the ground the weather snapped back to mid-20s for several days. Hopefully I don't lose anything due to too-early planting.

Also spied curb material for sale at Ritchie's, which has landscaping gears turning in my head. I was going to pay someone to install the stuff, but it's not like it's difficult, just time-consuming. And I have heaps of stone dust etc. to use up in the throughway anyway, right? Although if I want to tackle the basement that's likely to use up all my available pre-snow project time, so this may have to wait for spring.

Fall progress

2011-10-03T12:12:00.000-07:00

Peony has been relocated to the front yard, as well as some stray rose campion seedlings, which are nice and silver-coloured and should like the conditions out there. I ended up chucking the TG rose, since it was mostly dead except for one lonely, straggly cane. Planted a purple clematis in its place, as well as the sweet autumn clematis out front. Still to plant is a chunk of lovely silvery-and-purple sage from my mom's garden, somewhere it can sprawl a bit, since mom's patch got pretty big in just one summer.

And since the weather seems to have turned, I took a crack at my bulbs the other day. Planted: 90 tulips scattered all around; 60 crocus around the bottom of the magnolia; 40 squills around the top of the yard; 8 hyacinths that will probably be hidden by taller things but whose delicious smelliness will hopefully still be able to waft in the front windows; 20 alliums of various descriptions, mostly around the roses, which will hopefully deter the japanese beetles and anonymous caterpillars next year; and 10 kooky-looking "feather muscari". Remaining: 30 or 40 smaller alliums; 50 tulips for the backyard; 3 eremurus. Next spring is so going to rock.

Fall Chore List

2011-09-16T13:40:00.000-07:00

* Plant this year's frahillion bulbs (Thxgiving weekend, probably)
* Move peony and teasing georgia rose from backyard side bed to front yard
* Fall landscaping project: finish edging front yard with riverwash stone etc...to this end, need to
- do some weeding and final grading
- procure landscape fabric and pins
- obtain rocks, with the help of mom's trailer
Should also finish edging the patio in the back and deploy landscape fabric and stone there too.
* Get in touch with landscaping lady re installing curb edging for the front yard
* Clean up the damn throughway and the shed, since I have shelves that should help tame the chaos

2011-09-12T11:49:00.000-07:00

My mom and I went to Ritchie's to check out their bulbs before making a catalogue order. Holy crap. Rows upon rows upon shelves upon shelves stocked with every tulip imagineable and loads of other goodies besides. Prices were much better than the catalogues to boot, and no shipping charges to pay. We both went a little crazy.

The spoils:

* a sack of 50 assorted single tulips for the backyard
* for the front yard, assorted black (well, dark purple really) white and pink single and double tulips, including the Black Hero tulips of awesomeness from last year
* 60 crocuses to scatter around everywhere, since flowers at the beginning of April will make me smile even if they're in dirt instead of grass
* assorted alliums - more drumstick, more blue, more purple sensation, an interesting new white one called "graceful", and atropurpureum, since it has a different shape
* eremurus himalaicus and robustus, which are the real monsters of their kind (can get to be 6' tall) - a third of the catalogue price, but probably not the same quality, so we'll see how they do
* a pot of lamb's ears for the front yard
* a couple 4" pots of dark red sweet william, because it was half price

Now all I have to order in are the clematises (clemati?) I've had my eye on, since nobody else seems to carry them, to the tune of an additional $40. Sweeeeeeeet.

2011-09-09T10:01:00.001-07:00

A couple more shrubs to covet, possibly for the dividing line between me and the neighbour, since they grow ~6-8' tall but only a couple feet wide:

"Fine Line" buckthorn

"Helmond Pillar" barberry - ooooo, purple!

2011-09-08T12:58:00.000-07:00

After a rough night of little sleep I decided to treat myself to a plant binge yesterday in compensation. The spoils:

* Three pots of Munstead lavender (as per previous shopping list ruminations)

* Penstemon "Dark Towers", which is drought tolerant and likes full sun - therefore a good candidate for the front yard, I think! Plus it has the nice purple foliage I am so charmed by, in addition to pink flowers.

* Creeping speedwell, which has nice silvery foliage and promises to be quite striking when in bloom.

* Gas plants (aka Dittany), one pink and one white, which I've been reading about forever in garden magazines as this beautiful classic cottage garden plant but was never able to find.

* "Jade Frost" sea holly, since I'm not sure if the bareroot ones I planted managed to survive, and since it has funky variegated foliage to boot.

* "Ozawa" chives (to plant with some of the roses) which bloom nowish, for a bonus.

Plants to covet

2011-09-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

For the front yard, mostly:

Texas Scarlet Quince - Brilliant orange-red flowers in May bloom before the leaves appear. Shiny green foliage and a mounded shape make this a great accent plant for smaller areas or in front of taller shrubs. It's apparently only 2' tall, so could go well in front of the roses, maybe.

I thought some columnar juniper - in a nice silver blue, of course - would be a good addition, but these all seem to get 10-20' tall and reach that height relatively quickly. Nonetheless, tempted to try a Blue Arrow in place of the scraggly old mockorange beside the window out front.

The only one that's a little smaller (3') seems to be Juniperus communis 'Miniature'. At that height I could use it for an accent just about anywhere.

The hunt for the columnar juniper took me to the Rideau Woodland Ramble catalogue, where I found a bunch of intriguing items:

* I'm not usually keen on spreading/groundcover evergreens, but Picea Mariana Ericoides is pretty cool:

* As an alternative to a Blue Globe Spruce, Picea pungens 'St. Mary's Broom' is pretty gorgeous.

'Sester Dwarf' is also cute, although I'm not usually too keen on that super-pyramidal shape.

* Loving the texture on Pinus leucodermis 'Smidtii' and Pinus strobus 'Blue Shag'.

Would need to check if these are vulnerable to those goddamn sawflies, though...and yep, the intarwebs indicate that those little bastards like all kinds of pine, and given that these are dwarf white pines especially, either of them would probably be heartache waiting to happen. Sigh.

Summersweet (clethra) - especially Sixteen Candles and Ruby Spice - is also very pretty, although largeish; not sure if I could squeeze it in.

...and a little more googling reveals that summersweet needs consistently moist soil - so much for that idea!

2011-09-04T19:10:00.000-07:00

You'd think I would learn...

Note to self, AGAIN: midsummer is NOT the time to plant shrubs. Or dwarf trees for that matter. Sigh. Cooler weather seems to be on its way, so maybe I'll try again in the next month or two. At least the smokebush is still looking good.

Got the trellis up for the John Davis rose to climb on. It looks kind of more imposing than I expected, but as things start to fill up and out it should start to look more balanced.

My other problem is that I don't think it's anchored very well, despite the 4" or 5" spikes on the bottom of the feet. In clay it might work better, but in the sand I've got, you can pull the whole thing over way too easily. Not sure how to fix this. The feet are too small to weigh down with bricks or rocks, and sinking the feet in concrete would be an awfully permanent setup. Maybe I could use the flat feet instead of the spikes, screw them to a board, and then bury the board a few inches deep?

Another noteworthy thing in these pictures is the canna lilies, which are pretty astonishing in their gorgeousness. The flowers are OK - a little ratty because I'm not sure whether/how to deadhead the things - but the purple foliage is awesome, and it's tall to boot. I'll try to remember to lift these in the fall, but if not, Lindenberg's prices on them are reasonable enough that I could treat them as annuals.

The butterfly bush is verrrry slowly getting around to blooming, and is still pretty shrimpy - maybe 1' tall with a few stalks on it. I remain skeptical about this thing; if it's going to die back to the ground every year, how is it going to manage to get any bigger than this? Maybe it will grow faster as its root system expands?

Not much new in the backyard. Phlox needs hoops next year, it flopped all over the place. I could pinch it, but don't know that I'd want it flowering much later. A couple of the sedums are floppy too, weirdly enough...as far as I knew, floppy sedums meant too-rich soil, and since when is that a problem in my yard? The internets should know whether I should pinch them back next year...ah, yes, as quoted on GardenWeb: Plants can be cut back to 4 in. when they are about 8 in. tall, normally in early June. They could also be pinched at this time. Many gardeners prefer the results obtained from pinching as compared to cutting back, claiming that cutting back causes the plant to callus and break off in winter weather, whereas pinching does not. Awesome. If that doesn't work I'll try moving them, apparently part shade can have this effect.

2011-07-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

Between the midsummer maintenance plateau and the new baby bombshell going off, I haven't been out there much just lately and it's looking a little scraggly. For posterity, however, here's the front yard:

I planted some purple fountain grass, but otherwise have mostly just been trying to keep the weeds and bugs from taking over. Results in the backyard keep me hopeful that this will start to fill in over the next few years. I must plant (a) more lavender, maybe along the border between me and the neighbour and (b) more crocosmia, because ZOMG check it out in the back sun bed:

Said bed is, unexpectedly, rocking the midsummer colour - between the globe thistle, liatris, crocosmia and rudbeckia, this is pretty classic, no??

Although a little stringy and green in the middle.

I will have to find something else to fill in the space in front of the rosebush this time of year. More lavender, maybe? It's about the right height, and nice and silvery. Could stand a few more liatris, too; they're a little taller but very vertical. Time for a shopping/brainstorming nursery trip, I think!

Houseiversary Picture Post!

2011-07-09T18:20:00.000-07:00

Getting there!!

Front yard, 2011

2010

My schemey schemes, they ripen apace! Will have to keep repeating the purple and silver notes I'm acquiring, because I ♥ them so much - case in point: newly acquired smoke bush and Thume spruce.

Latest purchase in this direction is some purple fountain grass, which I'm not 100% sure is hardy here, but Canadian Tire seems to think so, so we'll see. A "Fine Wine" weigela (compact and purple-green) would be a nice addition somewhere, I'm thinking, in addition to one of the splashy colourful "My Monet" kind. Our newly-dug bylaw-compliant trench at the very front will eventually be lined with some pea gravel and river-washed stone, which should make a nice grass-free front border for the yard.

Also need to keep an eye out for more splashy colourful drought-resistant midsummer-blooming perennials, like this maltese cross, which is working out pretty amazingly for a 2010 impulse buy:

The combination of coreopsis, lavender, and blue alliums in the very front is pretty awesome, too; will have to find things to keep building on that. More lavender in general, actually, since it's doing so well there. More alliums in general as well - maybe some chives? - since my roses have been suffering from the depredations of various insect plagues. GRRR. At least soap and water seems to be working, mostly, and they're almost all putting out new growth.

Back yard, 2011

2010

A little more civilized, a little better balanced, a little more filled in. Still not as colourful as I'd like on the shadier side - although I gather this is an ongoing shade challenge anyway...more colours of astilbe maybe? - and need to beat the hydrangeas back a bit around the birdbath. And the patio badly needs some sort of border to define it against the "lawn".

Going around the beds:

Shade bed, 2011

2010

Tsk. Needs work. That anonymous tall red thing definitely needs to move further back. Otherwise need some definition and variation of texture in here somehow. Grasses? Astilbe near the back? More ground cover in the front?

Sun bed, 2011

2010

A little on the chaotic side, still - will have to be more ruthless with the stray rose campion - but the bee balm is definitely better off in its new home(s), and the Quadra rose will hopefully provide some nice height and colour at the back eventually, although I'm told it takes a while to get going. Maybe I should try some delphiniums back there, too, although I think it may be too ruthlessly hot and dry for them just there...although I suppose I've seen them growing in not-exactly-moist conditions around the neighbourhood.

In any case, there are some nice combinations emerging here as things start to form clumps - rose campion + bee balm + globe thistle, for example:

Wall bed, 2011

2010

Another tsk. Disappointing lack of change here. Replaced the Fairy rose with Seafoam, but it needs some sort of other colour or texture between it and the hydrangeas or it just sort of fades into them. Will have to browse over my garden magazines and see if they have any combinations to suggest for hydrangeas.

Corner bed, 2011

2010

Very pleased with the improvement here. Not only has it filled in, but: colour! texture! variety of height! If I could manage more of the same that would be awesome. Maybe I should try some begonias or impatiens here and there...

Also, check out the results of Operation Sudden Lily Beetle Death. Bliss. Ed Lawrence seems to think that the key is getting the drop on them early in the season, combined with ongoing vigilance. Will have to try to duplicate these results next year.

Side bed, 2011

2010

Well, I struck a blow against the ferns of insanity, anyway. And the bee balm makes a nice combination with the delphiniums (which I think were a little early last year due to freakish weather):

The hydrangeas, as previously mentioned, need to be beaten back, as does the stupid grass, and there's a peony and a rose that compLETEly do not belong here - I will move them in the fall and replace them with another clematis, I think. One that blooms nowish, if I can finangle such a thing.

2011-06-19T18:55:00.001-07:00

To Do Soonish

* ~~stakes and twine for lilies~~
* ~~cart last little heap of mulch into backyard and spread around shade bed~~
* ~~bylaw-related digging (need to figure out wtf to do with the dirt we take out, though)~~
* ~~purchase~~ and set up arbour for John Davis rose to climb on
* ~~deadhead roses~~
* weed between patio stones, especially stupid invading crab-and-other-grass
* trench around patio to keep stupid invading grass at bay
* ~~sweep sand into walkway joints~~

2011-06-19T18:40:00.000-07:00

The "Bourbon" clematis had all of one bloom on it last year...and now look at it. RAWK. I think I need at least one more clematis to climb on this fence.

Peonies of awesomeness...

in the front yard:

also in the front yard, on the plant I just got from my mother-in-law in the fall and was totally not expecting flowers from yet:

in the backyard, reaching their peak just as the front yard ones are winding down:

And ZOMG the crambe cordifolia decided to bloom this year! With exquisite timing, too, right after the spirea was done. Need to prune the overhanging tree branch back a bit so nothing gets in its way.

I cannot for the life of me remember wtf this is. It's from the plant sale a couple years ago, and other than the fact that it's too tall for this spot when in bloom, that's all I know.

Aaaaaaand roses, or at least a sample thereof. All my Galetta purchases are blooming like mad. I'll have to ask after the slow-release fertilizer the guy said they'd been treated with.

Morden Blush, quite breathtakingly gorgeous:

Prairie Joy, covered in blooms and buds:

2011-06-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

Recent highlights:

* Plant-shopping outing to Galetta with my mom. We visited Galetta Nurseries of hardy rose fame, of course, and also an iris garden. Mom bought a frahillion irises of all different colours, of which I will someday get divisions, and I bought more roses than I had strictly meant to, namely
- John Davis (purpose of the expedition)
- Seafoam (to replace the Fairy - nursery guy says that the Fairy is not really hardy here, which explains a lot)
- Quadra (to replace Blaze, which was not climbing the way I wanted it to)
- Marie Victorin
- Morden Blush
- Emily Carr (because I am a sucker for a really red rose)
Emily Carr lost the couple of blooms it was promising to transplant shock and/or not enough water, but all the rest are cheerfully bursting into flower. Awesome. Pictures to follow.

* Operation Sudden Lily Beetle Death continues to take astonishingly little effort on my part this year. When I mentioned this to the Galetta Nursery guy he figured that they were just biding their time on me till July. And it's true that I did find a quantity of larvae in the last couple days. But they were isolated to a few leaves and easily disposed of. They're surprisingly visible, actually, once you know what you're looking for; they skeletonize spots on the leaves in a very distinctive way, and when you turn the leaf over, tadaaa! I am (somewhat warily) optimistic that this trend will continue.

* Have to do some more digging in the front yard, since the city has recently informed me that my current setup messes with the roadside swale (which didn't drain anyway, as witnessed by the annual winter lake at the foot of our driveway, but now that I've messed with it I have to fix it...) The inspector I dealt with was actually incredibly helpful and came out to chat over the site with me, and we have tentatively arranged that me and the Brute Squad will dig a bit of a trench at the front of the yard to make sure the water goes where it's supposed to. If this works it won't actually involve messing with more than a few plants. It actually plays into my evil schemes rather nicely, in the end, because (a) it means getting rid of that last strip of grass at the front, and (b) if I follow a neighbour's inspired example and line the trench with semi-decorative stones (river rocks? pea gravel?) it will actually provide a very nice front border for the yard. So here's hoping this doesn't somehow end up turning into a more protracted headache.

Picture Post the Third: early June

2011-06-04T19:17:00.000-07:00

And this brings us to today!

FRONT YARD

Principal results of my mad project week of doom. Mulch is the great garden civilizer.

Baptisia in bloom, yay!

Also, much to my surprise, the irises decided to bloom this year after all. I guess they were just getting settled in.

Very much looking forward to the peonies - the ones in the foundation bed are about to explode (I guess they've also started to get settled in) and the one in the front bed that my mother-in-law gave me, which I was expecting to need at least another year, has actually got a bud on it too!

BACK YARD

The tulips are gone, but there are enough splashes of colour here and there that I'm pretty happy with the transition.

Going around the beds:

Only got around to mulching the front bit of this bed yet - oops. Ornamental rhubarb at the back is looking a little anemic - I think it might need more sun. The azalea is finally blooming, though! And peonies are also looking promising.

Very pleased with this bed at the moment! Especially the nice height of the irises at the back. Now all I need to do is get a rose back there that's hardy enough to actually climb above them. Need to somehow beat the daylilies back from around the japanese maple, too.

This one needs work, despite the alliums and spirea of fabulousness. The ongoing absence of the Fairy rose makes me sad. It has put out one lonely spray of leaves and that's it. And as predicted, the dragon is disappearing behind the golden oregano.

Pretty happy with this bed too, for a sprinkling of colour and a very nice diversity of shape and texture. Holy crap that Jacob's Ladder got tall. Not sure it's particularly visible here, but the clematis is about to explode with a zillion blooms, much to my delight!

Oh, how I long to get rid of that so-called lawn. The bed is looking semi-civilized, at least, until you get to the corkscrew hazel and Ferns of Insanity.

Some details:

Azalea:

And its relative, the rhododendron:

Lily patch, looking astonishingly near-pristine. Not sure whether I got the drop on the beetles early in the season, if their numbers are low from my victory last year, or if they don't do so well in a cold rainy spring...I'll take the results in any case!!

Pruning seems to have had a salutory effect on the dappled willow's variegated foliage as well as its shape and bushiness. Loving the colour this adds to the sun bed.

Irises of gorgeousness.

Picture Post the Second: odds and ends from slightly later May

2011-06-04T19:09:00.000-07:00

FRONT YARD

Black Hero tulips were pretty gorgeous, and of impressive height and non-floppiness, too. Gardenimport.com for the win!

Angelique tulips.

BACK YARD

More colours of tulips emerging in the sun bed. I wish I'd gotten a picture of them in full force, they were pretty glorious.

Picture Post the First: early May

2011-06-04T18:48:00.001-07:00

This is the first of a few picture posts I've been meaning to make but haven't gotten around to.

FRONT YARD

Scarlet Majesty tulips, awesome as ever:

They got a little top-heavy in all the rain, unfortunately, but made a nice arrangement to dress up the kitchen for a few days:

Peach Melba tulips were interesting - they started out a pale orange (as pictured here) and changed gradually to pink. Quite lovely:

Also, I started a willow fence between me and the neighbour:

BACK YARD

Going around the beds:

Again with the yellow tulips. Not sure if they are actually supposed to be part of the mix I ordered, or if they actually came back from last year. Oh well. At least they had some company in the daffodils.

Featuring dragon statue! Don't know that this is the right place for him, though. Waiting for better inspiration to strike.

I was actually pretty pleased with the amount of early colour I got...check out for example the spring vetchling, which I had totally forgotten I'd bought, and whose violently purple flowers were a delight.

And three flowers on the Trillium this year!!

2011-05-22T16:54:00.000-07:00

I have a picture post to make in the near future, but for now this is just a boring To Do list trying to itemize how the hell I'm going to accomplish everything I need to accomplish during my glorious Project Week of Doom.

DONE

* acquire concrete and trowel (thank you, brute squad)
* weeded most of the upper 1/3 of the front yard - more like half, actually, considering that the path takes up a fair swath of the middle - to the point where it's mulchable
* established a nice flat-bottomed trench for the concrete toe on one side of the path

TO DO

Tuesday (forecast: partly sunny)

Starting 8AM
* install half of concrete toe, weeding during any pauses (installation 2h? curing 3h w sprinkler)
* while curing: empty project room, move baby stuff into former project room, move bookshelves and futon into new project room
12 or 1PM
* delicious Zola's lunch w Corey
2PM
* mulch upper half of front yard (except edge around path)
3 - 4:30 PM
* tackle setup of project room and baby's room

Wednesday (forecast: partly sunny)

8AM
* dig trench for concrete toe on other side (2h)
10AM
* weeding middle of yard (except edge around path)
11AM
* continuing setup of project room and baby's room
12PM
* lunch
1PM
* install concrete toe on other side
* while curing, top up backyard mulch, weeding as I go

Thursday (forecast so far: showers)

MORNING
* deal with weedy edges around pathway
* mulch middle of yard
* weed front bed and mulch
AFTERNOON
* linen closets

Friday (forecast so far: periods of rain)

* deal with Mt. Laundry
* clean up bedrooms

2011-05-14T12:19:00.000-07:00

The current forecast of a solid week of rain would be depressing, except that I just planted all my bare-root catalogue perennials while it was sunny out, so I am doing a gleeful happy dance instead. GROW MY PRETTIES, AHAHAHAHAHAAA.

I am quite pleased with the way the back yard is shaping up. It remains a work in progress, obviously, but still: filling in and up with a very gratifying mix of colours and textures. Need to keep an eye out for possibilities for late-season colour on the shady side - haven't yet laid hands on any monkshood, for instance, and I may yet try another japanese anemone and some more brunnera.

Also need to hit Canadian Tire for some of their lovely shrimpy $2.50 perennials, namely foxglove and delphiniums, although I may try direct seeding the foxgloves first (Note To Self: AFTER mulch!) My delphinium patch is oddly depleted this year - it's back to about half its previous size. Not sure if that's due to weather or just what's meant by "short-lived perennial". Oh well, now I can pop some pink ones in there too.

Also not doing so well: some of the roses. Prairie Joy only died back by maybe 1 cm at the very, very tips of the canes, and otherwise is leafing out prolifically. Blaze died back to the base again, but that's par for the course for it, as far as I've observed in previous years, and at least it looks like it's starting to put out new canes. We'll see how it does this year, I guess; it doesn't seem to get the chance to really climb very far, maybe I should replace with something hardier like John Cabot or Quadra. Teasing Georgia and The Fairy, meanwhile, although still green at the base, do not seem to be growing or leafing out at all. After The Fairy's performance in the fall, I am baffled. Maybe it put out too much new growth too late in the season? Well, if it dies, I will replace it with one of the compact Mordens, those should be slightly more indestructible. And Teasing Georgia...I don't know about that one. It's not in a particularly good location for a rose - too shady. Another clematis would probably be a better pick there. I could try moving TG out front early next spring, I suppose, and see what happens.

Need to make a field trip out to Galetta one of these days - John Davis is on my shopping list at the very least. And, well, it just wouldn't be economical to drive all that way to get ONE plant, now, would it???

Also pondering additional front-yard hardscaping, which I seriously do not have the money for right now, but may enquire about anyway to gauge how much I'd have to shore up to get it done. I'm realizing that I need some sort of dividing line between me and my neighbour - a haphazard line of dirt and mulch encroaching on his grass is just not going to do - and similarly the strip of grass that's left between the garden and the street has REALLY GOT TO GO. Building little retaining walls is kind of pushing the limit of what I'm willing to risk doing myself, though (and also may be over-ambitious given my current beach-ball-like 7-months-pregnant shape.)

2011-05-08T16:38:00.001-07:00

Oh, glorious experimental farm plant sale, how I ♥ you!

This year's spoils - many of which were actually on the shopping list, gasp!

* two clumps of miscanthus

* two barberries:
Gentry's Royal(2' x 2')

Rose Glow (4' x 5')

* prairie smoke

* purple daisies
* pot of phlox, colour to be a surprise

* gentian

* ghost fern

* maiden hair fern

* pink primrose

2011-05-01T19:29:00.000-07:00

Behold: results of the fall's mad landscaping adventure!

Still need to sweep stone dust and sand between the pavers and put in the concrete toe. I am ever hopeful that I might conceivably get this done before baby #2 arrives in July.

Eremurus! Ahahahahahahahahaaaaaaa! And two of the three have TWO leaf spikes coming up - if that ends up meaning two flower spikes I will faint dead away from delight. Then again I will probably do that if they bloom at all.

In the backyard, meanwhile:

Not much to look at yet at this time of year, but I can already tell it has increased in gorgeousness. In my spring cleanup I have tried to sweep the pine needles onto the paths so as to make a nice thick (and somewhat contrasting) mulch. We'll see how that works out, but if it actually deters weeds I'd be glad to have a use for the stuff, because the tree certainly sheds enough of it.

Details of the beds, mostly just for posterity at this point, I might come back and add ruminating at some point when it's not almost 11 p.m. on a work night:

One note I will add here, regarding the lily patch: I raked as many pine needles out of the area as I could and doused everything with neem oil. Result: ~10 lily beetles were disturbed out of their hiding places and hunted to their doom. IT STARTS. Siiiiiiigh.

Behold the trench!

Aaaaaand one detail: bloodroot, very briefly (and rather gorgeously) in flower.

2011-04-22T19:18:00.000-07:00

I still haven't taken pictures - tomorrow will be rainy and overcast, which is good picture-taking weather, so I'll tackle it then.

Today I got the front yard semi cleaned up. Just about everything is coming back - even the black lace elder, which I figured was a goner after having been stomped flat by insulation guys, is bravely poking up new growth. The kniphofia is a likely casualty, though, judging by the mushiness at the base of the old leaves - I've read that they rot if they get too soggy in the crowns. And no sign of the eremurus so far, but if I remember my magazine reading correctly, they can sometimes surprise you with a late appearance. Fingers still crossed on that front.

In the back I raked up and got rid of pine needles, was greatly cheered by more crocuses (later appearances than in the front, probably due to less sun), and trenched the outline of the east bed, since that's the site of my most urgent struggle with invading weedy things. Goddamn you, creeping jenny, goddamn you forEVAR. I don't have any mulch to backfill with yet, so hopefully the trench on its own will do until my end-of-May vacation time. If I order mulch now it will just end up sitting in the driveway and stressing me out for a month because I will have no time to get to it.

I also discovered why my irises haven't been blooming: the rhizomes are under a good inch of dirt, probably due to my well-intentioned mulching. Doh. They're supposed to sit right at the surface. I suppose I should try lifting and replanting now...with only a couple inches of growth they might actually get around to blooming this year, and if they don't, well, they sure as hell aren't going to in the state they're in now.

2011-04-04T17:00:00.001-07:00

When I piled cardboard and dirt over the lawn in the fall, I had resigned myself to sacrificing the crocuses I planted the previous year, figuring there was no way they'd make it through all that. BUT where I used yard waste bags instead of cardboard boxes to smother the grass, they have emerged victorious! I had forgotten how much of a boost it is to see flowers at the beginning of April. ♥ ♥ ♥ First picture post of the year to follow!

Otherwise, so far I see daffodils (I think), a couple of little alliums, and daylilies (sigh). I am nervous about the eremurus...had I read about their persnicketiness before buying, I don't know that I would have attempted them. Drainage is so critical an issue that if you mess it up, to quote a memorable line from one of my magazines, "they will rot faster than you can dig a hole and bury twenty bucks." And while the whole front yard is pretty sharply drained, I still eyed the puddles that came and went with the thaw with great nervousness. If they DO come up, I will do a little victory dance and swear a great deal in triumph.

2011-03-09T16:40:00.000-08:00

Lindenberg Seeds catalogue arrived. Holy rock-bottom prices, batman!

Monkshood - 3 x $4.50 apiece (can probably find these in the garden centre, but not for that price!)
Astrantia 'Ruby Cloud' - $4
Bicolour buddleia - $4 for a 3" plug (less than 1/3 the Vesey's price!!)
Cannas - $6 for 3, so I'll get some Red King Humbert and The President for a total of $12
Heliopsis 'Venus' - $6
Phlox - $13 for 4
Eryngeum - $7 for 2
------
$60

Sweeeeeet. Definitely keeping an eye on this place in future!!

Spring garden projects

2011-02-23T18:37:00.000-08:00

* Revise Lee Valley irrigation system to rely more on soaker hoses and less on sprinklers. This way I will have less damage to floppy plants and/or sulky roses, and less evaporation to boot.

* Mulch of doom, front and back. Would be cool if I could manage to coordinate this and the item above such that I could put the hoses under the mulch.

* Line paths in the back and edge patio with pea gravel, river rocks, or some other decorative non-grass stone product; trench the rest of the back borders.

* Put in concrete "toe" to edge path in the front and hide the concrete under more pea gravel or whatever.

2011-02-23T17:09:00.001-08:00

To add to the shopping list:

Threadleaf bluestar (amsonia hubrichtii). Cloud of feathery foliage, little blue flowers, and turns a lovely bright yellow in fall. And they like dry soil, for a bonus.

Miscanthus 'Kleine Fontaine', because I saw a stunning picture of it growing in someone's Montreal garden. Fancy feathery maiden grass, which I already love and have resolved to acquire, only even better because it blooms RED.

I don't think I got around to mentioning, either, that I've managed to identify the prickly thing invading from the neighbour's yard. The neighbour didn't know what it was called, just that it produced bright orange berries if you had both a male and a female plant - and one of my garden magazines had a feature on such a thing. It's a bittersweet vine.

Yep, that looks pretty familiar.

I think it must also be the semi-civilized kind, since it hasn't suckered too egregiously. Helpfully a google image search also turns up a bunch of interesting crafty uses for cut branches of the stuff. Hmmm!

2011-02-20T05:38:00.000-08:00

Catalogs ahoy!! I am valiantly attempting to restrain my wishlist to those items I have not seen in garden centres or that are good enough deals I'll give it a shot anyway.

Vesey's
Mix of giant hardy phlox - 6 for $25
Asclepias - 3 for $14
Bicolour butterfly bush - $15 (although I'm skeptical that I will have much success with a 3" plug)
------
$54

Breck's
Purple astrantia (Venice) - $15
Mix of astrantias - 3 for $20
Mix of mulleins - 3 for $26
Hardy cyclamen - 5 for $28
Kirengeshoma palmata - $13
-------
$102 - $35 discount = $67

Gardenimport
Totally Tangerine geum - $18
First Blush euphorbia - $18
Stinking hellebore (gotta love a name like that!) - $32
-------
$68

2011-01-18T09:58:00.001-08:00

The awesomeness of davesgarden.com - already pretty high in my books thanks to their endlessly informative PlantFiles, which allow site users to post reviews and experiences with various plants - is made all the more impressive by their Garden Watchdog, which has users rate mail-order companies. People left rave reviews for Lindenberg Seeds, for instance, whose somewhat discombobulated website and black-and-white print catalogue I would have completely overlooked. Apparently, however, they have kick-ass plants for rock-bottom prices - three cannas for $4??? Sign me up!

2011-01-14T08:48:00.000-08:00

Two months till spring, provided spring is as freakishly early as it was last year.

Siiiiiiigh. C'mon plant catalogues, where are you when I need you??

Well, the Experimental Farm's plant sale is on May 8 this year, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., in the parking lot of the Tropical Greenhouses on Maple Dr. In addition to the wagon, this year I must bring a screwdriver and/or a wrench to secure the loose bolts on the wagon, and also an actual shopping list, although I would never dream of restricting myself to such a thing.

I should sign up for some of the tours of the Experimental Farm too, come to think of it. They have a guided historical tour and also tours of the rose and peony beds. Bet I could drag my mom with me on those.

I also want to check out the Fletcher Wildlife Garden's native plant sale on June 4, since I missed it last year.

Toying with the idea of putting my planned John Davis rose climbing up something like this, but not sure whether I really have a spot for something like that. Could put it over the start of the path next to the driveway, but then it would block the view of what's behind it from the road, which at the moment I kind of like. Could use it as a focal point in the upper part of the yard, but don't know if that would work and/or if I'm design-savvy enough to coordinate things around it. Time to break out the mad paint skillz!

That's...not half bad, actually. And I'd forgotten about the metal railing around the stairs, which isn't exactly conspicuous but would still provide some sort of repeated element/context for the thing. Let's see if I can fill in some of my plant schemes for the spring and see how it jives. Something liiiiiike...

Well, it will be a hodge-podge, but we knew that already. Hmmm.

Option #2:

Huh. That doesn't actually work at all. As a focal point it would be fighting with the magnolia, and it looks weird with the window anyway. Good to know.

2011-01-04T19:47:00.000-08:00

Ooooo. Pretty dwarf conifer that does well in shade: tsuga canadensis "Gentsch White".

4' x 4' and a slow grower. Must keep an eye out for a spot for such a thing. In the shadier part of the front yard, maybe? Depends what else I'm going to plant around it, since it would look best with some dark colours around it to contrast.

Living willow fence

2010-11-10T16:27:00.001-08:00

How cool is this??

Maybe this is what I will do with the cuttings I plan to prune off the dappled willow. Apparently if you put willow whips straight up and down in the ground, they will grow at the top, but if you put them in diagonally, they will grow lots of bushy little side-shoots.

2010-11-07T12:05:00.000-08:00

Sweet merciful crap. After a week of hard frosts and even a couple centimeters of snow, this is what the Fairy rose looks like:

2010-10-30T17:09:00.001-07:00

I have been googling around for roses for the front yard. Originally I had planned on just planting one, but I don't know how I could possibly narrow down my list that far. My criteria: hardy, unfinicky, and as long a blooming season as possible, because I cannot tell you how charmed I am by the blooms on the Fairy rose that are STILL GOING at the end of October. And fragrant is a plus, too.

The finalists:

JOHN DAVIS - Explorer rose

A large shrub or small climber that tops out at 8-10'. Galetta Nurseries tells me that it has a "light fragrance" and that it "blooms profusely from June until frost". Eeeeexcellent.

ALCHYMIST - hardy rose

Also largeish at 5-6' tall and wide. Only blooms the once, but it's apparently deliciously smelly. I've also read about this brilliant idea of sending a clematis to grow up the canes of a climbing rose, so that as the rose is finishing the clematis is just starting up.

SEAFOAM - groundcover rose

As posted about before - similar to the Fairy, I gather, only white instead; Canadian Gardening had all kinds of good things to say about it.

MORDEN BLUSH - Canadian Parkland rose

More compact than most of the others, 2-3' tall and wide; but Galetta says it's another profuse and continuous bloomer, and that it tolerates heat and drought very well, which would definitely be a plus in the spots I have in mind for it.

CHAMPLAIN - Explorer rose

Also in the 3' range and a continuous bloomer. I am a sucker for a really red rose.

2010-10-26T09:28:00.000-07:00

The other day while chasing the Zoodle around Carlingwood mall I actually spied a piece of garden statuary I really like. It was similar to this, about 8" or 10" high and a couple feet long:

I'm thinking this would be really nice in the wall bed between the oregano and the Fairy rose (although it might have to sit on some bricks so as not to be completely obscured/overrun by said oregano).

2010-10-23T17:52:00.000-07:00

Progress!! Bwahahahahaaa!

This is about 1/4 of the path, I think, and it took me about 2h to excavate...so naptimes over this weekend and next ought to be enough to have it done and ready to fill. Although tomorrow it's supposed to rain - dammit. Hopefully it will keep to a drizzle in the early afternoon.

Also, while browsing usedottawa.com, I came across an ad for a pile of Fine Gardening magazines. When I responded, it turns out they also had a stack of Canadian Gardening issues for sale. 90 new garden magazines - RAWK. If I restrain myself to one magazine a day, this will almost keep me in garden daydreaming material through the whole winter. I don't know if I have such ninja-like willpower in me.

2010-10-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

The digging - it starts!!! For future reference - so as to start the pavers level with the driveway:

4" gravel
+ 2" sand
+ 2 5/8" pavers
- 3/8" final compacting
_____________
dig down 8 1/4"

I'm thinking, though, that they should mostly stick up at least 1" above the grade, since I will be heaping dirt and mulch on top of the existing grade to create garden beds. SO, while I will dig to the depth above for the first row, for the rest:

4" gravel
+ 2" sand
+ 2 5/8" pavers
- 3/8" final compacting
- 1" above grade
_______________________
dig down 7 1/4"

2010-10-18T17:44:00.000-07:00

Thanks to one awesome neighbour, I have a new spirea (smallish and pink-flowering), some gooseneck loosestrife (which is apparently apt to be thuggish, so I'll have to plant it in a pot, I think), an astilbe, and some silver deadnettle.

Another awesome neighbour is redoing her driveway and has offered to share the cost of delivery for crushed stone and sand, making the aggregates for the spiral walkway a lot more affordable.

The bricks, meanwhile, have been found and delivered! Cobblestone interlock pavers, actually. They were more expensive than what I'd originally been hoping to spend, but they are so gorgeous that I'm thrilled to pieces anyway. I did a dry run this weekend and totally should have taken pictures...for my absent-mindedness I will just have to wait for a few weeks until we can get it done for realz.

2010-10-09T19:42:00.000-07:00

And because I am just this dorky: season retrospective!

2010-10-09T18:50:00.000-07:00

Picture post for October!

Front yard:

Dun dun DUNNNNNNN - foundation bed expansion begun! This will be the leaf dumping ground for the season, and in the spring I will pile on some more mulch and/or topsoil. Now I just have to finish my bulb-planting extravaganza by chopping some holes in the cardboard and putting in the last several alliums and tulips.

The view from above, with the future spiral laid out in orange mason's line. MY GOD it will be awesome. Of course, the cheapest bricks I've been able to locate ($0.50 apiece on kijiji) would STILL run me $400 plus the cost of aggregates. Siiiiiigh. Must brainstorm other hardscaping materials. Large stepping stones in a bed of river rocks/gravel over landscape fabric, maybe? That's probably not much cheaper, although it might be somewhat less labour.

Back yard:

Overall. Not as colourful as I would have liked, although that Japanese Blood Grass sure rocks the fall foliage.

Shade bed, with beans gone and rheum palmatum lurking at the back.

Sun bed. I'm thinking I may prune the willow now-ish and try to root the cuttings over the winter. This is supposed to be ridiculously easy to do. Then I could plant a few of these in the front yard to round out the shrub selection in the foundation bed expansion. Also, I suspect the Blaze rose has developed the dreaded black spot. Not really a big deal this late in the season, since the leaves would be dropping soon anyway, but I'd better muster out there and pick off all the affected foliage so this problem doesn't come back in the spring.

Wall bed. The Fairy rose is still going!! And the toad lilies did in fact emerge from the oregano with a couple of little buds. Must rein in the oregano, though.

Corner bed, particularly messy-looking. Next year I will stake the Joe Pye weed so it stays more upright.

East bed, devoid of ferns for the season.

2010-09-30T19:23:00.001-07:00

ZOMG BRILLIANT GARDEN BRAINSTORM OF INSPIRATION.

Poking around for local garden blogs, I happened across this post, and thought that a spiral garden was about the coolest idea for a garden design I'd ever seen. So I started thinking and doodling about the front yard...aaaaaaaand...

Ph33r my mad paint skillz! I even managed to copy and paste the dirt all over the yard to illustrate the elimination of grass. But yes! A spiral path - possibly made out of reclaimed brick - would bring the existing beds together beautifully, I think!

2010-09-23T16:53:00.000-07:00

Note to self: need more lime-green, silver, white-flowering, or otherwise bright plants in the east bed, especially things that are in good form at this time of year. It's quite dark and dreary over there as it stands. Possibilities:

* heucheras
* bright-coloured hostas
* ghost ferns
* annuals, i.e. begonias
* more silvery brunnera, e.g. looking glass
* hakonechloa

For more colour, since the turtlehead is the only thing blooming on that side at the moment, and the chocolate boneset will bloom white:

* monkshood (3', blue flowers)
* hardy cyclamen
* more anemones (or possibly moving the one I have, it's not looking so good this year and isn't flowering - too much shade??)
* kirengeshoma palmata, aka yellow waxbells

2010-09-21T17:37:00.000-07:00

Stupid fall. Why does it have to get dark out so early? I want to be in the garden!!

I am doing some editing to accommodate my recent purchases. I tore out the beans, which makes a pretty dramatic difference to the architecture of the whole bed. With the digitalis, ginger, and sweet woodruff moved elsewhere, this will give me space to put the gigantor rheum palmatum in the back of the bed instead, where it will fill up the space nicely and be much more visible than the current occupants. The digitalis will go between the RP and the peonies, with room for more of the less gigantic and more colourful kind come spring; the ginger, which has gotten pretty massive since last summer, will be in the front of the corner bed where there's both room and visibility for it. The sweet woodruff can go in front of the lady's mantle and chocolate boneset in the side bed, since there's a big blank there that could use some groundcover.

Found an awesome spot for the phlox in front of the rose and the irises, since it will fill the gap nicely when those are finished blooming. Not totally sure what I'm going to do with the clematis yet; with the prairie joy rose and the rose campion where they are I don't think I'd be able to see it in the middle of the sun bed, which is the most obvious spot for it.

Ooh, and now it's pouring rain, so the transplants are getting a good watering in. Eeeeeeexcellent.

2010-09-19T16:59:00.001-07:00

So the Rideau Woodland Ramble previously mentioned? Gorgeous, inspiring, and all-around delightful. I agree with the garden magazines, it is definitely worth the drive. Must go back in the spring - they have rhododendrons taller than me! I hope mine manage to achieve that stature eventually.

Aaaaaand, to make this trip EVEN MORE AWESOME, they had a sale on! So, the spoils:

* two gigantor phlox ("Natascha" - pinky-purple striped and mildew-resistant)
* a rheum palmatum "atrosanguineum" - not totally sure where I'll put it yet, maybe it will replace the beans? I couldn't resist!
* a pink new england aster, which claims to stay shorter than my sprawling purple one, but has weirdly bare leggy stems, so have to find something low-lying yet bushy to plant it behind
* a bush clematis - who knew clematis comes in bush form?? - called china purple. It doesn't climb, but has lovely lime-green leaves and purple late-summer flowers and funky seedpods. AND it's apparently highly fragrant when in bloom. It gets to be about 3' x 3' so again not totally sure where I'll put it, but it was too cool to pass up.

I was sorely tempted by a beautiful rose with bronzy foliage and orange-fading-to-yellow blossoms, too, but it was a floribunda, which means my lazy-ass approach to winter protection would probably spell its doom.

2010-09-11T17:08:00.000-07:00

Purchased today at the Ottawa Horticultural Society's plant sale:

* veronica - red and pink, since I have some blue already
* white globeflower - the yellow one was so lovely and long-lasting that I figured this was probably a good bet
* a massive pink astilbe, since the price was right
* centaurea, which I had passed over in the spring and then regretted not buying because it was so pretty in other people's gardens

Overheard at said plant sale:

"I can't wait for spring!"

OMG ME TOO. And I don't feel quite so dorky about it knowing I'm not the only one.

2010-09-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

Arrrrgh, curse you, american garden magazines!! Paging through Fine Gardening's delicious Autumn Garden publication, I spied the most gorgeous hardy mums:

Emperor of China - 3 to 4 feet tall

Pacific chrysanthemum - cute groundcover

J. C. Weigelan and Mei-kyo are also lovely. WE WANTS SOME, PRECIOUSSSS. But I can't find them anywhere! Checked all my catalogues, checked the online catalogues of a couple of local garden centres, phoned another one. I'm not 100% sure these are even actually hardy here...the pacific ones would be OK, since the flowers are sort of secondary to the cool foliage anyway, but Emperor of China apparently doesn't bloom until late October, and then dies with the first heavy frost...which would be pushing it here, I think. Sniff!

2010-09-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

Garden destination to check out some weekend: Rideau Woodland Ramble

Plant to keep an eye out for, probably for the front yard somewhere, since I don't think I have room for anything so massive in the back anymore: Rheum palmatum 'Atrosanguineum'.

2010-09-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

Here's an overall pic for September, just for the record:

And some documentation of the rosesplosion:

Stoopid flash lighting - you can really see the buds in this one, though.

Prairie joy rose, finally somewhat resembling a shrub.

Also, because I am sick to death of the weedy, crappy lawn back here, this is what I've been thinking we should replace it with (as close as my mad Paint skillz can render it, anyway).

Basically: a little corner deck enclosed by lattice with stairs leading down to a larger, lower deck that would leave no more than a strip of grass around the edge of the patio. And even that maybe I would convert into a planted border. What say you, internets? Would it mess with my riotous secret-garden aesthetic to have something so structured and rectilineal taking up half the yard? And maybe I'd be wiser to leave the lawn there for kids to play on...but then by the time we can afford to do this our kids will probably be old enough not to need the lawn anymore anyway :P Considering that we'd need to cut a door opening into the exterior wall and I'd want to do the whole thing in cedar, this is kind of a big-ticket renovation...$7500 at least, I'd guess, and probably more. And it would be strictly mad money, because there's no way we'd get that kind of $$ back from resale.

One way to make it a little breezier/more romantic would be to have...not a roof, precisely, but an arbour-type structure around the top section, which could have virginia creeper and clematis growing up it and from which one could hang billowy canopy/curtains and a candle-chandelier. Although again with the $$. Not as bad as roofing it over entirely, though.

2010-09-04T13:15:00.000-07:00

To Do This Year
* weeding: remaining 1/3 of backyard, front yard
* mow the damn lawn, such as it is
* prep front yard expansion
* plant bulbs, including lots of alliums (especially in shade bed, next to hazel, and front yard)
* clean up the throughway - why, why, why does this always end up such a mess??

To Do Next Year
* prune yew, willow, grapevines, roses if necessary
* front yard expansion, including replacing the black lace elder if necessary, since it isn't doing so well...note to self: mid-summer is NOT the time to plant shrubs
* make use of Fine Gardening's sneaky edging technique throughout front and back
* mulch again, since it is working so beautifully this year - although 1.5 cu yd ought to be plenty this time!!
* prepare for vacation time such that mulching can start right at the beginning of it, since it's a big frigging job
* line paths between beds and possibly also a strip around the patio with river rocks or gravel - soil and mulch washed down over the stones I put down and they have completely disappeared
* spray the front side bed with soap and water at regular intervals early in the spring, since everything in there is looking very munched-upon
* 6' stakes for delphiniums...also stakes and/or hoops for crocosmia, lilies, joe pye weed, goldenrod
* plant more phlox everywhere, because damn, come midsummer that stuff really rocks
* plant more digitalis
* plant some asclepias (yay butterflies!!)
* plant some eryngeum
* get an early start on continuing Operation Sudden Lily Beetle Death
* plant some annuals, since the ongoing colour is nice

To NOT Do Next Year
* don't plant beans in the backyard, since they are beetle bait. May see how they do out front, though
* don't bother starting seeds ahead, or at least not so many, since the only place where there's adequate light and protection from the cats is also somewhere I'm liable to forget about them completely
* don't plant cleome in the front yard - too dry and/or exposed for it there, evidently

2010-09-04T12:20:00.000-07:00

I ventured out into the garden this afternoon after a long stretch of disgust and discouragement with it. Lo and behold, it weathered my neglect pretty well, so I did a bunch of weeding and came in much more optimistic than I went out.

Japanese beetles have come and gone. At least they have a short season. Apparently the weather conditions have made this a doozy of a year for them all over Ontario. I was not as vigilant about picking them off the beans as maybe I should have been; hopefully this will not mean I am stuck with a horrible grub problem in the "lawn" next year. They also got at the corkscrew hazel - not a big deal, since that plant is all about winter appeal anyway. Otherwise, though, the damage was encouragingly minimal. Even the beans are recovering, having put out piles of new leaves and blooms.

In other encouraging news: I have rose-explody! The blaze rose re-bloomed with a spray of about 10 flowers that lasted for weeks. Now that it's out of the shadow of the bee balm, the prairie joy rose has at least doubled in size...guess that answers the question of how I make it bush out. And the fairy rose, whose straggliness was worrying me, has put out half again its previous size in new shoots, and is covered in buds. Pictures to follow!

Between the asters, the fairy rose, the assorted sedums, the rudbeckia, and the turtlehead - and possibly also the lemon lights azalea; wtf is it doing putting out flowers now?? - it should be a nicely colourful month out there.

2010-08-01T19:53:00.000-07:00

Drive-by picture post!

Overall:

Newly edited sun bed:

Added purple emperor and autumn joy sedums, as well as heaven's gate coreopsis. Bee balm has been chopped up and relocated all over, as previously mentioned - it didn't even wilt; rose campion is now propping up the joe pye weed, although it left seedlings behind - but those are back behind the rose and juniper, though, where I think they'll be quite nice.

Shade bed as it stands: beginning to fill in. Some sedums from Canadian Tire, as well as a funky ruffly purple heuchera.

Crocosmia. Need a hoop for these next year.

Awesomely filling in patio thyme.

2010-07-30T18:34:00.001-07:00

Another pest inundation has begun: the dreaded Japanese Beetle has made the leap from the grapevines on the fence to my scarlet runner beans. AUGH. Tomorrow I will go pick off the ones that are roosting there and spray the bean plants down with a solution of garlic puree, which was the recommendation from Richmond Nursery - but I am not optimistic, considering that the grapevines are so thoroughly infested; even if I tackled the impossible-looking task of de-bugging the vines on my side of the fence, they're planted in the neighbour's yard (and invading the yard of another neighbour to boot). Maybe if I make the beans unappetizing enough they'll stick with the grapes.

Interestingly, however, I am growing some of their reputed favourite foods - roses, japanese maple - and so far they haven't touched them. (This had better not just be a matter of time!!) Also interestingly, the beans are located in the shade bed, the only piece of the back garden that is not planted throughout with alliums (garlic relative). Hmmm! As if I needed another reason to stock up on those. Hopefully my inference is correct; the internets seem to suggest it may be so. C'mon universe, work with me here!

In more positive news, while at Richmond Nurseries, I happened across a stand of butterfly bush (buddleja). And OMG internets, I MUST HAVE THIS PLANT. It smells heavenly, and true to the name, in the couple of minutes I spent staring at the stand of plants at Richmond, they had attracted several butterflies of at least three different kinds.

The trick, of course, is that it needs full sun, and while you're supposed to chop it back to the ground every year, it grows back to about 4 or 5 feet high and wide. It's also only borderline hardy here. Basically, were I to plant one, it should be in the backyard for preference, since it's nice and sheltered there; that would also allow me to sit and enjoy the fragrance and butterflies. But I really don't have anywhere left for a 4'-5' shrub. I toyed with the idea of putting it where the beans are now - the digitalis and azalea would probably be done blooming by the time it got big enough to block them from view - but I don't know if that spot gets enough light, and I wouldn't want to hide the phlox and sweet rocket, nor cast the mockorange into total shade. A more promising spot is probably in front of the yew and peonies out front; I could crank the windows open to catch the fragrance, and we could watch the butterflies from the window, at least. Have to check how much light that spot would get before the shadow of the house falls over it - will keep an eye out for this tomorrow over the course of the day.

Meanwhile, I have dug up and divided the bee balm - dun dun DUNNNNNN - and am pleased as punch with the results so far. It already looks more balanced. And the relocated chunks of bee balm will be a nice repetitive element to tie the whole garden together, as my garden magazines always say. Photos to follow when I have the replacements in the ground.

2010-07-16T19:25:00.000-07:00

Happy houseiversary to us! I believe I will keep up last year's tradition of a compare and contrast picture post. Feast your eyes!

FRONT YARD

2010:

2009:

Lawn: similarly fried, but somewhat less weedy. Magnolia is a few inches taller. Foundation bed: more civilized in some ways, wilder and woollier in others. Need to take some shears to that yew.

BACK YARD

2010:

2009:

Now THAT I think I can call half-decent progress. Awesome.

Sun bed

2010:

2009:

Damn, that bee balm really needs to move.

Wall bed

2010:

2009:

Holy crap, look how far the golden oregano has gotten! Too bad about the delphinium and the toad lily, though. Need some more stuff to go next to the wall that flowers around this time of year - the cotoneaster has nice red berries, but those will be another month or two yet.

Corner bed

2010:

2009:

This is filling in nicely, although again it could use more colour to bridge the gap between lilies and Joe Pye weed. And speaking of Joe Pye, so much for the "dwarf" variety; it's as tall as the delphiniums were (~6').

Side bed

2010:

2009:

Hmmm...improving, esp with the nice height of the delphiniums, but need to beat back the bastard ferns again; they're sprouting in the lawn, now.

And for future reference, here's the shade bed in 2010:

2010-07-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

While stranded in Carleton Place on Saturday (to make a long story short, our car is a craptastic bucket of bolts) I was intrigued to discover that hey, Canadian Tire in Carleton Place has different plants than my local one! I am tempted to run back there next weekend and snap up a couple of items:

* some asclepias (butterfly plant - I always thought this just meant milkweed, but no, it's much fancier, and likes part-shade to boot)

* a nice variegated green foliage plant, which turned out to be an artemisia called Limelight

...and some sedum, since everything is on deep discount.

As I think I've remarked before, Canadian Tire's garden section is surprisingly awesome. Loblaws is pretty good too. I've seen both places carrying the same plants from the same growers as one of the nurseries I like. (I wonder how badly nurseries are affected by the big-box places being half-decent. God knows they still end up with an embarrassing chunk of MY money...)

Home Despot, however, is pretty crappy and usually worth no more than a cursory look around. Wal-mart, that den of iniquity, is about as crappy as you'd expect for perennials, but is occasionally handy for things like cheapass 6' bamboo stakes.

I'm also trying to think of a possible use for a Globe Blue Spruce, which first caught my eye at the nursery, and then again on sale for $40 at Loblaws. I love blue evergreens, and this one is enticingly bushy and interestingly shaped, and mad drought tolerant to boot. Trouble is that although it's a very slow grower, it does eventually top out at around 8'. As adorable as it is, I don't think I have a spot for it. Bah.

Oh, and note to self: must remember to take a picture of the crocosmia, which is finally - and stunningly - blooming.

2010-07-09T08:12:00.000-07:00

Well, after a week of 35-degree weather, the annuals in the front bed are looking pretty fried, despite my efforts to keep them watered. I think cleome must be a water hog of a plant, given the contrast between last year's 4' tall specimens and this year's shrimpy, shrivelled ones. The front lawn is also fried, but whatever, it's just the lawn.

Out back, things are doing better, but the Fairy rose is still looking pretty fried, despite its very pretty tiny pink flowers. Damn, that thing is a lot more persnickety than my other roses. I suppose I could try fertilizing it again.

To Do whenever it becomes bearable to set foot outdoors again:

* give grape vines a haircut, since they are attempting to grab the japanese maple. I fear this was a stupid location for said maple, since I will have to hack the grape vines away from it every single year.
* finish weeding and mulching the foundation bed.
* prune dead wood out of the remaining anonymous shrub in the foundation bed; I may or may not keep this one. Will think about it till the fall, since I'm told you're best to transplant hydrangeas when they've gone dormant anyway.

Plant Du Jour that I have my eye on: Sea Holly, aka Eryngeum. Specifically the stunning Sapphire Blue featured in the latest Canadian Gardening magazine. It likes full sun and poor, dry soil. Hmmmm, I think I can provide that!

2010-07-04T18:54:00.000-07:00

So here's the effect of the renovations so far:

Newly planted Black Lace elder!

I debated between this and a Wine & Roses weigela, which is a similar colour but a little smaller, but went with this one in the end because the nursery people tell me it's tougher. Given my crappy soil and the dry-as-dust conditions in this bed, it'll need to be pretty tough.

While there I was unable to resist the purchase of some asparagus, as burbled about previously, and some globe thistle, which I keep hearing about. It looks much cooler than it sounds, as a handy google image will demonstrate:

A few more pictures from the back, while I'm at it:

Bee balm and rose campion. What a lovely combination. Too bad I picked such a stupid location for them.

Lily patch, continuing in gloriousness. Although I spied one single, solitary beetle today. No rest from shit-bugs for the wicked.

This weekend has been the beginning of a ferocious heat wave that promises to continue all week, so I turned on the sprinklers this evening. The result, unfortunately, was that a few tall plants flopped over and broke. Lesson learned: SIX foot stakes for the delphiniums next year, and a "cat's cradle" arrangement with stakes and twine for the lilies.

As a silver lining, though, I got a nice bouquet out of it.

2010-07-03T19:23:00.001-07:00

Because I can't stand thinking about something for very long without doing something about it, today with the help of the Brute Squad (aka Corey) I tore out the stressy tree, the juniper, and the probably-a-weed tree.

RAHR.

The front of the house is very bare all of a sudden, but given that it already looks better despite the empty spot, I'll call this progress.

Tomorrow I will pop by the nursery to pick up a Black Lace elder and scout for ideas for other shrubby things to plant in the spring. In the fall I will put down some cardboard and amass fallen leaves, thus expanding the bed to accommodate roses etc., and plant alliums.

Before planting the elder, must remember to dig some compost into the soil there. And then I will dig up all the stupid wood violets and mulch the hell out of the whole bed, hopefully thereby using up the last of my pile.

2010-07-02T19:15:00.001-07:00

More front yard schemes illustrated with that glorious piece of software, Windows Paint!

So at the back we have a Black Lace cutleaf elder next to hydrangeas of insanity. In front of this will be a little trellis pyramid - I figure I'll take two of those nice 4"x4" square cedar ones (like the one for the teasing georgia out back) and lean them up against each other. This will serve as the climbing surface for a Zephirine Drouhin rose. All around the rose will be planted monster alliums. Down in the front will be blue star junipers, maybe, or whatever other low-profile shrub I can find in that colour, and a My Monet weigela.

Hey, maybe I can put some of the awesome Graziella maiden grass in with the mallows?

Hmmm. Hard to tell. Getting kind of cluttered though. Damn my plant-collecting urges!

2010-07-01T18:26:00.001-07:00

Canadian Gardening magazine, why must you get me in so much trouble!!

Idly flipping through some back issues I have kicking around the house, I ran across an intriguing front-yard garden design in the Fall 09 issue. The design was for a bungalow that featured a stone finish and bay window similar to what we have in the front of our house. They proposed a pretty trellis screen against the wall under the window and a paved "courtyard" area with stone bench surrounded by shrubby things of varying textures and colours.

I'm not sure there would be a lot of point to a sitting area in the front yard - much nicer, quieter, and more private in the back - but it would certainly make more sense to pave over that insanely dry area right in front of the house than to try to grow stuff in it. In any case, I do quite like the idea of an all-shrub planting in this area, since that would occupy lots of space and look schnazzy while being helpfully low-maintenance.

Possible candidate for replacing the perpetually-stressed-out-looking tree: Sutherland Gold cutleaf elder.

Would be a nice contrast with the monster yew. Maybe too yellow, though? There's a nice dark purple version too; that might do a nice job of repeating the purple-leaf sandcherry note.

These both get to be a little more than 6' tall, which sounds about right; the rest of the space at the back could go to some hydrangeas of insanity, and possibly a ninebark on the other side (again with the purple). Then in front of all that I can put all the random stuff I wouldn't have room for otherwise - barberry, a rose or two, possibly some less ratty variety of juniper (more blue stars or some of that spreading stuff, maybe). As an added bonus, this would get rid of an additional few feet of "lawn"; I could also yank the currently invisible daylilies and the ~~beetle bait~~ - ahem - orange lilies.

2010-06-26T17:09:00.001-07:00

Oh, Canadian Tire, how I ♥ you around this time of the season. $1.49 is about the most awesome price for perennials evar (well, aside from "here, I'm dividing this, have some!")

Spoils:

* Jacob's ladder, a variety with funky brown-purple leaves and purple flowers
* Monster digitalis - my evil scheme is to surround it with the shorter-but-more-colourful variety
* Turtlehead, which I keep hearing about in garden magazines
* Somewhat ratty-looking artemisias: one Powis Castle (the same variety as the ginormous one out front), and one Silver Mound (the size I was expecting Powis Castle to be when I bought the one out front)
* Tansy
* Sweet William
* Pink and blue salvia

Excepting the artemisias and salvia, lots of shady stuff in this list, so I will add it either to the corner bed or the shade bed. Naptime tomorrow is the plan!

2010-06-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

Also, before I forget:

Ideas for not-too-tall plants to replace massive bee balm of doom and fill in other middle-to-front-of-bed space
* speedwell
* artemisias of various stripes
* sedum (something with nice fall colour, for preference, although that frosty morn stuff looks pretty good out front)
* perennial salvia
* lavender
* euphorbia

To get in the market one of these days
* massive foxgloves of doom (do they have a different kind than me or something? They're twice as tall as mine!!)
* penstemon (been eyeing it forever)

In June there bloomed a red rosebud - that is the flower for me

2010-06-25T19:04:00.000-07:00

Front Yard

w00t, flowers! Cleome, mostly; either I accidentally picked a dwarf variety (again!) or they liked all the rain we got last year, because these are a lot shrimpier than the ones I had out back. Still, they're colourful.

This photo also features a swath of pink mallows that popped up in the - ahem - "lawn". They self-seed most perniciously, but they are pretty, and it's not like anything else is much inclined to grow in that patch of dirt. So let them do their thing and eventually I'll get around to building another bed around them.

Closer up: cleome, jupiter's beard, and mullein. Mini-mullein, really. I wasn't expecting it to bloom this year. They are supposed to get pretty massive - maybe this variety doesn't, or maybe it's just biding its time for next year, like the delphiniums did.

Super-awesome fiery red bee balm. This stuff gets taller than I thought, as I will exclaim about below re the backyard, but not before the baptisia blooms, so it can take over when the baptisia fades into the background. Or so the theory goes.

Siiiiiigh. Need to devote some attention to the foundation bed, because it looks like crap right now. A fringe of violets of doom around the edge, a random-looking tree that I strongly suspect is a weed, a ridiculous tree that is rapidly outgrowing its allotted space and never gets enough water so it's always browning and clearly stressed, a massive yew making a bid for total takeover, peony foliage completely overshadowing everything around it. Also hidden behind the money plant (which looks much nicer in the photo than it does in real life right now) is a ratty-looking juniper.

I don't even know where to start. A lot of the problem here is that it's so insanely dry and shady thanks to the overhanging second floor, because I could rip out what's there, but WTF else would I do with it? For example, the trick will be to replace the ratty stressed out tree with something that (a) can either withstand the drought or climb towards the house from a few feet out and (b) has some height to it. My neighbour has virginia creeper climbing up around the door, which looks great, and conveniently I have one of those creeping unwelcome around the backyard, so that's a possibility. Could also try a clematis or a honeysuckle, but those actually need to be tied to something, so I'd have to rig one of those sneaky string trellises from Lee Valley.

Maybe I should just transplant some of the damn hydrangeas and ferns from the backyard and let them do their wild and woolly thing here while I figure something out.

Somewhat nicer, but not without ugh and dismay. Again with the marauding yew. Google-fu tells me that you can prune the hell out of them, fortunately, so I'll have to give that a shot. And I have to remember to take soap and water to the mugho pine - goddamn sawflies - the larvae seem to have flown the coop, because it's not getting devoured any more, but the last thing I need is another set hatching out. Should fill up some of the empty dirt with some sort of low-growing ground cover stuff...relocate some of the dragon's blood stonecrop, maybe, since it got completely lost under the exploding artemisia. And that stupid freaking peashrub...ugh. I hate that thing, but every time I look at a picture I am forced to concede that its height and texture work well in that spot. Have to remember to prune all the stupid mildew-spotted suckers off the bottom.

Back Yard

If I do say so myself, this is starting to look not half bad. Slightly closer but still general shots (featuring awesomely filling-in patio thyme!):

Another view of the sun bed, showing the surprising results of chopping down the daisies, which were winding down. I wonder if the crocosmia is actually going to bloom this year - it's put up about 3x as many leaves, anyway. The intarwebs say mid to late July, so here's hoping. One thing I really need to do in the fall is to divide that massive chunk of bee balm that I foolishly put in the front and move it around to different places where it won't block my view of the roses. Haven't decided about the rose campion yet, that one's a little airier in habit, but may do the same with it too.

*happy sigh*

The only way I could be happier with this plant right now is if it had actually managed to, y'know, climb. But I prefer the flowers to height.

Right in front of the rose are irises of doom, which for some reason failed to bloom this year. They certainly look green and massive enough. I fear they may be overcrowded, but maybe they just need another year to get established. If they still don't produce anything next year I'll shuffle them around a bit.

Delphiniums. Taller than ME. And yet not flopping over. Squeeeee!

Rose campion and Teasing Georgia. Was totally not expecting the rose campion to survive over here, and it's not going as nuts as the stuff in the sun bed, but this is nothing to scoff at, I think.

And Operation Sudden Lily Beetle Death has paid off. OMFG.

I didn't think the show could possibly be worth picking nasty shit-bugs for, but...man. Look at that. I may keep them after all.

2010-06-12T18:14:00.000-07:00

Time for a picture post!

Been awhile since I posted pictures of the front yard, so:

Mulch, how I ♥ you.

The flowering things are all cosmos. Dwarf cosmos, apparently - note to self: the variety that grows 6' tall is Sensation, not Sonata. I've also put in some cleome, so hopefully that will achieve some height in the back this year. Since the hollyhock seeds failed to take *grumble* I gave in and bought some in pots at Loblaws. The poppy seeds, however, sprang up just when I'd about given up on them. Considering they've usually bloomed by now, I hope they manage it before frost (or, alternatively, that the seeds that came up are the perennials).

The little purple-leafed geranium I bought at the beginning of the year is blooming! And the cilantro is close. Man is it ever nice to be able to go out and pick a few stems off when a recipe calls for 2 tbsp of the stuff.

Bright Lights swiss chard is as colourful as advertised. For some reason it particularly likes this location; it came up elsewhere, but is about 4x as big here so far.

In the back, meanwhile:

Check out the INSANE civilization of the east bed!! Need to wrest the corkscrew hazel back from the ferns/creeping jenny of doom, yet...but still!

Two plants blooming for the first time: astrantia, aka masterwort (pink) and trollius, aka globeflower (yellow). The globeflower is surprisingly impressive, actually, for a random impulse purchase; it's been blooming for weeks now and still going strong.

Newly purchased veronica. It makes a really beautiful combination with the foxgloves, columbines, and evening primroses in the corner next to the tree, but I'm at a loss to explain why they go so well. The blue spikes go nicely with the pink and yellow, but maybe there's some sort of subtle height and texture interplay going on too, the kind of thing they're always on about in garden magazines. Damned if I can articulate it. Must try to get a good picture. I begin to appreciate how garden photography is an interesting challenge.

I actually went so far as to pick a bunch of larvae off of these a while ago, swearing a blue streak the entire time. Lily beetle larvae are really, REALLY fucking revolting. I think I will stick to picking off the adults from now on. If they manage to eat the flowers despite all my disgusting labour, I am giving up.

I had forgotten that these even bloomed.

Prairie joy rose - the first of several flowers. Awesome. It seems much happier in its new sunny home, unsurprisingly, but is still quite spindly from its shady exile. Not sure how to fix this. Do I pinch off the tips to make it bush out?

The Blaze rose is also in bloom...

...in fact, about to explode into bloom!! I think I may be reaping the rewards of planting it over the former site of the compost bin.

To my surprise, it looks like the Fairy rose is also going to bloom this year, with several buds at the end of every stem. I was worried about this one because a few stems had gotten quite yellow and straggly a couple weeks after transplant. Despite being a condescending wanker, the guy I spoke to at the nursery was apparently right on, because a dose of fertilizer (which I have never bothered with before) seems to have spruced it right up.

2010-06-03T18:55:00.001-07:00

Well, I achieved most of what I set out to do during my Glorious Vacation. Weeding, civilizing, and mulching were mostly accomplished - it's just the wild and woolly part of the east bed (past the rhubarb) and the foundation bed out front that have yet to be conquered. Planted all the plants I meant to plant (although I now have some veronica and some hollyhocks waiting to get into the ground, and didn't get around to a pile of seeds).

To my irritation, some disgusting insect - probably sawfly larvae - is devouring the needles off the mugho pine in the front bed. Must remember to wield some soap-and-water at them, although I'm not sure that will be effective; worth a shot I suppose. The intarwebs assure me that one year's infestation doesn't generally kill the plant. And if it does, well, I will be sadly lacking a nice structural evergreen, but on the plus side I will have space to plant something new.

Something dug up the sunflower seedlings Rose brought home from daycare for mother's day. Not that Rose is old enough to really understand making or giving a gift, but still: GRRR. The Empress of Dirt has to protect her sprouting sunflowers from birds, apparently, so maybe that's what got mine. She has a picture illustrating a nice little cage that seems to be made from an old hanging basket. Maybe I will try that next year. Meanwhile, I still have the pot that she painted to put them in, so there's something anyway.

In other pest news, I am somewhat surprised to find that the alliums seem to be - knock on wood! - deterring the groundhog, since its depradations have been limited to the one bed that doesn't contain any. Hmmmm! I need to get some more of the pinks ones (allium roseum) anyway, and I like them in general, so those are totally on my fall bulb shopping list. (Also some Black Hero tulips, so pretty!)

I would also really like to plant some asparagus. Not to eat - the soil here is sandy and poor (I submit for evidence our pathetic excuse for a lawn), which conditions apparently result in tough and woody stalks - but for ornamental purposes; if you let asparagus stalks mature, they turn into gigantically tall feathery foliage. Check this out:

Wouldn't that be a cool accent! I am pretty much out of space for tall full sun plants in the back - there's some space in the middle, but I think something so tall in that spot would just end up hiding everything at the back - but it could go in a corner of the new bed out front. As a bonus, I believe I spied some at Artistic Landscape Design for the eminently affordable price of $6.99.

Fall bulb schemes so far, then:

Gardenimport.com
Eremurus x 3
Black Hero tulips x 20

Breck's
Scarlet majesty tulips x 8
White cloud allium x 3

Vesey's
Blue drumstick alliums x 24
Peach melba tulips x 15
Angelique tulips x 18
Allium roseum x 20

Now if I was smart, I would make my tulip investment in some nice single flowering varieties that would come back reliably for a few years...but I can't help myself, the double ones just cry out to me. Siiiigh. Mail order plant purveyors, you had better love me.

2010-05-29T18:51:00.001-07:00

So I spent a few free hours today chipping away at the gigantic pile of mulch that Maurice Yelle Ltd. so helpfully delivered this morning. So far I have managed to mulch the new bed out front, the shade bed and the back of the sun bed. Loving the sudden tidiness this creates. My only question is how do I go about reconciling my desire to strangle weed seeds with my desire for some of my plants (poppies, foxglove, lupines) to generously reseed themselves??

Meanwhile I am poking around in catalogues to see what I want to plant in the fall. I think I will definitely have to invest in some Eremurus, aka foxtail lily, which look impressive and tall and are described as needing about exactly the conditions I have in the new bed out front.

I would also very much like some white alliums. I may actually just get more alliums period, because they are so awesome in any colour. The front yard could do with some, too.

Some googling tells me that my beautiful double tulips will probably not return next year. Poo. Well, Breck's is sending me more French Lace mix already; I will have to snap up more Scarlet Majesty. I am also intrigued by Peach Melba and Angelique, which I think I would put in the front bed but might keep in the back instead. Decisions, decisions!

2010-05-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

Aha! Look at this, I have discovered how to make a cut to contain all my mad progress pictures!

FRONT YARD

Overall:

Well, it's insanely weedy and disappointingly free of poppies, as far as I can tell, but it's getting there.

Woo, lupins! After seeing a yard chock-full of many-coloured varieties of these, I am hoping they seed themselves around freely.

Peony blooming, FINALLY.

BACK YARD

Overall:

Sun bed is less colourful with the tulips gone, but the patchwork of different foliage colours and textures does pretty nicely on its own. Everything else continues to slowly fill in. Very promising, I think!

Shade bed, featuring peonies:

Sun bed, with prairie joy rose contained in an obelisk behind the raging bee balm:

Wall bed, much the same:

Corner bed - check out the ornament I dug out of the shed for the clematis to climb on:

Side bed, with raging delphiniums - they're almost as tall as me:

Some detail shots!

New peonies!

Crazy shasta daisies. These had collapsed and were sprawling in all directions, so I roped them in with a peony hoop. They look a little weird as a result, unfortunately. Next year I will leave the support up and let them grow through it, instead of wrangling them into it after the fact.

Bigass poppies about to bloom! Squee!! Hopefully they'll reseed themselves all over this area - mom had these things in her garden in Calgary, once upon a time, and I know they certainly popped up everywhere there, so here's hoping.

Hostas generously provided by JFlo are looking awesome.

Columbine.

One single solitary bloom on the clematis. Hopefully it will come out with more next year, because: stunning!

Closer view of the insanely tall delphiniums. I may have to get 6' stakes.

Aaaaaand the thyme, on a very slow mission of creeping patio domination. I hope it blooms this summer!

2010-05-25T16:31:00.000-07:00

Long Weekend & Vacation Day 1 Accomplishments

* added to east bed:

Cardinal flower

Golden loosestrife (no relation to the evil purple loosestrife, don't worry)

German catchfly

Lady's mantle

* found a nice and affordable obelisk chez Ritchie's Feed & Seed - damn that place is awesome - and set the prairie joy rose climbing up it. Noticed in the process that the rose has several buds. FTW!

* emptied my "wasteland of pots", as a friend so aptly described it, and schlepped them all to Loblaws for recycling

* snapped up two gigantic, gorgeous peonies while at Loblaws, since they were on special for $10, and added them to the sunny part of the shade bed

* beat the ferns back as far as the rhubarb, at least. Discovered that the ferns were thoroughly underplanted with not only creeping jenny but evil creeping campanulas (the proper name for the long purples I battled at Jamieson). Not sure what to do about this; they're all mixed up in the fringes of the lawn, too, which dense mat of roots makes them a real bitch to pull out. I suppose I could try digging up all the soil around there, sifting out what I can, and then mulching the hell out of the whole area.

VACATION AHOY

2010-05-22T18:19:00.000-07:00

Stuff To Do During My Glorious Week Off

* weeding of doom
* civilize the east bed (more on this in a second) and the foundation bed out front
* order mulch and spread it all around the backyard
* find some scarlet runner bean seeds (home despot possibly?)
* move tripod thingy to somewhere seeds will actually grow
* plant scarlet runner beans or possibly morning glories at base of tripod thingy, as well as planting other miscellaneous after-last-frost seeds
* shop for affordable but classy-looking support for prairie joy rose (obelisk?) preferably not from big box type place

So the east bed remains kind of a mess, mostly due to an over-abundance of ferns. Apparently I wasn't ruthless enough in digging them up last year. Will have to rectify this and find some way of filling the space - some begonias, maybe, for a temporary solution. The bee balm I put out front might end up moving back here too, since it has been very droopy and unhappy looking in the full sun.

The intarwebs seem to suggest that the goddamn creeping jenny might not be such a bad thing, provided the plants it grows around are tall enough that they don't get overwhelmed. I dunno. I may attempt to yank it back hard as well. I have no illusions about actually eradicating it, but I suspect any measure of control will only be achieved by regular yanking campaigns. WHAT FOOL ACTUALLY PLANTS THIS STUFF. I ask you.

Other possible companions for the delphiniums:
* astilbe
* digitalis
* coreopsis
* black-eyed susans (these didn't transplant so well last year, but worth trying again I guess)
* lady's mantle
* sweet william
* another clematis

Sigh. Stupid shade.

In there already is globeflower, masterwort, canterbury bells, purple geraniums, sarah bernhardt peony, rose campion, and the david austin rose (called teasing georgia). To complicate things further, several of the above have been munched on by the resident groundhog, whom I have been trying to discourage by dumping kitty litter down his bolt-hole (Ed Lawrence advises that this is a surefire way to get them to move elsewhere...because, after all, "wouldn't you?") They seem to be recovering fairly well, to my great surprise. Knock on wood.

2010-05-22T16:43:00.000-07:00

GREAT LEAPS of progress out there the last couple weeks, my friends. BOUNDS of progress. GREAT STRIDES.

Shade bed, now featuring a Blizzard mockorange, some phlox, All Gold japanese forest grass, and pulmonaria.

Sun bed, continuing to fill in with awesomeness.

Wall bed, featuring madly blooming spirea and newly planted The Fairy rose.

Corner bed, looking surprisingly civilized, albeit empty in the middle.

Some items with which I am particularly delighted:

The rhododendron. SQUEE.

The lilies, showing evidence of my scrupulous attention to Operation Sudden Lily Beetle Death.

Alliums of fabulousness. I'm a little peeved that the "mixed" giant alliums I ordered turned out to be all purple, but they're fabulous enough regardless that I don't care all that much. Also, they multiply, because where I originally planted two there are now four coming up. w00t!

And from a couple weeks ago: apple trees in bloom.

Must also take a picture of the delphiniums, because holy crap, they are astonishing me with their will to survive. I hadn't really expected them to come back, but they in fact put up about three times as many stalks this year. Having learned my lesson from last year, I am tying every single one to a five-foot stake.

2010-05-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

So yesterday when we were on our way to the grocery store, Corey gallantly pointed out some hand-lettered signs indicating a plant sale off in a nearby suburb. It turned out to be a fundraising event for an African women's charity. I snapped up an impressively large red-flowering peony for $10 (sahWEET), some phlox, and some brown-eyed susans, as well as a substantial pile of ten-year-old gardening magazines.

Inspired by a couple of said magazines I have added the following to my shopping list:

* Seafoam rose. Apparently a super-floriferous "ground cover" rose that gets to be a couple feet high and sprawls several feet wide; canes will actually root where they touch the ground. How cool! I'm thinking this might be nice in the wall bed, which is sadly empty at the moment and I'm at a loss as to what to fill it with, although in the pie-in-the-sky department I'd still like to put one of those fountains there. The ever-helpful Galetta Nurseries apparently has these in stock, so maybe I'll make a road trip during my week off.
* Oooh, looking at the Galetta website, "The Fairy" is actually pretty gorgeous too. This would have the advantage of adding some colour to that bed, which is set against the white-flowering spirea and hydrangeas. Hmmmm! Although I already have a pink rose in the sun bed...
* Zephirine Drouhin rose. I've heard this name a few times and it sounds pretty spectacular - climbing, fragrant, shade-tolerant. But Galetta doesn't have them, nor does Vesey's. Hmmm. Some phone calls are in order, I guess.

So in my puttering around over the course of the weekend, I managed to fix the irrigation system in the back, install an irrigation system out front, do a bit of weeding, and plant 3/4 of my recent purchases. Now that the irrigation system is back in business I am optimistic that I may actually get blooms out of at least one of the rhododendrons. I was baffled as to its failure to open any of its promising-looking buds, but apparently this April was the second driest on record or something, and the intarwebs tell me that drought can delay flowering or abort it entirely, but watering can help if you catch it in time. And now that I've given everything back there a thorough soaking, there is a bit of pink starting to show on the buds. FTW!

Also the "shade" bed is rather sunnier than I thought, except at the very back. It's at least as sunny as the other side of the yard. So that gives me a few more options as to what I do with it, at least!

2010-05-09T11:28:00.000-07:00

Additional progress in the front yard:

* snapped up a few cheapie plants in the market (lupins, lavender, cilantro, and a funky pink-flowering ornamental grass) and added to the new bed.
* planted seeds in the new bed as well: hollyhocks at the back, poppies of various heights and colours and longevities all around, bright lights swiss chard in the middle, some gigantor marigolds (just in case they might actually sprout when direct seeded outside) nearish the back. I have never yet succeeded in growing poppies from seed, but the packages insist they're easy to grow and that bed is the best approximation I have of their ideal conditions, so here's hoping.
* the peonies are (knock on wood!!!) looking like they might actually manage to bloom this year??!? Again, here's hoping!

Progress in the back yard:
* Operation Lily Beetle Sudden Death continues apace. I could only find two of the little bastards to squish the other night; this morning I couldn't find any. Trying not to get my hopes up, as they will no doubt be back in force soon enough. Sneaky tricks I have discovered:
* it's hard to tell whether you've squished them enough to actually kill them dead, and it's gross besides, but picking them off and chucking them in a bucket of water will make sure and is not as squickifying.
* my cousin had the excellent idea of wielding needle-nose pliers at them, since they like to hide in the folds of leaves and fall right off the plant and hide in the ground if you are too clumsy to nab them right away.
* use a short bucket of water; that way you can lean the plants over it and just brush/shake the beetles off into the bucket. Much less gross than squishing them.
* check the undersides of the leaves - eggs, like adults, are bright orange and easy to spot.

TO DO
* plant today's spoils. SQUEE.
* buy some of those tall hardwood stakes and fix up the delphiniums - also the japanese maple, which has grown a few inches since last year, astonishingly enough.
* ongoing weeding of doom. Bleh.
* On that note: MULCH. How I am going to manage this exactly I'm not sure, because it will involve a crapload of the stuff. But nonetheless.
* Clean up the throughway, it's getting embarrassing.
* de-dandelion the backyard lawn and add some more clover in its place.
* mow the lawn front and back. What a concept.
* hunt for a shade-tolerant mockorange and possibly a bicolour buddleia, if there is still a sunny bare spot that's big enough.

2010-05-09T10:51:00.000-07:00

Ohhhhhh Experimental Farm plant sale, how I ♥ you.

Spoils:
* variegated yucca

* baptisia

* coreopsis zagreb

* coreopsis red shift

* pulmonaria raspberry splash (this is the $20 pulmonaria I was looking at in my Veseys catalogue...except I got it for $4! Ha!)

* japanese forest grass

* red hot pokers (kniphofia)

* houttuynia cordata chameleon - funky technicolour foliage plant, which I am warned to be patient with because it is very slow to reappear in the spring ... oh crap, also everything I am reading about it on the intarwebs says it's mad invasive. Dammit. Well, maybe I can put it in a planter or something.

* verbascum

* two little bitty things that I snapped up for $3 and $4 because the pictures associated with them showed lovely flowers, but whose names I cannot remember!!

2010-05-03T19:03:00.001-07:00

Also: pictures!

FRONT YARD

Overall, for the record:

Stoopid lawn. It's as patchy and lame as ever. Although some clover has come up here and there, so I guess that's something. My next-door neighbour, with whom I share said stoopid lawn, has shared the depressing news that he has also tried to overseed it in years past and never had much luck.

Oh, purpleleaf sandcherry, how I ♥ you.

Money plant! This should be fun come the fall. It's surprisingly tall, too.

OMG. Scarlet Majesty tulips FTW. I am SO buying more of these next year.

BACK YARD

Overall:

I have finally figured out what patio furniture would work back here: a couple of nice adirondack chairs, especially in cedar so they could weather to a nice silvery colour, with a little side table and footstool(s). They're surprisingly comfortable, those things.

New shade bed, strictly for future reference. Weeds are already invading. Must make with the mulch!

Sun bed.

The yellow tulips were supposed to be part of a "french lace" blend of pink, white and purple. Somebody wasn't paying attention when they picked my order. Fortunately Breck's has an insanely generous return/replace policy, so they're sending me another batch, and I will just move the yellow ones somewhere else, because they are pretty stunning.

Wall bed.

Corner bed, featuring weeds, weeds, weeds. Ugh.

HowEVer, the very corner of said corner bed is looking quite nice.

Also, I was stoked to see that the trillium sent up two stalks this year! Maybe next year I might actually get two flowers out of it.

East bed.

How appropriate that "Dans un jardin" is a perfume shop

2010-05-03T18:40:00.001-07:00

As I type I am lounging on the couch with the windows wide open, basking in the smell of flowers. I think it's the purple-leaf sandcherry that is so deliciously perfumey at the moment, but there are a number of other similarly fragrant things lining the street, so I think it's just that time of year. LOVE IT.

For instance, there are some white-flowering shrubby trees edging the park near our house that smell heavenly. A neighbour identified them as chokecherries. Alas, I don't think I really have room for one of those, although it's probably worth checking with the native plant nurseries around town to see if they can't be pruned to keep a certain size.

I would really like to get something large and flowery to go at the back of the new shade bed, but most of the flowering trees or large shrubs that I love (flowering almond or quince for example) need lots of sun. Mockorange may be a go, though, if I can find the right variety, and it is reputed to be deliciously smelly, too. I hear that "Blizzard" has good shade tolerance, but can't find it on any nursery websites, possibly because its main claim to fame is cold tolerance past zone 3.

I am toying with the idea of adding a pile of daffodils to the front garden next year as well - Breck's has a mix of specially fragrant ones.

2010-04-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

Spring is early this year by a good month. I am having trouble finding this as creepy as I probably ought, because LOOK!

FRONT YARD

Overall view:

The magnolia is stunning.

The lawn reseeding has accomplished something? I guess? I hope this is grass or clover sprouting and not hellacious weeds.

Peonies coming back. Hopefully they will bloom this year. I don't THINK they're planted too deep - buds did form, they just shrivelled up and never opened. I suspect all the rain last summer may have provoked fungus of doom. Who knew peonies were so persnickety??

Behold the tulips! And irises! And my swank repurposing of old bricks from the backyard!

BACK YARD

Overall:

Compare to this time last year. See what I mean about spring arriving early this year? This photo is nowhere near as green. Also nowhere near as AWESOME. HAHAHAHAHAHAAA.

Primroses, as promised by the garden magazines, are lovely, and super-early bloomers. I think I have to track down some more of these.

The bloodroot is coming back, as is the sweet woodruff, but I see no ginger nor solomon's seal back here yet. Hmmmm.

I see three buds here. I'd dismiss it as a random freak of nature but it's not the only one. WTF?? Since when do tulips do this?

Look, it's the transplanted rose! I didn't kill it! Indeed it seems pretty happy in its new sunny spot. Just have to get something to prop it up - a nice obelisk type structure, maybe.

2010-04-02T18:04:00.000-07:00

I ♥ my crocuses.

Here's a wider-angle shot for future comparison purposes. Naturalize, my pretties!! Ahahahahahaaa!

Aaaaaaaand look what I did today! The new garden bed begins to take shape! Now I just need topsoil. I meant to get Ritchie's to deliver it on Monday, but I forgot to call back on Thursday, so I may have missed the boat on that till next weekend.

As an added bonus this used up every last one of the remaining rocks from Montague, so now I can sweep up the throughway once and for all. Well, except for that pile of sand that I need to figure out what to do with.

Also this weekend I need to replant a bunch of my seeds, since some cat or other around here has been using them as a salad bar. GRRRR.

Spring cleaning

2010-03-24T17:53:00.000-07:00

Ahhhhhhh. Sweet, sweet project time, how I ♥ you.

Tonight I accomplished the following:

* gave the backyard lawn a thorough raking over, as it was caked with half-decayed fallen lilac leaves. Will have to deploy some dutch white clover and some shade-mix grass seed; it's pretty patchy and mossy back there. Not that I mind the moss, it's nice and green and soft, but the last thing I need is hostile weed takeovers, and the clover should help to reduce the amount of bare ground available for them.

Speaking of which, the creeping jenny is already on the move, depressingly; I did the "rake first in one direction, then the other" trick advised by Ed Lawrence for creeping charlie, but it didn't do much good. I think I will have to wield a spade and then go sifting through the soil by hand for every scrap of root in that patch in order to stave it off. And even then I haven't got a hope of digging it all out of the garden bed. Goddamn thuggish plant. I wouldn't mind it so much if it actually discouraged other weeds, but nooooo.

* finally transplanted the prairie joy rose, hopefully not demolishing its root system too badly in the process. Ugh. Fingers crossed. The outcome of this will go a long way towards determining my opinion of the finickiness of roses. At least I managed not to accidentally dig up any bulbs while I was at it.

* swept the patio mostly clear of pine needles, revealing a lovely ever-more-established patchwork of thyme and moss and nicely settled stones. It is totally increasing in gorgeousness and I am dead proud of it.

* swept up the astonishing drifts of fallen leaves and cedar bits covering the passthrough between carport and yard. I really have to do something about this area, it's a horrific mess. It would be tempting to dig up some of the pavers and turn it into garden space, especially given all the nice inviting passageway ideas I've seen in garden magazines, but it's so shady in there that the attempt would be an exercise in frustration. Maybe if I get bored in 10 years. Besides, we need somewhere to put the BBQ.

I figure that if I can dedicate the half-hour that is Corey's part of the Zoodle's bedtime routine to yard-work, I will be able to keep at least sort of on top of things. Naturally that is the same time slot I would need to work up to biking to work. Too many damn projects, not enough time. But REGARDLESS, here is my list of Stuff To Tackle In Nearish Future:

FRONT YARD
* determine outlines of new bed and cover with compost and topsoil
* plant "early spring" seeds, e.g. poppies
* dethatch and top-dress lawn, deploy clover and grass seed
* clean up leaves and other crap out of existing beds

BACK YARD
* finish cleaning up throughway
* organize shed so it's not a hazard to set foot in it - just about gave myself a black eye this evening
* top-dress lawn, deploy clover and grass seed
* start shade bed with compost, topsoil, and mulch while I figure out wtf I'm going to do with it
* get the drop on all the goddamn celandine that's popping up everywhere

(Very) Early Spring

2010-03-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

It is probably a sign of sad, sad addiction and withdrawal that I am stomping around out there with a camera in mid-March. NONETHELESS: time for a picture post!

FRONT YARD

Well, I didn't kill the magnolia, so w00t! Need to scheme some more about what I'm going to do with that new bed. Separate post on this subject to follow.

Crocuses are making an appearance, which cheers me greatly. I had fun pointing them out to the Zoodle, too. I am so glad I planted these things. Can't wait till they bloom.

Also returning: irises. I think the neighbourhood bunnies may have sampled this one, but it doesn't look too much the worse for wear.

BACK YARD

SQUEE. I can already tell that last summer's efforts made a fabulous difference back here. Melt, snow, melt!!!

The patio thyme seems to have stayed evergreen under the snow. By the end of this summer, it will no doubt have annexed the whole area. Awesome.

Wow, the hens and chicks are sure looking happy. I don't think it can really be possible for them to have grown under the snow, can it?

I seem to have cultivated a whole host of moss, both in the garden patches and on the patio stones (the ones visible so far anyway). Unfortunately, as pretty as it is, I don't think it actually deters weeds.

Spoils of Seedy Saturday

2010-03-07T10:25:00.000-08:00

* Cleome in pink, purple and white. Last year I got these as bedding plants, so it'll be interesting to see how seedlings compare.

* Phacelia Tanacetifolia. A very interesting-looking annual; package claims it's good for bees. From what I'm reading the foliage looks like something between ferns and yarrow.

* Poppies. Going crazy with these this year, apparently, because I picked up two more varieties - both self-seeding annuals:

English Elegance

Flanders Fields

* Malva Zebrina. Was it these or Lavatera that get super self-seedy-aggressive? Hmmm.

* Gigantor marigolds (aka CrackerJack Mixed). Last year these didn't germinate so well, but I think the seeds may have been old.

* Nice red hollyhocks. Where to put them?? Maybe in the front yard, at the back of the new bed? It will be nice and sunny there. Not that they'll bloom until next year anyway.

* Mixed Lupins. I hear mixed reports about these - that they're mad persnickety and unreliable from seed, and that they naturalize wildly. I gather they need very particular conditions, but that they go nuts when those conditions are met. Will have to check again.

2010-02-27T12:58:00.000-08:00

Latest seed purchase, inspired by a tip from a gardening magazine: "Bright Lights" Swiss Chard.

Not that I have any idea how to cook with it, but isn't it awesomely colourful!

2010-02-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

February, I hates you forEVARRRRRRRR.

To distract myself from how far away spring is, I went seed-shopping. The spoils:

* Parsley. I was surprised to learn from the package that this stuff is actually biennial, meaning last year's parsley will be back. Mom tells me, however, that it bolts in its second year - although it's okay if harvested early in the season, it still doesn't taste the same. So: new crop. At least the old stuff will be ornamental.

* Basil. Nom.

* Cilantro. Judging from the picture on the package this stuff is actually quite pretty in addition to being tasty.

* Poppies: "Paeony Scarlet" (annual), Californian Poppies (annual), and mixed oriental poppies (perennial).

* A cute ornamental grass called "Bunny's Tails", or lagurus ovatus.

* Blue fescue ornamental grass. I am going to have to do some more reading on this one, I've been warned it may be a thug. I suppose I could plant it in a container or something, anyway.

* Cerinthe "Purple Bells". An annual.

* Dianthus "Brilliancy".

* Coreopsis "Early Sunrise".

* Matthiola. This image is a lot prettier than I remember these things - to my memory they were pretty unremarkable, except for they smelled delicious (like lilacs but later in the summer). Possibly they needed more sun to actually look decent.

2010-01-15T08:47:00.001-08:00

Another event I will have to attend: Seedy Saturday at the Ron Kolbus Lakeside Centre on March 6, 10AM to 3PM. By the time March rolls around I will no doubt have already gone totally overboard buying more seeds than I could possibly plant, but STILL. Plus it's being held practically in my backyard.

2010-01-11T08:14:00.000-08:00

Two Experimental Farm events that are totally going on my calendar:

Rare & Unusual Plant Sale - May 9, 9AM to 1PM, at the KW Neatby building on Carling. Best Mother's Day outing conceivable, really. I will be repeating last year's strategy of showing up 10 minutes early with a wagon.

Native Plant Sale - June 5, 9:30AM to 12:30PM. I'm guessing this is probably hosted at the Fletcher Wildlife Garden, since it's their event. The Fletcher garden sounds worth checking out in and of itself, actually; their website is full of interesting tidbits.

Spriiiiiiiinnnnnnggggg how I pine for you!

2010-01-08T18:03:00.000-08:00

So before the snow arrived in December, I got winter protection up for neither the magnolia nor the maple, and I completely forgot about a poppy I'd been meaning to plant, so it's probably all frozen and dead now. FAIL. Hopefully the shrubs at least will survive.

In better news, I can haz Vesey's catalogue! So here is the shopping list for spring 2010:

Astilbe, which I started from seed back at Jamieson and have been meaning to buy more of ever since. Shady and tall FTW.

How's this for an awesome fern? It starts out ORANGE and turns green as it matures.

"Naturalizes easily" is all too often code-speak for "mad invasive", but these mallows have caught my eye for ages.

I have been saying I should get myself some coreopsis, since I've been admiring its tall clouds of yellow flowers in other people's yards. Just to be different, I think I'll go for the one that starts out red and then turns yellow.

I feel a little silly contemplating spending $20 on a pulmonaria, but look at the flowers on this thing! Much cooler than the usual blue kind.

2009-11-01T11:43:00.000-08:00

Since it was so gorgeous out, I zipped outside during the Zoodle's naptime to rake some leaves and do some maintenance.

I had been meaning to delay my front yard schemes for a couple years, but I had eleventy billion leaves to get rid of and a shrub to plant, so:

Last year I abandoned a heap of leaves on the lawn and ended up with a big bare patch in that spot, so I figured I should be able to get the same result if I leave the leaves there deliberately. Decorative fence and drought-tolerant plants to follow. This makes me doubly happy because now I can plant cosmos next year after all.

That strip of grass around the outside has pretty much got to go, though; it will just be straggly and annoying as it is. I should probably pave it under with a nice decorative brick something or other, although that part will have to wait, since I will totally not have time or $$$ for major garden renovations next year. A paved path could go around the outline of the new bed, actually, and go between it and the magnolia.

Eventually when I can expand the whole yard into garden I'm figuring this will make a good spot for an "entry" where more paved paths (for access and easy weeding) can start. I could even do some sort of schnazzy arbour thing. Except it would have to be all rustic and stuff to go with the fence I'm planning. Hmmm.

Meanwhile, awesomeness in the backyard:

Look, my birdbath has visitors!

A nice splash of colour from the cotoneaster (and the hydrangeas make a nice contrast, too).

2009-10-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

Triumph! This is probably the first time I've actually gotten bulbs into the ground in reasonable time, despite there being an unprecedented frahillion of them. I also planted most of the spoils from the previous post.

Remaining Garden Chores
* move pampas grass
* move primrose to front, where it will actually be visible
* plant poppy (forgot to this afternoon, oops)
* move rose and peony when they go dormant
* cover maple and magnolia when it gets cold

The one thing I'm still pondering is where to put the burning bush. The internets tell me it has the best colour in full sun and dry conditions, which suggests I ought to stick it in the front yard. Maybe I could put it sort of in the front corner...

...and then it could be the centerpiece of that little decorative corner I was scheming there.

In other news, here's what the sun bed looks like right now:

Between the cosmos, the asters, and the gaura, this is impressively colourful for October, eh?

Less impressive:

One single, solitary, lonely sweet pea. File under Plants I Will Not Be Bothered With Next Year. This is particularly annoying because if they HAD worked out, they'd still be blooming like crazy.

2009-10-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

Note to self: just because it has been cold and miserable outside does not mean it has been cold and miserable enough to get rid of the bugs. Try to plant bulbs or otherwise dig in the dirt, apparently, and they will come out in force.

My miscalculation on this front, however, does tell me that the patio is excellently performing the function I originally had in mind for it, i.e. creating a space to sit and look around without stirring up the ravening swarm.

Anyway. Time to deploy the mosquito hat, even if it looks dorky.

2009-10-02T13:01:00.001-07:00

Oh lord. In addition to that free perennial, Richmond Nurseries also had a "buy two, get one free" deal on both shrubs and perennials. That's way beyond my power to resist. Well, I saved $30 or $40, didn't I?? I suppose I had to get one more round of binge buying in before the season ends anyway...

The spoils!

Corkscrew hazel. I'm thinking maybe this can replace the prairie joy rose on the east side when I move it; the nursery staff seemed to think it would do OK with those light levels, as long as it gets enough water. With my kickass Lee Valley system in place I don't think that'll be an issue.

Dwarf burning bush. STUNNING fall colour. Not totally sure where this one's going to live yet, but it's supposed to be pretty adaptable, so I'm sure I can find somewhere to put it.

Cranberry cotoneaster. Loved the shape and texture of this one, to say nothing of the reddish fall foliage and bright berries. I'm thinking this can go in front of the wall, since it's fairly low-growing.

"Queen Charlotte" anemone. This jumped out at me, since my mother-in-law recently planted one and I was very taken with it.

Saxifrage. Isn't it cute?? I believe mine blooms red. Maybe I'll take my cue from this image and stick it in some wall crevices.

Orange oriental poppy, in case the ones to be transplanted don't survive. I can always use more of these.

Dwarf balloon flower. Another cutie, purchase of which was inspired by my mother-in-law.

Oh, and I got a big mossy hanging planter to house the giant spider plant my mom brought me from Chesterville.

DOOM. Good thing there's only a 30% chance of rain tomorrow, maybe I will actually manage to get everything planted...

2009-10-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

Oooooooh, look, an online coupon for a free perennial from the Richmond Nursery! Just a little perennial, and you have to go before October 5, but still: I am SO THERE. The Zoodle and I needed something to do this afternoon anyway, and with all the garden centers taken down it's been ages since I did some nice plant browsing.

Also, my online credit card statement had a silver lining when I checked it: Breck's has charged my card, which means my bulbs should be enroute! Of course it's now cold and rainy and generally kind of lousy gardening weather. Well, at least it won't be buggy, right?

Edit: ...and when I stepped out the door to grab the mail, guess what package was waiting for me? Squee!!

2009-09-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

So I'm toying with schemes for the front yard. Not that I will be implementing these anytime soon, since I still have two beds barely started and one bed not even begun in the back. But still.

The red dotted line indicates the property line between me and my neighbour. The red arrow indicates a possible location for one of those gorgeous low-lying 6'-wide junipers, although this is more a whim than true inspiration at this point.

The front corner is a breeeelliant idea I snitched from a garden magazine. I'd go back to those lovely people in Montague and buy some old fence rails (which they were selling in addition to the rocks) and make a little decorative corner, which would get planted round with cleome and cosmos and possibly morning glories around the posts, with other lower plants in front. Around the magnolia, meanwhile, I'd start with a half-circle bed in front of the tree (brown) and then add another half-circle (red) when the rest of the space fills up.

Any plants in these locations would have to be mad drought tolerant and hardy, though, since the soil out front is particularly sandy and sun-drenched; also, it is more subject to wind than the very sheltered backyard.

A whole bunch of daisy-looking things would work (shasta daisies, asters, echinacea, gaillardia, rudbeckia) and conveniently I have all of those scattered around already - so by the time I get around to making these beds I can just transplant a bunch of pre-existing stuff and it should be fine there. Sedums and sempervivens, of course; I don't have sedums yet but sempervivens should be divisible by then. Coreopsis also, apparently; personally I prefer the big tall ones. I've been seeing that stuff everywhere this summer and admiring it. Russian sage would also be a good pick, although that gets monstrously huge. Oooooo, and apparently buddleias are also in this category. Awesome, those are gorgeous:

Apparently anything silver and/or fuzzy is apt to be drought tolerant, too. So artemisias and oriental poppies are on the list, also lambs' ears (although I hear those get pretty ratty-looking by late summer).

Ornamental grasses, too, or similar-shaped plants. Here's a yucca, for instance, which is lovely:

Another pretty plant called euphorbia - maroon-coloured foliage:

2009-09-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

In lawn news, when I finally dragged the lawnmower out of its hiding place the other day, I discovered that the lawn's shagginess was not grass (ha! Imagine! GRASS, in MY LAWN? Surely you jest!) but some sort of feathery weed. I had noticed the feathery foliage before, but it was a pain in the ass to attack with my trusty weeder so I'd given up on it.

Now that it was about to bloom, it was conveniently much easier to spot and also much easier to get a grip on and yank. So I grubbed all of it out before mowing.

And good job I did, because come to find out, the stuff goes by the name of RAGWEED.

2009-09-01T12:00:00.001-07:00

Time for a picture post!

The sun bed, with the cosmos looking particularly wild and woolly.

The wall bed, with the golden oregano going berserk (compare with the freshly planted stuff among the pictures here). Now THAT's groundcover. The delphinium has withered to a bare stick, but the internets assure me that this happens sometimes when it gets hot and that it will be back in force next year.

The corner bed, with bleeding heart moved, rhododendron and sedge grass planted, and weeds beaten back. Again, compare. Looking at least slightly more civilized, eh? I just have to wreak further havoc and devastation on the celandine that's raging along the fence.

Now blooming:

The gypsophila has gotten a second wind and is blooming all over the place.

Surprise! It turns out I did actually manage to plant some cupid's dart. They looked very much like the bachelors' buttons as seedlings, so I planted them all together. I'd been wondering why these weren't getting as tall as the other ones.

One of the heleniums shriveled up and died - we'll see if it comes back - but this one's doing fine.

And here are the asters. They start out white and then get gradually more purple as the flowers open more.

2009-08-27T18:11:00.000-07:00

Continuing thesis and baby related insanity on the home front means not much in the way of garden news, alas. Hopefully I will get a chance to snap some pictures in the next few days. Meanwhile I am unwinding with schemes and ruminations.

To Do in the Next Couple Months
* As mentioned, move bleeding heart and plant remaining unplanted plants
* Plant bulbs when they arrive
* Move the pampas grass, which will end up hiding the maple if it gets as tall as promised in its current location
* Cover magnolia and maple when it gets cold out
* Attempt to weed the back lawn a bit
* Possibly dig up the last bed in my patio arrangement and let it sit under mulch over the winter; I may not get around to doing anything with it next year but at least I won't have to worry about it multiplying weeds on me

Things I Will Do Next Year
* Either find another location for the cosmos or don't bother with it. As much as I love the stuff, it is too tall for its current location; it hides the climbing rose almost completely. The cleome can stay put, although I might scatter it around a little more.
* Need to use taller stakes on the delphiniums, provided they come back.
* Don't bother with the geraniums, but plant lots of begonias of many colours in the shade.
* Gird up my loins like a man and pick-n-squish all the nasty goddamn lily beetles, since they don't seem to respond to anything else short of chemical assassination.
* Chop back the invading grape vines and anonymous climbing stuff coming over the west fence.
* Mow the lawn once in a while; take Ed Lawrence's advice about raking the hell out of the creeping charlie early in the spring.
* As stated many times before: MULCH.
* Focus on filling up the shadier beds in my mad spring plant-buying.

2009-08-06T10:01:00.000-07:00

Not a whole lot going on out there these days; this is due in part to preoccupation with other projects, but it doesn't help that it's just that time of year. Although this year, despite the seasonal rattiness of the ferns, things are still looking pretty good, so that's progress over my last garden. The climbing rose has buds like whoa - not sure if it just blooms late or if it just took this long to get established. The maple is, well, much the same, but it's not dead, so that counts as victory, right?

I mustered out briefly today to do some poking around and weeding. Pulled a whole mess of celandine out of the corner bed. I also, regretfully, dug out the dogwood, although I imagine it will be back. It's just too big and leggy for that spot, which makes the whole bed look like a mess, and I don't have anywhere else to put it right now. The bleeding heart is having a similarly wild and woolly effect on its surroundings by sprawling all over everything, so my evil plan for a week or two hence is to dig it up and move it further out into the bed. The rhododendron I snapped up on sale, meanwhile, should make a tidier replacement.

To my surprise, there's also an azalea still alive back there, and it actually looks pretty happy. I think it got chewed on in the spring - I suspect the neighbourhood groundhog, which has also snacked on my parsley and canterbury bells; must lay down some blood meal at some point - but it actually managed to flower a little while ago, and is growing busily. Once I get the bleeding heart out of the way it may even be visible.

In my crashing around I startled what I thought at first was a cricket, but it turned out to be a toad - a teeeeeeny tiny toad, about half the length of my thumb. How cool! I hope this means that the big toad I met once or twice has had babies somewhere. By the time I came back with my camera, alas, it had disappeared.